TOP 100 ACTOR SITES
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| Jane Lynch: 'I'm just a goof' | Glee The openly gay star of hit TV show Glee, tells Danielle Berrin about finally making it in HollywoodIt's 9am on the Paramount Studios set of US TV series Glee, and actor Jane Lynch has just been nominated for her first Golden Globe. "What-eva," she grumbles, throwing her arms up and wobbling her head as if it's no big deal. That kind of nonchalance would exasperate her character, the tyrannical cheerleading coach Sue Sylvester, for whom winning is the chief aim of humankind. But after two decades as a working actor, and with more than 100 film and television credits to her name, including The West Wing, Two And A Half Men, The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Julie & Julia, Lynch has trained herself not to get too excited.The darker heir to High School Musical, Glee is a musical comedy-drama about a group of high school misfits who find personal redemption – and social isolation – through song. At 49, having spent most of her career playing bit parts and guest spots, Lynch is finally getting the recognition she deserves, as the show's sublime villain. "When you get singled out, you're supposed to say, 'Oh it's all about the ensemble,' but you know?" she deadpans, about to unleash her inner Sue Sylvester, "It's all about ME, dammit! I won this fucking thing!"The ragtag bunch that makes up the Glee club – the high school term for a singing group – reads like a roster of the disenfranchised: there's Kurt, who is gay; Artie, who uses a wheelchair; Rachel, who is Jewish; and Quinn, a spoiled blond cheerleader who winds up pregnant. Their disadvantaged status is exploited by Sylvester, the tracksuit-wearing coach of the Cheerios (the cheerleading squad), who makes it her mission to denigrate and humiliate every member of Glee club – as well as their teacher, Will Schuester (played by Matthew Morrison).Sylvester's self-righteous disdain for the meek and mopey is the perfect antidote to the earnest self-expression that defines Glee club. For her, high school hallways are a battleground where the strong must conquer the weak – and the only way to win is to rule with an iron fist: "I'm all about empowerment. I empower my Cheerios to live in a state of constant fear by creating an environment of irrational, random terror,'' Sylvester says. There is no place for tenderness, sadness or nostalgia, and her intolerance of sentimentality borders on sociopathy. "I can't stand the sight of kids getting emotional, unless it's from physical exhaustion," she says in another scene. As we sit down to talk near the Paramount canteen, random passersby saunter up to Lynch to congratulate her. At 6ft tall, she gets noticed easily and, sporting a casual, no-frills style – she's dressed head to toe in denim – she is also approachable.Lynch relishes the contrast between her real-life and onscreen personas. "I'm accessing a part of myself without judgment; and that is the mean part of myself. Every once in a while I'll be walking down the hall making an exit, and I'll just grab one of the kids and put 'em in a headlock and throw 'em against the locker." Playing the villain is "delicious", she says – and she celebrates her character's lack of restraint. "She has no filter; whatever heinous thought comes into her mind comes right out of her mouth." That might be a tough character to love, but Lynch plays her with such unmitigated gaiety, it's hard not to.Lynch grew up Irish Catholic in Dolton, Illinois, an urban sprawl suburb on the south side of Chicago – "a concrete jungle", as she calls it – where the main pastimes were "beer, whiskey and storytelling". Her father was a small-time banker, her mother a housewife, and they were strong on principles such as how to handle money, but soft on social mores such as underage drinking. "This is going to make my parents sound terr-i-ble, but all through high school, we were the drinking house. We'd sit around the kitchen table with my parents and drink beer."As a student at Thornridge high school, Lynch described herself as a floater who coasted from group to group. Socialising on the fringe, she never made enough of an impression to warrant mockery, she says. It wasn't until later in life that she discovered she was gay, so she missed out on the taunting experienced by the gay character on Glee. "I didn't know what 'gay' was in high school," she says. "We used the word 'queer' when someone was weird – when I finally heard what it really meant, my heart sank, and I thought, 'Oh God, that's me.' "She found a home in her school's Glee club – the choir – where she stayed for four years. But despite a longstanding dream to be an actor, Lynch walked away from her first role out of fear and was subsequently banished from acting in school plays. "I got so scared because I knew this was what I wanted to do with my life," she says. "I got a reputation as a quitter, so I didn't get cast in anything in high school; it was terrible."On Saturdays, her mother would play her records such as Funny Girl and The Sound Of Music, but when Lynch announced that she wanted to be an actor, she says, "My mom said, 'Learn how to type!' " She studied theatre at Illinois state university instead, before spending two years at a theatre-training programme at Cornell. Back in Chicago, she spent the next 