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Post by pacinoyes on Jun 10, 2019 20:07:25 GMT
I'd have to say Rylance getting an Emmy is far more likely than Cranston getting an Oscar - it's the harder award to get and to campaign for, he's in his mid-60s (Cranston) that's tough to pull off and Rylance arguably deserved the Emmy before. In the very first post, I listed Rylance as a GOAT contender - the first post! - so I think he just has a different level of acclaim, now his level of ambition is a different thing - sometimes he seems to have it, other times he can get diverted in his career.
Of course that's the thing that derails all the GOAT contenders in UK and US - the males at least - the balance between doing work, being "perfect" (or whatever that is) and finding the right piece. I have often said Olivier is the GOAT for this thread at least (and was #2 only to Brando to me in our poll) and he is that because he had no discernible private life in some way - he literally was in a play, on TV or film set or running the National theater for a billion years - it's superhuman and inhuman to work that much.
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Post by pacinoyes on Jun 10, 2019 20:13:08 GMT
Oh honeys, I don't know if she's been mentioned already but I'd like to give a shout out to Julie Harris who won five Tonys and eleven nominations, three Emmys, a Grammy Award, and was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress. She should have been given an Oscar for The Haunting (1963) which is probably her most famous movie, but it wasn't recognized at the time and gained cult status much later. She also starred in East of Eden, I am Camera as the first prototype of Sally Bowles, pre Liza Minelli's Cabaret; she even played Orphelia to Richard Burton's Hamlet. Most importantly, anyone who has played a character who cuts off her nipples with garden shears, deserves our admiration & respect. I'd also say for Harris she's an insanely unfussy and real performer - when she acts opposite Dean or Brando etc. in Reflections in a Golden Eye there is never any indication of her losing the sight of her own work in service to them - Taylor, Brando, Keith at times all go into very florid affectation but Harris grounds everything, every time........that's quite a temptation she avoids there and it's the opposite of what most people would say about "theater actors" when they use that term as a put down.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 10, 2019 20:26:09 GMT
she even played Orphelia to Richard Burton's Hamlet. Can you provide a link for this? Linda Marsh was Ophelia in the '64 production of Hamlet with Burton on Broadway... He starred with Julie Andrews in "Camelot," honey - is that what you're thinking of?
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Post by MsMovieStar on Jun 10, 2019 21:00:07 GMT
she even played Orphelia to Richard Burton's Hamlet. Can you provide a link for this? Linda Marsh was Ophelia in the '64 production of Hamlet with Burton on Broadway... He starred with Julie Andrews in "Camelot," honey - is that what you're thinking of? Oh honey, thank god, you didn't ask for a picture of the nipples! She was in the movie according to her wiki filmography - which could be wrong...
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Post by MsMovieStar on Jun 10, 2019 21:16:06 GMT
Oh honeys, I don't know if she's been mentioned already but I'd like to give a shout out to Julie Harris who won five Tonys and eleven nominations, three Emmys, a Grammy Award, and was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress. She should have been given an Oscar for The Haunting (1963) which is probably her most famous movie, but it wasn't recognized at the time and gained cult status much later. She also starred in East of Eden, I am Camera as the first prototype of Sally Bowles, pre Liza Minelli's Cabaret; she even played Orphelia to Richard Burton's Hamlet. Most importantly, anyone who has played a character who cuts off her nipples with garden shears, deserves our admiration & respect. I'd also say for Harris she's an insanely unfussy and real performer - when she acts opposite Dean or Brando etc. in Reflections in a Golden Eye there is never any indication of her losing the sight of her own work in service to them - Taylor, Brando, Keith at times all go into very florid affectation but Harris grounds everything, every time........that's quite a temptation she avoids there and it's the opposite of what most people would say about "theater actors" when they use that term as a put down. Oh honey, I know exactly what you mean: It's what I love about her performance in The Haunting - she's totally immersed in the role. She's naive, foolish and slightly irritating throughout. I always think of that line 'the terrible strength of the weak' when I see her Eleanor - she's a wonderful creation. I also love her vivacious Sally Bowles.
