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Actors Who Always Seem to Be Playing Actors. Specifically, Themselves.
Note: I’m going through old drafts, trying to clean them up. Here’s one. It doesn’t look worthless enough to pitch, nor bad enough to say, “I think I’ll save this one, and clean it up sometime in the future”. I’ll just mash the Publish button, and have one less box of stuff in my Ricochet basement.
To be honest, I’m afraid that I’ve actually published it at some point. I don’t care. It’s not staying in the basement.
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We just watched a post-WWII film, Clementine, directed by John Ford. It stars Henry Fonda.
Whenever Henry Fonda is in the scene, I forget the story and the character he is playing, and I see Henry Fonda playing the part of an actor who is portraying Henry Fonda acting in a film.
Robert Redford is another actor like that. Did he ever do what an actor has to do in a movie, get you to suspend disbelief and get into the story? Forget that he’s acting?
Not that I recall, but if he did, let me know. I may be forgetting or I may have missed the movie. If your reply mentions Butch Cassidy or The Way We Were, The Horse Whisperer, or the one about the cute Mountain Man, do not expect a response.
There are other actors like that, though I can’t think of them at the moment. If you do think of one, your comment will get at least a Like. Promise.
There are other actors who started out that way, but grew in their skills and put on some age, and got to be pretty good actors. I’m thinking of Richard Dreyfuss as an example, but don’t quote me on that. I could probably come up with some examples of movies where he did not play Richard Dreyfuss after he got older, but I would have to fall back on doing a Lifetime Database Query (asking Kate) to name one where he played the role, not the self.
[EDIT: That sentence may be the reason that I decided to save this for necessary fixes before publishing months ago. But I have no regrets. It is one less box in the Ricochet basement, and if the writing quality is horrid enough to earn me a job writing under my own byline on the front section of the WSJ, bring it on. They pay good money.]
Jack Nicholson got famous for Easy Rider. Barf me back to the Sixties. But I think he got better, and that I’ve seen at least one flick where he performed well, an old actor playing an old guy. The Marine Colonel one maybe yes, but the lefty propaganda nature of that movie prevents me from thinking of it as a movie, instead of as a brainwashing project. But if I force myself to think of it as a movie, I have to admit it was a great movie, and Nicholson did a masterful job of playing his role, with not a moment of distraction from the story. One reason is that he wasn’t playing himself, the impudent counter-culture Jester.
[EDIT: I fixed an error. Memo to self: Henry Fonda. Not Henry Ford.]
Published in General
Sean Bean is versatile within a certain range, and probably my favorite non-leading actor. He and Jean Reno carried Ronin, for instance, never mind Attitude Man DeNiro.
I think an actor can only act a part as well as he or she can imagine the part. So an actor changes by emphasizing some aspect or another within one’s own personality and realm of experience. It’s similar to the writer advise to write about what you know.
When someone pretends to represent something they don’t understand, it’s obvious to those who do understand. This is most obvious with regional accents. It’s why good actors have coaches and do research.
All intelligent people have more going on in their heads than they choose to express. A courageous man is not without fear. A good woman is not without cruel or selfish thoughts.
A good actor is able to let one’s guard down in front of many people and cameras, to focus amid props and gear, and do it on call, to imagine oneself as a different version of oneself.
There’s a reason not everyone is good at impressions. Saint Peter said “I am all things to all people. I contain multitudes.” Not everybody does. Some personalities are straightfoward. Some are full of possibilities and internal battles.
We should discuss The Shining. I’ll start – I wanted to kill Shelly Duvall when I watched her insanely stupid character. And since I couldn’t get to her, I wanted Jack to do it for me. I was hoping, when he came up the stairs with that bat, that he’d connect.
Now that I’ve seen the movie thirty times and analyzed it way too much, I understand what Stanley was doing with her character. I don’t forgive him, tho.
I knew you were gonna say that about Shelly D, Barfly. And I totally get where you are coming from. (My little friend Tony let me know.)
Though it took awhile for them to come into their own and they are painfully mainstream, Leondardo Dicaprio and the later Keanu Reeves seem to lose themselves in their roles. This discussion reminds me of a book by A.D. Nutall.
As Theodore Dalrymple said,
Stories are critically important things. They help us understand things that theory or even biography don’t do. All of my philosophy fails to explain why so many politicians love power. I don’t have any empathy for actual historical figures and the psychology seems foggy to me. But I have empathy for Lady MacBeth.
Such is the force of fiction.
John Lithgow.
The man has tremendous range, but I’m always aware I’m watching John Lithgow. NTTAWWT
On accents
In defense of Marko Ramius, if you can’t do an accent well, don’t do it. The classic blunder, only slightly less well known than “never going in against a Sicilian when death is on the line, Tony Curtis’ “Yonder lies da castle of my fadduh.”.
