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Post by stephen on Aug 21, 2019 19:06:40 GMT
So I know this thread will breed discussion on the heavy-hitters: Dean. Cazale. Phoenix. Ledger. Hoffman. And indeed, they are all worthy mentions and will get more than their fair share of discussion around here, but I thought we'd kick things off by talking about a consummate character actor who made one hell of a stamp in his time on Earth, and had so much more to give:
J.T. Walsh.
If you wanted an actor to play a crooked good ol' boy, a stern military disciplinarian, an unassuming human monster, or just the sleaziest sumbitch in the room, you called on Walsh. He was one of the most reliable scene-stealers in the business at the height of his powers, and there were moments he could outright school A-listers at their peaks.
But when it comes to Walsh, as good as he almost always was, there are three performances that stick out. One is his masterful performance as a corrupt prison warden in the underrated X-Files episode "The List" (where, real talk, he deserved an Emmy even more than actual winner Peter Boyle did for his guest spot the episode prior). Another is his ace turn as a sinister trucker and nemesis to Kurt Russell in Breakdown. And then there's his performance as Dan "Buster" Keeton in the underrated Stephen King adaptation Needful Things, which essentially shows what J.T. Walsh would've done with the Michael Douglas role in Falling Down (the answer: great things).
Gone too soon, indeed.
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cherry68
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Post by cherry68 on Aug 21, 2019 19:58:59 GMT
Alessandro Momo, the young guy in Profumo di donna (scent of a woman). He had some good performances already, even if he wasn't 18 yet. Wondering what he could have become.
How can we forget Massimo Troisi , the (two) Oscar nominee for Il postino? He began his career on stage in a comedic trio, but he was capable of more intimate roles.
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Post by jimmalone on Aug 21, 2019 20:08:13 GMT
Patrick Dewaere
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Post by pacinoyes on Aug 21, 2019 20:20:34 GMT
I've talked about James Hayden before but he died at precisely the time he should have started to get well known - part of the crew in Leone's Once Upon A Time In America and in the best cast of Pacino's landmark American Buffalo on Broadway. Mickey Rourke dedicated his Pope of Greenwich Village performance to him in the credits. Some think he might have been the actor of the 80s - a new James Dean - but he suffered a heroin overdose and he never got the chance to even show how good he could have been really. He's the guy in the middle below and with the boys in OUATIA:
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Post by pacinoyes on Aug 21, 2019 20:33:23 GMT
Tying into the post by jimmalone and for Longtallsally who I know is a fan - Dewaere's tragic Serie Noire co-star Marie Trintignant daughter of Jean Louis and co-star of Chabrol's unforgettable Betty.
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Post by fiosnasiob on Aug 21, 2019 20:36:49 GMT
Laird Cregar, a huge man and a very talented actor who died way too soon at 31 (or 30 or even before, there are some troubles regarding his real date of birth and he looked much more older than his age). He was tired of all the evil people he was forced to play (brillantly) because of his stature (being 6′ 3″ and 300 lbs), he became more and more obsessed with his weight lost to look like a more conventional leading man and get the roles that go with it, so much that he lost one third of his body weight resulting in severe abdominal problems. He died from a heart attack few day after the surgery. In only 4-5 years of career he still left his marks, almost always a standout in his films, dominating every scene that he's in. In his last two roles, Fox Crime-Horror Classics, The Lodger (1944) and Hangover Square (1945), he portrayed two different madmen to perfection. His next film was supposed to be Les Misérables and he would have certainly given others memorables performances, a great loss. " I have a feeling the studio is almost beginning to consider me an actor now, instead of a type." (from one of his last interviews)
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Post by Johnny_Hellzapoppin on Aug 21, 2019 20:54:24 GMT
Katrin CartlidgeA particular kind of talent, and capable of a wide variety of work. She had the ability to be a hugely sympathetic and warm performer, but also unlikebale and even grotesque. She could even wrap it all up in the one role at times. Her death at a mere 41 years old is particularly sad when you take this quote from her into account... "I actually love getting older. I hated my 20s; I couldn't wait to be 30. I'm really looking forward to turning 40, if I get there. And not just because things are more successful now, but because I think the older you get, the more you find life interesting apart from your own problems. So roll on. I can't wait."