10 years performing in the prestigious Steppenwolf Theatre Company and touring with improvisational comedy troupe The Second City. But it was getting cast in The Fugitive, the 1993 film starring Harrison Ford, that gave her the confidence to move to Los Angeles. She was 33 by the time she decided to try her hand in Hollywood, but started getting jobs immediately – theatre, sitcoms, commercials and voiceover work. There were occasional dry spells, she admits, but, she says, "I felt successful all the time – even though nobody knew who I was."By the time she turned 39, however, Lynch decided she had gone as far as she could go and almost quit. Then Christopher Guest spotted her in a Frosted Flakes commercial and cast her in his next three films. "The man changed my life," she says unequivocally. "He blew the doors open for me." Indeed, Lynch stretched her comedic chops as a butch lesbian dog handler in the mockumentary Best In Show; a porn-star-turned-folk-singer in A Mighty Wind; and again, as an entertainment/tabloid journalist in For Your Consideration.Lynch jokes that her agent once said she'd do just about anything for a steak and $1.50 – not so any more. She admits fame makes life a lot easier. She recalls the days when she'd perform in restaurants and the cast would have to enter through the kitchen: "We were lower than the help," she jokes. That her current success has catapulted her to a level she has never before experienced hasn't altered her perspective: "Being the workaday actor that I have been – and will always be, if this goes away – can be thankless. There's a part of us that wants recognition. And it's easier when you get the affirmation and you're making more money and people ask you what you think."Lynch likes the way Glee holds up a mirror to minority issues. In its opening 13 episodes, the show addresses, among other things, teenage pregnancy, physical disabilities and issues of race and sexuality. "What I love about [the show] is it stays away from political correctness," she says. While most mainstream TV series shy from confronting some of these edgier topics, Glee tackles the development of social hierarchies, yet manages to express "different" as "cool". There is a playfulness that permeates the show's treatment of provocative topics, avoiding tired stereotypes while retaining its brutal honesty. "We have [the cast] dancing around in wheelchairs," Lynch says of one episode that forced the entire cast to wheel themselves around in order to relate to a disabled student. "And we have a father not real cool with his fruity son." In Glee, it's not the student from a low-income single-mother household who gets pregnant – it's the beautiful blond cheerleader from a wealthy Republican family.Lynch herself barely thinks about being an openly gay actor in Hollywood. "I think if I were an ingénue – if I were Kate Winslet – it probably would hurt my career, but because I'm Jane Lynch and I'm a character actor, the world isn't projecting their romantic fantasies on me."They are, however, projecting their values on to Lynch's private life. This past year saw a nationwide rejection of legalising gay marriage, stripping gay Americans of their hope for equal civil rights. "Shouldn't there be safeguards against the majority voting on the rights of a minority?" Lynch wonders. "If people voted on civil rights in the 60s, it would have never happened. It took somebody like [President] Lyndon Johnson going, 'F all of you! I'm going to do this.'" She pauses for a moment, then says, "Obama won't do it. He's a huge disappointment to me."Fortunately, this backwards step hasn't impacted on Lynch professionally, or personally. For the first time in her life, she's in a committed relationship. She admits that, in the past, she bailed from relationships, but has "finally found one where I want to stay", and tells me that she's remodelling her Laurel Canyon home to accommodate a family.Comedy, more than fame, has sustained Lynch through the ups and downs of her career. "Making people laugh is a really fabulous thing because it means you're getting deep inside somebody, into their psyche, and their ability to look at themselves." She equates comic performance with accessing the messy, ugly parts of herself. "You have to get through a lot of ego to get there," she says. "You have to get through a lot of self-protection that says, 'I'm cool', to get down to the stuff that says, 'I'm just a goof.' "• Glee starts on E4 on 11 January at 9pm.ComedyTelevisionUS televisionDramaguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Up and Hurt Locker named best-reviewed films of 2009 An Education, In the Loop and Afghan Star also recognised by Rottentomatoes.com's Golden Tomato awardsUp, Pixar's animated tale of an elderly adventurer and his balloon-propelled house, has been named as one of the two best-reviewed films of 2009 by the critical aggregator site Rottentomatoes.com. Pete Docter's film won the Golden Tomato award for best-reviewed wide-release movie, while Kathryn Bigelow's Iraq tale The Hurt Locker picked up the corresponding gong for limited-release films.The awards are gleaned from ratings collated by the site from the published opinions of more than 200 top film critics. Up's success means Pixar has scored a hat-trick – the Disney-owned animation studio won the award in 2008 and 2007 for WALL-E and Ratatouille