A different twist
Yes! She did. I was very impressed. How do people remember all this stuff?
Robert Redford played Death, disguised as a wounded policeman, in an episode of “The Twilight Zone” about half a decade before he first became a star. The point of course was death wasn’t supposed to look like Robert Redford, but while the role played to his looks, since he’s just a supporting actor here, he’s not playing Robert Redford:
I get that in a lot of things, but in Once Upon a Time in the West, I didn’t see Fonda. I just saw Frank.
Mark,
Well, Mrs. Camp is obviously a woman of great intellect and refinement. So, of course she would know such things.
I remember this stuff because movies interest me and it’s funny.
Tim
I agree with the first three, and raise you Gary Oldman (possibly our finest actor) and Colin Firth.
But Dustin Hoffman? Some good performances, but when he’s bad, it looks like he is practicing his lines in front of a mirror, trying out different voices. Cringe-central.
Morgan Freeman can play quite a range of characters, from benevolent to scary. He’s too big an actor now to stretch his muscles nowadays, and once you’ve played God, you’re in demand for the all-wise roles he is probably inundated with now.
But the same way an actor can tarnish himself with an asshat comment about politics, forever making me wince a little when I see him, Morgan Freeman did the opposite. When asked “What shall we do to help the black man?” he replied like Frederick Douglass: “Do nothing with us. Stop helping us. We are fine.” Or something to that effect.
I admit it is small-minded of me, but now every time I see him, my heart skips a beat, and I smile with hope for my fellow man.
You may know him as Sean Bean. But to me will always live in the hearts of his 95th Rifles as Captain Richard Sharpe.
Thanks. I think this may count as a counter-example to my including Redford in my Bad list. I didn’t have time to watch the whole thing, because Kate read Sunday Morning Coming Down on Powerline and so we are listening to a bunch of Jimmy Webb songs. No link, you guys all have PowerLine bookmarked.
Playing a somewhat tipsy version of a person everyone knows – and singing live in a take, is about as good as you can get IMO.
I have tremendous respect for actors. It’s really hard, and it’s so easy to be bad.
This is partly because of his very distinctive voice, IMHO. I would put Alan Rickman (RIP) in the same category.
For me, her performance in the made for TV movie The Doll Maker was somewhat outside of her character:
She made this movie after Nine to Five, touring Appalachia with Dolly Parton.
Regarding playing to type:
In my view, to play to type, Redford would have to play a pretty, self-absorbed actor with limited acting ability. In all his actual roles, he is not playing to type, and he has difficulty with that.
I’m not counting the Twilight Zone part.
A good way to assess the ability of an actor is to realize you didn’t know who was starring, and then discovered who they are. Christian Bale is one. Angelina Jolie.
And I would always recognize him, but Alan Rickman is a favorite actor.
Rain Man, Hero. But yes, he usually plays himself.
All actors play themselves.
Great actors, or even really good actors, almost always have a personality that is engaging — attractive, personal, glib, facile, with clear facial expressions that are varied, complex and contextually appropriate. They are good raconteurs, personally. It’s rare to find a really good actor who is boring in real life.
What they do on the screen is be themselves in odd or different situations, and they themselves are most often that thing which engages the viewer.
(And notice that comedians usually can play dramatic parts extremely well, but half of dramatic actors seem to have trouble with comedy.)
Some actors are quite shy and are not engaging in person. DeNiro is one actor in that category.
Many actors have commented that playing comedy is much harder than doing drama. There was a great 2 minute segment on “Friends” where Joey explained to a class he was teaching how you it is you react, cry, or act deeply serious when doing the drama of a soap opera.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQzQRaQINns
Richard Burton once turned to some cast member in the stage play “Camelot” and said, “Tonight I will recite the King’s speech so that the audience cries.” And that was the effect he got.
The next night he announced “Tonight I will recite the King’s speech and make the audience laugh.” And they found the speech hilarious.
And that is acting.
You can be both engaging and emotive and facile, and shy.
King George commands and we obey.
I had to scroll all the way down to see if anyone had said Woody Allen already. The most obvious example of someone always playing themselves. And now that he is too old to play a romantic role, a given actor fills in and plays Woody Allen in all his most recent (terrible) movies.
Also Matthew McConaughy generally plays rakish sexy Southerners, but I love that man so I am happy to see him anytime. And Viggo Mortensen is another, dark, dangerous ethical men. And Cillian Murphy from Peaky Blinders generally plays characters that are sensitive and twisted, thus offsetting his looks.
Gary Oldman is the one I found to disappear into a role – without crazy make up usually (well, Dracula). Sid Vicious, Sirious Black, Lee Harvey Oswald, Beethoven, the bad guy from Fifth Element, George Smiley, Churchill, and lots of other bad guys.
He’s been a fav of mine since Sid and Nancy, and the very odd Track 29.