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Post by pacinoyes on Jun 11, 2019 11:09:29 GMT
Today's person is somewhat "in the middle" of May/Harris she's off the radar unless you're a fan which everybody is .....except she's still off the radar.
Nina Arianda has a lead Tony win (and another lead nomination), was by far the best supporting role opposite Pacino in The Humbling (their scary-funny interactions could have been a whole other film even - she's something else), she's adept at comedy and drama - but lately she seems to show up in the smallish roles though memorably (Stan and Ollie, Florence Foster Jenkins, the TV shows Goliath, Billions). A couple years back she co-lead a rushed but interesting take on Shepard's Fool For Love with Sam Rockwell - so anything she does opposite major male leads........she aces it.
Rarely have I seen an actress who is so obviously a star, whom everyone acknowledges is fantastic (literally, everyone) not being used as such at all. Come on, build a TV show around her for Godsakes......
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Post by pacinoyes on Jun 14, 2019 11:37:30 GMT
"He's the best actor I've ever seen" - how often do you hear that? Well does that just mean you don't know what you're talking about or you haven't seen that many actors perhaps? Which brings us to arguably the UK's finest actor of his generation - according to some at least and his generation includes Daniel Day-Lewis, Ralph Fiennes and Mark Rylance. 58 years old and recently awarded the "Sir" in Sir Simon Russell Beale. I've seen Beale on stage (once) but Beale does not have a Tony, Oscar or Emmy - he's less than zero is US celebrity culture - but in the UK he's Godlike - considered the leading stage actor of his generation AND arguably the most interesting Shakespearean actor of it too even and he is almost never mentioned as such on here because well, who has seen him in the US? In the UK? He's one of those actors who wildly tilts to one medium and maybe the best example of it . In some ways he's the better, more acclaimed version of Brian Bedford (no one knows him either) - Beale has made noticeable commerial inroads lately in TV and film (Penny Dreadful, Death of Stalin). If he won an Oscar say no one would be surprised - at all - but as what do you cast a man who is knighted at 58 ..............and has already played Lear AND Prospero? As Hamlet, below:
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Post by stephen on Jun 14, 2019 12:16:30 GMT
Beale, for me, is the definitive Falstaff, and that's quite the statement. His work in The Hollow Crown is titanic, truly larger-than-life, and speaks to Beale's tsunami-like force of personality and magnetism. He's my win for The Death of Stalin, so I've already been keyed onto his greatness, but he's starting to get notices in the mainstream. I've been saying Beale needs that big franchise breakthrough to get his name out there in Hollywood, and I think if he played the Penguin, it would be just the ticket.
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Post by pacinoyes on Jun 15, 2019 10:25:36 GMT
Well if Simon Russell Beale provides a bit of a headscratcher on what he does next, Stephen Dillane I think provides the best example of someone we haven't covered yet, in reverse.
A Tony winner, very distinguished stage actor and very memorable on very memorable TV (Game of Thrones, The Tunnel, John Adams) - he's popped up in films but that seems an area far more open to him I'd venture to say now. Dillane is ALSO in this same Beale generation class (what was in the UK water 55-63 years ago........) and he first and foremost is a guy that people will say "Oh is that the guy who played __________". Right now I'm struggling to think of what you couldn't cast him in?
A sort of UK everyman with a depth of talent that only a very few have - he may find in his 60s even more is open to him than was previously and ....................he's been exemplary already.
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Post by stephen on Jun 15, 2019 12:50:57 GMT
Dillane's always been a favorite of mine. I consider him the MVP of John Adams (a series with a veritable murderer's row of powerful performances; who would ever have thought Tom Hooper capable of that?), he was pitch-perfect as Stannis Baratheon, the One True King, and he's very fine indeed on The Tunnel. And he's been cropping up a lot lately in small roles in high-profile projects, probably in the wake of Game of Thrones and people finally keying into his greatness. He just needs his big Rylance-esque breakthrough, where a great director takes a chance with him as opposed to one of his better-known cohorts.