respectively.Lone Scherfig's coming of age drama An Education was the best-reviewed British film, and also picked up an award for best drama. There was more UK success for Armando Iannucci's political satire In the Loop, which won best-reviewed comedy. And Havana Marking's documentary Afghan Star, which followed four contestants in a Kabul-based reality TV talent competition, took the Golden Tomato for best-reviewed foreign language film.At the opposite end of the spectrum, the videogame adaptation Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li has the dubious merit of being the worst-reviewed film of 2009. It picks up the Mouldy Tomato award – only 4% of critics thought it was any good at all.Kathryn BigelowAnimationWalt Disney CompanyAwards and prizesBen Childguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Prince William on official visit to New Zealand WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) -- Britain's Prince William took the reins of the winning America's Cup yacht and visited the site of the 2011 Rugby World Cup in New Zealand on Sunday at the start of his first official overseas trip on behalf of his grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II.... hosted.ap.org |
Susan Boyle delights Oprah Winfrey THE British singer looked to be back on an even keel when she appeared on the US talk show. news.com.au |
Life, but not as we know it | Adam Rutherford If aliens do exist in the Goldilocks zones of outer space, I'm not convinced we'll recognise themFor 21st-century renaissance science, look no Âfurther than the stars. Closer to home, the Royal Society, as part of its 350th anniversary celebrations, this week brought together some dizzying intellects to ponder the Âemergent field of astrobiology, and ask: "Are we alone in the universe?"Meanwhile, the space telescope Kepler silently orbits above, its continuing mission to seek out Earth-like planets. Kepler's eye focuses on what we fondly refer to as "Goldilocks zones": areas of space close enough to a sun that planets therein are neither too hot nor too cold, but just right. There, we think, we might find Earth-like life.Present at the Royal Society meeting in London was Frank Drake, the godfather of the scientific pursuit of ET; 50 years ago he founded the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence (Seti), and designed a formula that predicts the number of civilisations capable of making contact with us. Then not one planet was known outside of our solar system. Today, with only an infinitesimal wedge of the sky incompletely explored, we have found more than 420. Every day evidence mounts that life beyond our planet seems almost inevitable.What would aliens look like? Our psychological set-up is so egocentric that we find it hard to relate to creatures that don't resemble ourselves: the common octopus rarely stands alongside monkeys in animal rights campaigns despite similar sentience. Not only do we look for Earth-like planets, we think of aliens in humanesque form. The "grey" alien of science fiction, with its frail body and enlarged head and eyes, plays to our evolution away from animal ancestry and towards our cerebral tendencies.There's no reason to think that an alien would stand on two feet, have two eyes or breathe air. The subtlest shift in circumstance might render intelligent life entirely different to our anthropocentric obsession. Some evidence suggests that our upright stance is connected with our ability to endurance-run: on the plains, our ancestors couldn't outsprint a fleet-footed meal, so perhaps we stalked our food to death. But imagine if our ancestors were mountain-dwellers: running would have had no currency, and no selective advantage. Change the geography of the cradle of humanity, and humankind becomes something unimaginable.It's impossible to know, but fun to speculate. This game presupposes that Darwinian natural selection is a universal truth. Fine by me: it occurs in all known species, and there have been no credible challenges to the theory of evolution. It's hard to imagine the evolution of life via a different scientific route.Life on Earth is encoded in DNA, the universal language on which natural selection acts. Many scientists believe that the precursors of life began not with DNA, but its cousin, RNA – still a vital tool in all living things. In 1969 a meteorite crashed into the Australian backwater of Murchison. In 2008, Zita Martins at Imperial College showed that it harboured an essential component of RNA that was extraterrestrial in origin. While this does not say that life exists or began in space, it does say that the complex components of life are present in the universe. When we return to Mars in the next few years, it will be these hallmarks we are looking for.Frank Drake is a visionary, a man who quite rationally wants to find our place in the universe. In 50 years of watching the skies, the Seti team has not found extraterrestrial life among the stars. Either intelligent life is extraordinarily rare or its civilisations are short-lived, snuffed out by cataclysms, perhaps of their own making. While we continue to explore our vast universe, we should remind ourselves that even if it is Âbuzzing with life, our own existence is far from guaranteed.SpaceEvolutionScience fiction and fantasyAdam Rutherfordguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |