Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Mar 3, 2019 15:56:31 GMT
Barbara, Isabelle, Helen, and Vanessa, that is.  This incredible group of women represents such a diverse range of talent - they're cemented together in history as the only actresses who have been awarded the Best Actress prize at Cannes twice (Hershey consecutively so). Please, share your thoughts? How would you rank them in terms of talent? For me, it'd go... 1. Isabelle Huppert 2. Barbara Hershey 3. Vanessa Redgrave 4. Helen Mirren I think the first three are in a different realm than Mirren, talent-wise, but I love Mirren, too! She does diva histrionics with the best of them. Huppert and Hershey are certainly the most versatile - they're true chameleons who can do anything. Redgrave is searingly powerful, too, but in an ethereal way - I see her working well with a less diverse range of characters. |
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Post by pacinoyes on Mar 3, 2019 20:00:19 GMT
Well Isabelle Huppert is the GOAT, ever, period and I don't say that about the 2 actors I ranked 1-2 in our male poll (Brando/Olivier). Even people who think she's great don't get it - see Sincerely Charlotte or Loulou or anything besides her "big ones" and prepare to be baffled by her searing, fearless work. Look I'll say plenty of questionable stuff on actors - Paul Newman is not on Pacino's level of talent, how's that - go ahead flame away but I'd never definitively list the males like I do the females. Redgrave is the one that is closest to a female Olivier where she has work across all mediums and she's definitive of something otherwordly even - it's not even acting it's more like a personification - I have no problem saying Huppert/Streep/Redgrave are the 3 most talented actresses ever - and I would never do that for male actors. Hershey is a marvelous actress but she'd be my 4th here. Mirren was rather wonderful even as a sex kitten and arm candy all through the 70s early 80s. She seismically changed and its a monumental change for an older actress - to me she's too major to be below Hershey but I do like Hershey too and think she's the most underrated/underappreciated of actresses - she's just less vivid to me which is the one main attribute I judge acting on - not versatility or consistency (definitely not consistency, at all) etc. |
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Javi
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Post by Javi on Mar 5, 2019 1:04:30 GMT
Mirren is good (sometimes very good). Sadly haven't seen enough Hershey although she seems fascinating.
I think pacinoyes made an interesting point. Huppert, Streep and Redgrave can each be considered the world's greatest actress depending on what you respond to as a viewer.
Someone described Huppert as the most intelligent actor alive and I'd agree with that. It's not just that she's an intelligent woman (that's obvious enough); it's that she deliberately plays with her intelligence in all her roles. This gives her a one-of-a-kind alertness and also a playfulness. No one masters irony the way she does, or finds humor where there ought to be none. Everything she does on screen is highly intelligent, but never intellectualized, never the result of a process... and because she sees no separation between emotion and intellect, she can move you in ways you didn't see coming in a thousand years. The emotion is there but it doesn't come from the usual places. I suppose that's her genius, in a way.
Redgrave is an actress of genius too in a very different way. Her depth of feeling is unparalleled (here she is superior to Huppert, Streep and everyone else). She moves you in ways that a poet would... pacino's "otherworldly" adjective is correct. What she has in common with Huppert is that she's unpredictable. Her performance in Playing for Time, for example... that performance is a full picture of the human experience that I'm still trying to wrap my head around many years after seeing it. And it's her vision of the human experience, not the director's.
Both are all-timers, in any case. But my heart will always be Redgrave's...
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Post by Deleted on Mar 5, 2019 13:45:15 GMT
She moves you in ways that a poet would... pacino's "otherworldly" adjective is correct. I agree, but I think that with Redgrave, this quality can work to her disadvantage when she's not really being directed. Some of her performances are a little... one-note to me. The sing-song voice, her motionless gaze - it can be a bit "precious." |
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Post by pacinoyes on May 23, 2019 11:12:53 GMT
Someone really needs to get Hershey an even halfway decent role now - I almost listed her in the MIA thread though she has recent credits...I almost want to go out of my way to point out how heroic Mirren is again - big 2019 film role, big TV role coming next season, all the awards acclaim later in her life (late 40s-50s+) though she had a acclaim prior to that.
Hershey is younger than Mirren - it's kind of cruel that she really has got not much really in a long time....
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