TOP 100 ACTOR SITES
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| Halle Berry and boyfriend bypass airport line MONTREAL (AP) -- Canadian police say it was wrong for one of their officers to whisk Halle Berry, her model boyfriend and baby through airport security.... hosted.ap.org |
Polanski sues French media for invasion of privacy PARIS (AP) -- The news snapshot shows Roman Polanski standing at a window, a thin slice of his face visible amid an opening in the curtains. The French paper that printed the photo saw it as a newsworthy depiction of the director's life under house arrest in his Swiss Alpine chalet.... hosted.ap.org |
Philip French's screen legends No 79: Montgomery Clift 1920-66Like Marlon Brando, his close friend, fellow maverick and chief rival for the title of greatest American actor of his generation, the tall, lean Clift was born in Omaha, Nebraska. His father was an overbearing, right-wing banker and stockbroker of considerably fluctuating fortunes; his ambitious mother, an illegitimate child adopted at birth, was obsessed with establishing her membership of a distinguished patrician family from the south. Along with his twin sister and elder brother, Clift was privately educated.At the age of 15, Monty, as everyone called him, made his Broadway debut and for the next decade was constantly employed there, usually playing handsome, sensitive sons, though with the possible exception of Thornton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth (directed in 1942 by Elia Kazan) none of the plays he appeared in entered the classic repertoire. For years, he rejected Hollywood offers until accepting the role of the sensitive orphan adopted by overbearing Texas cattle baron John Wayne in Howard Hawks's western, Red River (1948). It was, however, his second movie, Fred Zinnemann's The Search (1948), in which he played a GI caring for an orphan in postwar Europe, that appeared first and for which he received the first of his three Oscar nominations. He only returned to the theatre once thereafter, in another part that reflected his own troubled nature and family background, the suicidal Konstantin in The Seagull (1954).He invariably played outsiders in conflict with his surroundings, often victim-heroes like the starry-eyed social climber in George Stevens's A Place in the Sun (1951), the first of three films with his close friend, Elizabeth Taylor; the anguished Catholic priest trapped into hearing a murderer's confession in Hitchcock's hugely undervalued I Confess (1953); the doomed regular soldier Robert E Lee Prewitt in Zinnemann's From Here to Eternity (1953); the Jewish GI bullied by antisemites in Dmytryk's The Young Lions (1958). His seismographically delicate face and eyes conveyed his inner struggles and torment.Clift was selective over his roles. Some think overly so. He turned down the parts played by William Holden (Sunset Boulevard), Gary Cooper (High Noon), Richard Davalos (East of Eden), Anthony Perkins (Friendly Persuasion), Marlon Brando (On the Waterfront), Richard Burton (Prince of Players), Dean Martin (Rio Bravo), Oskar Werner (Fahrenheit 451).Later, as a result of heavy consumption of drink and prescription drugs due to guilt over his homosexuality, and after a disfiguring 1957 car crash, he became erratic and unreliable. But he is heart-breaking as the reckless, alcoholic, mother-fixated rodeo performer in John Huston's The Misfits (1961), in the title role of Huston's Freud, and as the concentration-camp victim in Kramer's Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), made when he was seriously unwell.He died a deeply unhappy man in New York City on 23 July 1966. Asked the previous evening by his partner-secretary whether he wanted to watch The Misfits on TV, he replied: "Absolutely NOT!" and went to bed. He was found dead the next morning in a locked bedroom aged 45.Spencer Tracy on Clift "He makes most of the young actors today look like bums."Clift on acting "The only line that is wrong in Shakespeare is, 'Holding a mirror up to nature'. As an actor, you hold a magnifying glass up to nature. If it were a mirror we would have no art."Essential DVDs The Search, Red River, The Heiress, A Place in the Sun, I Confess, From Here to Eternity, Suddenly Last Summer, Red River, The Misfits, Freud.Philip Frenchguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Winehouse admits panto punch-up charges Amy Winehouse today admitted assaulting a theatre manager during an incident at a pantomime. breakingnews.ie |
Spice Girls inspired by 'Mamma Mia!' The Spice Girls were inspired by ‘Mamma Mia!’ to make a musical about their careers. breakingnews.ie |