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Post by pacinoyes on Jun 16, 2019 10:10:51 GMT
Well sometimes I don't list an actor here because - this being the best thread ever - we do have that flexibility people! Today's topic is the elephant in the room when you read the thread topic acting from the inside vs. outside - stage theatricality vs. television/film naturalism. This is a major discussion and we won't do it justice here but very often it is filled with contradiction. Consider Gary Oldman clearly an immersive and transforming actor - but to me his Oscar win will always equal "fat suit" (and I very much like the performance). The great John Gielgud famously referred to himself as an actor who works "inside out" and Olivier as "outside in". Brando known as THE internal film actor had all kinds of outside devices he used - accents, hair pieces, changing ethnicity, body dysfunction (The Men) etc. - Montgomery Clift far less of those things. You'll note African American actors don't do this as much because often they didn't get the opportunity to ....... females even less (although refer to Piper Laurie, covered a few posts back above, and her gender switch role is an outside in role). I myself prefer seeing the actor not having them "disappear" in the role - rather than the actor "become the character" I prefer to have them meet in the middle where I am aware of the actor and not, aware of the character and not. But if this thread has taught us anything it's that there are all kinds of actors and performances and what works for one doesn't work for all. As the GOAT contender Albert Finney says in The Dresser, under the heavy makeup and theatrical magic he became Lear and "I saw an old man outside myself"
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Post by pacinoyes on Jun 17, 2019 10:15:15 GMT
Since we covered acting from the inside vs. outside today let's cover a fascinating example of it although her career was relatively chaotic and messy for her level of talent - and she won an Oscar AND a Tony - Jo Van Fleet.
A theater actress and by all accounts a great one too, after winning a Tony she was pegged by her often theater director, the great Elia Kazan for the movies in her 30s - she debuted and won BSA in his East of Eden as James Dean's mother despite being fairly close in age to him. Later, at 46 she played under heavy makeup an 89 year old (!) memorably in Kazan's Wild River - with no Oscar nod in a weak year too, one of the strangest wtf Academy moments.
Her career went off the rails in film but she still popped up occasionally and finished up in episodic TV. Roman Polanski used her cold aging looks to a dazzling, but brief atmospheric effect in The Tenant.
It's a shame that there wasn't more for Jo Van Fleet - her resume is heartbreaking to read - but she was a pivotal acting figure in the era of the new female and a singular type who set up what modern actresses who followed routinely take for granted.
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Post by pacinoyes on Jun 17, 2019 14:50:17 GMT
Next up, let's do a really big one - Robert De Niro - on any list of the GOAT in film - to many people he will always be number 1 even and I often say that while some maybe have matched his best 6 performances - no one ever, period "topped" his big 6. Only one significant stage and TV credit but obviously a monumental film career with a lot on the line in the upcoming months. He's often looked at wrongly for someone looked at so much - in comparison to his great peers or even himself. He went into post-stardom theater, trying daringly, in a lead role (Cuba and His Teddy Bear), a new play - not a revival of a classic (and as a different ethnicity!). He gave his best on camera performance in quite sometime in HBO's Wizard of Lies. In his next film appearance he's the lead in a big budget production which he hasn't pulled off recently, so the pressure will be on. Theater may be off the table now but TV/Film are in play and he's still in the game at almost 76 with successes across film genres in a near 50 year career. We've already covered others who are top heavy in film (Day-Lewis, Hanks) and whether excelling in that "one medium" tops the 3 mediums across the board - regardless, his best work and legacy is unfnckwithable. From Cuba and His Teddy Bear:
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Post by TerryMontana on Jun 17, 2019 16:00:58 GMT
Can't believe this thread reached 18 pages before you spoke about De Niro.... I honestly thought he would be somewhere around page 4...
I don't know what you mean by his top-6 but for me, his performances in GF2, Deer Hunter, Mean Streets, Raging Bull, Taxi Driver and Awakenings are among the best ever by a male actor.
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Post by TerryMontana on Jun 17, 2019 16:01:42 GMT
Also, I see Burt Young in the picture.
Very underrated performer, imo.
