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Post by Deleted on Sept 6, 2018 12:47:28 GMT
The consecutive Cannes-winning, Emmy-winning Oscar nominee. A Streep-esque chameleon (seriously, she can do anything) who never quite ascended... Poetic, mysterious, erotic, fiercely intelligent - too many adjectives apply! The closest Scorsese has come to having a female muse (he made The Last Temptation of Christ at her suggestion!), and certainly one of the finest American actresses. Please, share your thoughts.
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Post by pacinoyes on Sept 6, 2018 13:12:36 GMT
Criminally neglected actress - the US version of like Judy Davis sort of. In her earliest role in the the lacerating Last Summer (I recently spoke of this film's director, Frank Perry in another thread too) she gives one of the most honest and complex female performances of the era and that was a great era for US actresses too. Everyone will talk about Catherine Burns in that, Oscar nominated, but I'd suggest looking at Hershey.
That performance where she isn't "playing" anything, she just IS - mixing sexuality, evil, boundary pushing curiosity, vanity, gender ideas on power and how to use it or sublimate it - is the foundation of some great ones in her career - as Mary Magdalene or Portrait of a Lady.
A lot of times, she was too good for mere movies in a way, often they didn't know how to really cast her.
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Post by Johnny_Hellzapoppin on Sept 6, 2018 13:20:47 GMT
She's one of those actrors that I've liked or loved in everything I've seen her in, but admittedly that isn't a lot.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 6, 2018 14:19:05 GMT
Criminally neglected actress - the US version of like Judy Davis sort of. Definitely in terms of versatility, but I think she's more sensual than Davis and Streep - I think of Rampling, honestly.
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Post by Mattsby on Sept 6, 2018 16:48:55 GMT
Really like her Hannah and Her Sisters, Last Summer, The Entity. Tin Men as well, where she gradually becomes the heart of the film. Need to see more of her work... I'll second pacinoyes words on Last Summer too! It's well worth seeing if you can find it - Hershey's performance is remarkable, her energetic charisma and confidence and wicked sense of fun turns darker, dangerous, more spiteful when confronted by a mature but judgmental outsider. Every review singles out Catherine Burns' tragic monologue but that scene really works bc of the way Hershey plays it - tempting Burns, "playing" losing interest, then kinda perversely radiating at the sadder, shameful aspects of the story. As for Frank Perry, it's probably his best directed film. I've been going thru his filmography actually, he was a crucial filmmaker especially around '68-'70 : The Swimmer, Last Summer, Diary of a Mad Housewife. The first two brilliantly takes in and then gut-punches the audience - all three are complex, barbed takedowns of different generations. David and Lisa is ok, crisply shot but in all a bit oversimplified, now I'm figuring out where to go next...
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Post by pacinoyes on Sept 6, 2018 19:27:40 GMT
His career goes haywire after that unfortunately. Play It As It Lays (1972) has a great Tuesday Weld performance and a Joan Didion script and is worth a watch for actor high points (Anthony Perkins too).
Perry was very into psychological aspects of character and those strong 60s films you mentioned really hit all the right notes with that, later his style gets overwhelmed in genre - Doc, Man On A Swing, Rancho Deluxe and you can almost feel him getting depressed and everything going wrong. But Play It As It Lays has his some of his old spark and is really great for Weld who didn't get a lot of great roles (DePalma loved her and wanted to cast her at least twice............she's also gorgeous on the cover of Matthew Sweet's Girlfriend album!)
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Post by Deleted on Sept 6, 2018 20:25:45 GMT
Wonderful actress.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 7, 2018 0:34:33 GMT
Her Cannes statistic is one of my favorite bits of movie awards trivia - she's still the only person to win back-to-back awards at the festival - and what's more, her winning performances are both so strong and so different. She plays a bayou matriarch in Shy People and a crusading South African liberal in A World Apart. I strongly recommend both films if you haven't already seen them - I can link you if you'd like. Check out the trailers below:
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Post by Deleted on Sept 7, 2018 3:01:49 GMT
Also, I'd like to add (yes, I'm an obsessive fan of hers ) that she'd be a wonderful addition to these annual Hollywood roundtable discussions. She speaks with such clarity and sincerity about her process.
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Post by Mattsby on Jan 10, 2020 4:14:24 GMT
Two quick thoughts - 1) Looking at my fav horrors of the 2010s, she's the only actor/actress who appeared in more than one; Black Swan, Insidious. Hmmm. 2) How the hell did she exit the 80s without a single Oscar nom? Golden Globe nom for Last Temptation of Christ, BAFTA nom for Hannah and Her Sisters, and the historic back to back Cannes wins for Shy People and A World Apart. There's a scenario, not unreasonable, where she gets double-nodded in '87 and '88! Not to mention Supporting for Hannah in '86 - way more deserving than most of those nominees (Tess Harper, Mary Mastrantonio, etc). It's been mentioned on MA but not in this thread, so as a refresher - the only actresses with more than 1 Cannes win are Huppert, Redgrave, Mirren, and Hershey. I mean, as the only American, she deserves greater credit! I recently double-featured her two Cannes perfs - Shy People she is extraordinarily great, you can't name many perfs like it, completely controlled yet disheveled and unpredictable and haunted. There are revealing moments of heartbreak and a sense of failure to her, while conveying a wide maternal space and feared quality too, she's doing a lot and pulls off what's close to an impossible role. The movie itself caught me off guard - wasn't expecting this to be so wildly perverse, verging on trashy, but there are some smog-spooky atmospheric scenes. A World Apart is a decently done pic, much less surprising than Shy People, and even though it came before... reminded me so much of the better A Dry White Season; Hershey here is a seamed-up and smart, it's a solid perf, just lacking a greater presence... though I liked the cracks in her togetherness, how the extent of her time in prison weighs on her, and most of all being confronted by her daughter. Both function as a questioning of motherhood, with more or (much) less merited distraction of responsibility.... Did I say quick thoughts?
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Post by futuretrunks on Jan 10, 2020 5:31:19 GMT
No clue. Have only seen her in The Natural, Last Temptation, Black Swan, The Right Stuff, and Hannah and Her Sisters, and none of those performances left a serious impression.
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Post by getclutch on Jan 12, 2020 20:55:27 GMT
I was always fond of her early performance in Last Summer, you just knew there was something there concerning talent. The Entity has been on my watch-list for so long, need to get on that. A few posted Shy People & A World Apart, need to get on those as well.
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Post by Mattsby on Nov 2, 2020 21:53:54 GMT
Posting here bc it's more about her. She stars in a new horror The Manor that'll be one of the four in the next Welcome to the Blumhouse cycle. On one hand, I think the banner seems to be a way to nicely package their lesser movies - I didn't like the first four movies, except Black Box was pretty good. But this is exciting bc we don't get many older-actor focused horrors and it also reteams Hershey with her Last Summer costar Bruce Davison. That's 50+ years between movies! www.imdb.com/title/tt13372794/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_1
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