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Post by MsMovieStar on Aug 21, 2019 20:57:42 GMT
Oh honeys, I'll leave Monty Clift for Tyler. Wallace ReidBefore Monty, there was Wallace Reid, an silent screen sex symbol, pre Valentino (who also belongs here), who after an accident on a movie set was prescribed morphine and then trying to keep up with the hectic pace of his career developed into an addict. He starred in Birth of a Nation (1915) and Intolerance (1916). He died, drying out in a sanitarium at the age of 31.
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Post by Mattsby on Aug 21, 2019 21:11:03 GMT
Daniel Pollock, Crowe's Romper Stomper co-star, committed suicide at 23y/o shortly after filming finished and several months before it premiered. Just from pictures, he has a long kinda villainous face, you really wouldn't expect the perf he gives in Romper Stomper, Crowe's equal there imo. Both are great but Pollock is the heart of the film. On screen in that he immediately has presence, a natural pensive quality and great use of eyes to suggest the character dilemma. Who knows what he might've done next...
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sirchuck23
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Post by sirchuck23 on Aug 21, 2019 21:14:20 GMT
Tupac Shakur - The man has grown to such mythical proportions that its hard to fathom he was only 25 years old when he died. With his work in Juice, Poetic Justice, and Above the Rim, Shakur I feel showed great potential as an actor and it would've been great to see how his acting career would've panned out if he kept at it. He had the screen presence and endless charisma to boot to be a leading man imho.
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Post by MsMovieStar on Aug 21, 2019 21:22:08 GMT
Oh honeys, are we doing actresses as well? Simone MareuilThe enigmatic star of Luis Bunuel's early classic Un Chien Andalou (1929) fell into a depression after the war and doused herself with gasoline and set fire to herself in a public square. Hauntingly Surreal, n'est pas? As an actress, this is quite a good way to go... But I'd do it on a red carpet, going out in a blaze... with people always remembering me as hot. (Of course, I'd never do this... the loss to humanity would be too great).
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Post by Viced on Aug 21, 2019 22:05:39 GMT
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Post by pacinoyes on Aug 21, 2019 22:07:43 GMT
I often used to talk about actors who didn't fit into Hollywood - they were too talented in a way and they couldn't be molded to fit into patterns - square pegs into round holes - like Jonathon Winters, Robin Williams, John Leguizamo.
They all made it in their own way but no one ever fit less/more than Andy Kaufman - a completely shattered way of looking and laughing at the world - he actually "acted" far better than you'd think. His TV appearances on Fridays among other shows were designed as tests to see if audiences could catch him acting - so were his wrestling appearances and skits where faking it was implicit and you still couldn't be sure. On Taxi" he created a complex character from the ground up and all his personalities were like a comic/darkly comic Sybil that he conceived/wrote/acted.
Here he runs a complex "work" on the audience of Fridays by refusing to introduce The Pretenders -all while giving a serious and nervous talk. Is he acting - well I don't know and I like not knowing ..........and I think he'd have really like that too.
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Post by MsMovieStar on Aug 21, 2019 22:11:56 GMT
Gail RussellI've always found Gail Russell's story heartbreaking as she was a victim of her own beauty. Scouted off the street by Paramount executives for her beauty, a mix of Hedy Lamarr and Vivian Leigh - a look big in 1942 - the pathologically shy eighteen year old was pushed into being a movie star. She made her first big impression in The Uninvited (1944) and then was often cast with John Wayne and Alan Ladd. Introverted, self-conscious and never overcoming her shyness, Russell suffered from chronic stagefright which she coped with by drinking. Her alcoholism killed her at the age of 36.
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Post by getclutch on Aug 21, 2019 22:20:42 GMT
Big fan of the TV series Angel & Doyle was my favorite character. Was in shock when I heard Glenn passed. Very talented actor yet I think he had better days coming.
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Post by pacinoyes on Aug 21, 2019 23:35:49 GMT
Chris Penn - never got the attention that went to his movie star brother Sean but when he got a juicy role he could play it very memorably. Reservoir Dogs, Short Cuts, and especially memorable Abel Ferrara's The Funeral he gave indelible performances. I'm also a fan of his Law and Order: Criminal Intent turn as the worlds worst father - a soulless monster that he played like the world most spoiled full grown child lost in a moral abyss. Died at just 40.
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Post by stephen on Aug 21, 2019 23:37:59 GMT
Chris Penn > Sean Penn. Not even sorry.