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Post by pacinoyes on Jun 17, 2019 16:23:21 GMT
Can't believe this thread reached 18 pages before you spoke about De Niro.... I honestly thought he would be somewhere around page 4... I don't know what you mean by his top-6 but for me, his performances in GF2, Deer Hunter, Mean Streets, Raging Bull, Taxi Driver and Awakenings are among the best ever by a male actor. It's because the thread initially just covered actors who did work all 3 mediums and while De Niro has - it's not his specialty so it went a different way - heck we only recently did Hanks and Day-Lewis too! Also it's because, and it hurts me to say this, with the exception of a few people stephen , Mattsby , you, and a few others but not that many - we don't talk about acting here. I am sure there are people who've never clicked on this thread thinking it's about the theater but really it's the best thread on here if you want to talk about actors (as opposed to say "Cheese" and stuff which seems to be uncommonly popular - that was a joke!) - a lot of good stuff on this thread I'd recommend it to all, start at page 1, c'mon get into it!!! The big 6 I was referring to for De Niro are : GF2, Deer Hunter, Mean Streets, Raging Bull, Taxi Driver, King of Comedy (73-83)...........but yes Awakenings is great too, he has a bunch indeed
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Post by TerryMontana on Jun 17, 2019 16:54:01 GMT
Can't believe this thread reached 18 pages before you spoke about De Niro.... I honestly thought he would be somewhere around page 4... I don't know what you mean by his top-6 but for me, his performances in GF2, Deer Hunter, Mean Streets, Raging Bull, Taxi Driver and Awakenings are among the best ever by a male actor. It's because the thread initially just covered actors who did work all 3 mediums and while De Niro has - it's not his specialty so it went a different way - heck we only recently did Hanks and Day-Lewis too! Also it's because, and it hurts me to say this, with the exception of a few people stephen , Mattsby , you, and a few others but not that many - we don't talk about acting here. I am sure there are people who've never clicked on this thread thinking it's about the theater but really it's the best thread on here if you want to talk about actors (as opposed to say "Cheese" and stuff which seems to be uncommonly popular - that was a joke!) - a lot of good stuff on this thread I'd recommend it to all, start at page 1, c'mon get into it!!! The big 6 I was referring to for De Niro are : GF2, Deer Hunter, Mean Streets, Raging Bull, Taxi Driver, King of Comedy (73-83)...........but yes Awakenings is great too, he has a bunch indeed Yes, I forgot King of Comedy!!! One of my favorite De Niro performances and one of my favorite Scorsese movies!!! So now it's a big 7 for me!!! Truth is I don't participate that much in this thread because, as I've explained before, my English is not very good and I'm not American/ British, so there isn't much I could say about the stage work of the guys you're discussing here. But I enjoy reading the posts here, especially for actors/ actresses I have a soft spot for!
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Post by TerryMontana on Jun 17, 2019 16:55:38 GMT
And I like the cheese thread, fyc!!!
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Post by stephen on Jun 17, 2019 17:25:17 GMT
Robert De Niro is an actor that I really appreciated when I was a young upstart cinephile, but as I got older I started to become less enthused with him.
I think in terms of his output, his '70s and '80s career is pretty damn untouchable. Now don't get me wrong, I think Taxi Driver is the most overrated film/performance of all time and nothing will change my mind on that, but it's nevertheless a game-changer that clearly shaped the landscape of cinema irrevocably, and he had a lot to do with that. And I'm not overly wowed by his Godfather: Part II win if I'm being honest, but it's more because I think the rest of the supporting cast is so damn good in less showy roles. I think his Jake LaMotta only becomes great when he's gone to seed; before that, it's pretty surface stuff. Basically, De Niro was Christian Bale 1.0, relying on shaping and twisting his body to suit a part, and that can be very impressive... but it cannot sustain a career.
Now. With all that said, De Niro had more tricks up his sleeve. The Deer Hunter, to me, is the zenith of his talents: he's intense, but you don't see the effort, even though I consider it a bigger high-wire act than anything he did with Scorsese. His late-'80s output (The Mission, Angel Heart, Midnight Run) is, for my money, his prime, when he started to explore outside of his comfort zone and seemed to have the ambition to try new and different things. It culminated it what I consider to be his defining turn with Scorsese in Goodfellas, which is where I feel De Niro truly became De Niro, as almost all the imitations and impersonations are informed by his performance here, even if they're quoting other roles. That same year he had Awakenings, which to me is the last time I feel he was truly inspired.
But nowadays, I think he's a tired, leaden, somnulent shell of his former self. He got lazy. He got complacent. He started falling back on the same old tricks over and over. He didn't go back and rework himself the way Pacino did. He's content to just do the same basic schtick over and over. Sometimes it works, especially in the hands of a capable director (i.e. Tarantino), but most of the time, it just aggravates. At his peak, De Niro could contend with anyone. But I think that we're well past that sell-by date and I don't think The Irishman will revive any good will despite people thinking it's a slam dunk. But we'll see.
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Post by pacinoyes on Jun 17, 2019 18:25:59 GMT
Good comments stephen - I disagree with some of that but it is good for the discussion and I do agree with much of it too.
Relative to this thread I think you see things in him in the late 80s when he was finding his way and I agree some fascinating work is there (Midnight Run, Jacknife) that he is actually trying to re-capture an element of now in an odd way. Cuba and His Teddy Bear (1986) I think he really felt the need to go on the stage right THEN because Hoffman and Pacino had just done it (1984) in revivals to great acclaim - and Hoffman especially hadn't done stage for a long time prior so I think he felt a good kind of pressure that he "had" to do it, exactly, then.
He was cognizant, competitive and curious then but years later he didn't switch to a TV role until it was seemingly very "late" imo - I remember people suggesting it for him as early as the early 2000s and he seemed like he was way behind an obvious curve he could have ridden to great success perhaps. Sometimes the movie work and TV work are not "equal" - sometimes they free up different muscles (like theater) - which is one of the reasons I chose to separate them here even. Because sometimes if the movies are letting you down, or you're letting them down even, TV can be a wonderful cure even temporarily, for the film blues and as I've spoken about in this thread a lot, Benedict Cumberbatch is exhibit A in that regard in this era for me.
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Post by stephen on Jun 17, 2019 19:05:56 GMT
I don't know if De Niro tried his hand at TV "too late." I think the damage has been done for so long and that he just isn't able to rouse himself regardless of the quality of the work. The Wizard of Lies isn't a great project, but it's one that had potential to be, and seeing what Richard Dreyfuss was able to do with that role in a project that had less "clout" to it and managed to be outright brilliant while De Niro seemed like he was adrift for much of it... I just feel people are far too forgiving of latter-day Bobby D because of his early success. He'll always have the '70s and '80s, but for me, the way you end your career matters just as much as how you start it.
But honestly, I think if you gave De Niro the HBO projects Pacino had, you'd get more or less the same grim, glum result. De Niro just doesn't care anymore. And that's what frustrates me so much is that he's willing to take a role but more often than not, he half-asses it.
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Post by Mattsby on Jun 17, 2019 20:17:12 GMT
I love De Niro and Mean Streets is maybe my #1 all time fav supporting perf, but idk if he has more than 10 perfs that I really like.... and nothing too special since 1990 besides Heat where he's srsly great and Wizard of Lies which is a good, subtle perf (and arguably deserved the Emmy) - I especially like the moments where he gets testy and abrupt with others like at/after the anniversary party. It's too bad that massive Amazon series with David O Russell opposite Julianne Moore got the chop at the last second. He was committed to two seasons, 20eps! and would've filmed right after The Irishman.......
Two perfs I wanna mention outside of his very best and impressive transformation work - Hi Mom! where he's genuinely funny, slapstick, close to a high-strung Woody Allen type role which is interesting bc could you imagine him pulling off something like that now or recently? And pacinoyes fav Jacknife that I actually haven't seen for a while but I consider it his most touching, charming perf - paraphrasing: "See these eyes? They could be as big as basketballs and they wouldn't be as big as my stomach."
The Irishman is an enormous challenge for him..... a lot of voiceover and scenes where he isn't front and center, more of an observer, there's the blue contacts, simulated height, de-aging, up-aging, etc. He's the one guiding this 3+hr epic, and he's juggling a lot, he has to recede, stand-out, convince physically, sort of all at the same time.