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Post by pacinoyes on Aug 22, 2019 0:10:06 GMT
There's a guy I wanted to cover in the "genre" thread but my feelings on this actor run so deep and are so personal it goes beyond genre and I'm not sure I ever covered him in any way - maybe in the IMDB days - Bruce Lee. Bruce Lee is the first actor I ever liked or was a fan of - and while I can write (endlessly ) on other actors there's very few that meant to me what Bruce Lee did. Specifically it's 2 films - Fists of Fury and Chinese Connection which had their titles labeled wrong and flipped for their US release when I first saw them. To see these films which used to be shown at a retro double features constantly at the local 2nd run theater was an eye opening experience. The characters Lee plays in those films were a revelation to me and in many ways how I saw myself. Not in how he fought, but in how he thought and felt. In Fists of Fury (now correctly called The Chinese Connection) he had a whole zen manner and outlook - when he comes at the end to fight the grandmaster, the old man throws a caged bird onto a branch of a tree - Lee then throws a rock breaking the branch and knocking the cage to the ground and freeing the bird. Even as a kid I found that poetic and beautiful - and this scene from Chinese Connection (now correctly called Fists of Fury) is still my favorite action scene ever because so much depended on it. Watch the scene below and look how genius this is - character, subtext, control and loss of control. Dead at 32, his son actor Brandon Lee would die at 28.
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Post by pacinoyes on Aug 22, 2019 19:40:28 GMT
Pier Angeli - A lovely presence in Theresa (1951). When you watch her in that movie she seems like a ghost floating above it all. Married to Vic Damone, engaged to Kirk Douglas and famously linked to James Dean she died at just 39.
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Post by Tommen_Saperstein on Aug 22, 2019 20:04:19 GMT
no one has mentioned Natalie Wood yet?
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Post by eyebrowmorroco on Aug 27, 2019 12:49:52 GMT
Laurence Harvey
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Post by hugobolso on Aug 27, 2019 18:17:51 GMT
Never seen a film of her, but Annie Vernay story intrigued me, because she was a big starlet in Europe that died at age of 19 in Buenos Aires Argentina In her short career was Max Ophûls muse in The Novel of Werther as Charlotte and also was Princess Tarakanov
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cherry68
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Post by cherry68 on Aug 28, 2019 4:37:33 GMT
Poor Sal Mineo was killed when he was only 37.
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Post by pacinoyes on Aug 29, 2019 10:22:19 GMT
Well stephen mentioned him in the first post so I thought I'd really look deeply at John Cazale who is talked about a lot and I'd argue as an actor overall is grossly underrepresented even here if you can believe that. First, John Cazale if he had lived, imo, would have played some leads - he is like Robert Duvall in that way. Philip Seymour Hoffman the best American actor post 70s imo was the full realization of what he started but didn't live to complete. Not only is he famously 5 for 5 in Best Picture nominees while alive but as a stage actor he was even better maybe or that's where you see the full scope of what he did - playing major more leading roles in productions of Line and Measure For Measure (with Meryl Steep) and other work as well. He co-starred very memorably with his acting partner Al Pacino in The Indian Wants The Bronx, the early production of The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui, and the "best" Local Stigmatic apparently (1976) done as a Performance Art piece for Joe Papp. We have talked before about how Cazale changed acting presentations in American film by playing weak - almost never done by actors for fear they'll be perceived as weak and therefore block themselves out of other parts. Cazale turned "playing weak" into his own personal masterclass - he didn't just play a weak role, he so receded into those roles he changed the dynamic between himself and the more dominant co-star which he could then probe even deeper (Sonny in Dog Day Afternoon is generally afraid of Cazale's Sal not the other way around and it adds all sorts of dynamic tension). From The Indian Wants The Bronx (1968) - which won Obie Awards (Off-Broadway) for Best Actor (Pacino) and Cazale (Distinguished Performance List) - 4 years before The Godfather. This piece made them both stars in New York - and their work together through film and stage is one of the great US acting (and friendship) stories - and Cazale was more than just his collaborations too.
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Post by TerryMontana on Aug 29, 2019 13:06:00 GMT
He co-starred very memorably with his acting partner Al Pacino in The Indian Wants The Bronx, the early production of The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui, and the "best" Local Stigmatic apparently (1976) done as a Performance Art piece for Joe Papp. Do you know what part he played? I assume Pacino's partner, am I right?
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