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Post by stephen on Jun 17, 2019 20:32:47 GMT
The Irishman is an enormous challenge for him..... a lot of voiceover and scenes where he isn't front and center, more of an observer, there's the blue contacts, simulated height, de-aging, up-aging, etc. He's the one guiding this 3+hr epic, and he's juggling a lot, he has to recede, stand-out, convince physically, sort of all at the same time. This is something I am very curious to see discussed. I remember when The Curious Case of Benjamin Button came out and people were deriding Pitt's nomination and performance as being a gimmick due to CGI and makeup wizardry for the first third of the film. People were questioning just how much of that portion of the performance could be attributed to Pitt, as there were body doubles and CGI augmenting the performance. But now you've got De Niro, Pacino and Pesci who are going to be almost entirely CGI-assisted, and probably far more substantially than Pitt was. I don't know if they are using body doubles yet, but you'd have to think they would, because they're septuagenarians pretending to be half their age. So how much of the finished product can be attributed to the actor? And while that's an argument that can be made for any performance, as they are all shaped and molded in the editing room, it's more explicit here.
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Post by pacinoyes on Jun 17, 2019 20:47:04 GMT
The Irishman is an enormous challenge for him..... a lot of voiceover and scenes where he isn't front and center, more of an observer, there's the blue contacts, simulated height, de-aging, up-aging, etc. He's the one guiding this 3+hr epic, and he's juggling a lot, he has to recede, stand-out, convince physically, sort of all at the same time. This is something I am very curious to see discussed. I remember when The Curious Case of Benjamin Button came out and people were deriding Pitt's nomination and performance as being a gimmick due to CGI and makeup wizardry for the first third of the film. People were questioning just how much of that portion of the performance could be attributed to Pitt, as there were body doubles and CGI augmenting the performance. But now you've got De Niro, Pacino and Pesci who are going to be almost entirely CGI-assisted, and probably far more substantially than Pitt was. I don't know if they are using body doubles yet, but you'd have to think they would, because they're septuagenarians pretending to be half their age. So how much of the finished product can be attributed to the actor? And while that's an argument that can be made for any performance, as they are all shaped and molded in the editing room, it's more explicit here. This is part of The Irishman thread too and I think me and Mattsby talked about it a bit there too. There is clearly a scenario say if De Niro is in Best Actor - and in the time in which we live now - where his performance will be immediately docked in comparison to other nominees. On some level audiences can't even comprehend this technology (critics too). Look at how Scorsese's comments about him trying really hard to capture the details around the human eye were wrongly categorized as - "the film is in trouble he said it" If that can happen and it did at a certain level people are going to say something like "I loved that scene when De Niro was crying but I think it's a trick" not him doing it.
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Post by Mattsby on Jun 18, 2019 2:27:30 GMT
Jumping in for the OG, Eddie G.... Edward G Robinson, born in Romania and moved to America at 10y/o in 1904. It wasn’t long before he was on Broadway, appearing in shows every year between 1915 to 1930, totaling near 40 Broadway productions including a Tony-nominated perf in Chayefsky’s Middle of the Night opposite Gena Rowlands and Martin Balsam which ran almost 500 performances from ’56-’57. At around 100 movies there’s a lot of work, initially typecast but able to play with his image too, and for someone stout and known for corrupted characters it’s a feat that he gained marquee movie star status anyway. My favorite perfs are Scarlet Street and Double Indemnity. And I’ve recently seen Five Star Final ’31, where he jams out dialogue like a lash, and Tiger Shark ’32 as a one-armed Portuguese fisherman a sweeter performance than I’ve seen from him otherwise. Slowly getting there but I have a ton more to see. stephen pacinoyes - fav perfs? Also impressed by a little-seen TV Movie from 1970 - The Old Man Who Cried Wolf. So he taps all three for the thread! His last starring role at 76y/o, he spends a lot of the 70min movie running around frantic; it’s a heartbreaking perf where his mental acuity is constantly questioned as he tries to both prove that a crime actually happened and then who exactly did it. Highly praised by tv critics at the time but for some reason no Emmy even though a popular ABC item. He popped around other TV shows too like Night Gallery. It’s surprising he has zero awards for anything on screen - he could’ve been Oscar nom’d at some point, no?
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