HOLLYWOOD ACTOR PREP by Dana Kaminski

In His First Film, Orson Welles Lead Actor Wasn’t Afraid

Not intimidated by size of the role, nor that his character’s name was in the title. Nor by the high-level reputation of A-List director, Richard Linklater.

He wasn’t intimidated to play an American legend, known for being larger-than-life.

Nor was he afraid of playing a real-life character, altogether.

He wasn’t void of fear due to an actor’s runaway ego.

Truth Is, This Actor Was Very Prepared.

From the outset, it all looks like sheer luck.

Fate did play a role, in the timing.  In that, stage actor and RADA grad, Christian McKay was doing a one-man show at the same time that the director, Richard Linklater, was looking for someone to play the role of Orson Welles; the same real-life person that McKay’s one-man show was about.

Watch him talk about being a novice film actor, and his lack of intimidation about it, in my video below. He reveals some of the actor prep he had done for this role, long before he ever heard of Me And Orson Welles.  Long before he ever met Richard Linklater.

On another Hollywood Actor Prep video, he talks about how he got the movie role. This video, here,  is really all about his lack of stagefright.

It also reveals something about the film’s director, Richard Linklater; and his own sense of confidence about his work.

Backstory: McKay’s Path To Playing Welles, On Film

(Telegraph UK)

Still, his sense of affinity with Welles remains with him. “I play him my way, I feel very close to him,” McKay says. He leans forward and smiles: “You can’t play the role without real belief in it.” Twinkling self-confidence indeed.

When he was an acting student at Rada, a teacher told Christian McKay that he wouldn’t find steady work until he was 50.

As it turned out, McKay beat that prediction by 15 years. In his debut film, Richard Linklater’s Me and Orson Welles, he plays the visionary actor-director of the title, sharing top billing with High School Musical heart-throb Zac Efron. His performance has elicited rave reviews from critics and he looks set to lift any number of Best Newcomer awards.

In the film, set in 1937 New York, Efron plays a fictional teenage student, Richard Samuels, who talks his way into a minor role in Welles’s landmark Mercury Theatre production of Julius Caesar. (At the time, Welles was all of 22.) The star-struck Richard makes his stage debut, falls for an older woman in the Mercury company (Claire Danes) and experiences the dazzling, beguiling Welles’s dark side.

McKay landed the role via a circuitous route. He had been portraying Welles in a one-man show, Rosebud, named after the key word in Citizen Kane. It played to sell-out audiences at the Edinburgh Festival in 2004; he still recalls fondly the Telegraph ’s review by Alastair Sooke, who called it “a stellar production” and raved about McKay’s “twinkling self-confidence”.

“I always wanted to be an independent maverick, writing plays and putting them on myself,” he tells me. “The one-man show was set up so I could earn a living from it while I pursued other things.”

But then the show’s writer and director relinquished the rights to Rosebud and McKay fell out bitterly with its producers, who wanted to dump him, take it Stateside and, as he puts it, “cast a fat American in the role”. He was living in Tunbridge Wells, considering his future gloomily and sitting in a pub called The Orson Welles (no, he’s not making it up) when the producers called and asked if he would return to the role.

“I said yes, on one condition,” he recalls. “I said, ‘You give up the rights and I’ll set up a little company and produce it myself.’ ” He thinks they imagined he would continue taking Rosebud round small British provincial venues. But that’s not how it turned out.

First his wife, actress Emily Allen (who plays Orson’s wife Virginia in the film) set up their production company, Atomic 80. “That sounded so hip to me, not being very hip myself,” McKay confesses. “But as she pointed out, 80 is the atomic number for Mercury, the name of Welles’s company.”

When he was asked to accompany the Theatre Clwyd stage company to a “Brits on Broadway” mini-festival in New York, McKay seized the opportunity to present Rosebud for 16 nights in a tiny off-off-Broadway theatre.

Word of mouth was phenomenal and Linklater, who had written the script of Me and Orson Welles, flew from Texas just to see McKay. He offered him the film role, resisting pleas from backers to cast a big‑name actor.

Richard Linklater, Christian McKay, On The Set, 'Me And Orson Welles'

Photographs by Liam Daniel © Freestyle Releasing

Best, Dana

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Sherlock Holmes with Robert Downey Jr., Playing Lead Title Role

Directed by Madonna’s Ex, Guy Ritchie; this movie also has leading actors, Rachel McAdams, and Jude Law.

For full list of the supporting players, go to this link at IMDB.

(Sorry, to my iPhone users, about the trailers being in ‘flash’…it was just a bit easier this time.)

Precious Trailer, With Mo’Nique Who May Get An Academy Award Nom For Acting In This Film

Directed by Lee Daniels, this movie has a newcomer-actor in the lead title role, Gabourey ‘Gabby’ Sidibe.  Some well-known musical names are also acting in Precious, such as Lenny Kravitz, and Mariah Carey.  Full cast list at IMDB.

Doesn’t Every Actress Wish To Work With Pedro Almodovar? ...Broken Embraces

Here’s a trailer with one of his usual actor-hires, and acting-Oscar winner as well, Penelope Cruz.

Bad Lieutenant: Port Of  Call New Orleans, Directed By The Esteemed Werner Herzog

Yet, this film is a remake and Harvey Keitel was the actor in the original, and it’s one of his most famous roles. So there’s a little murmur of complaint inside the artistic film community,  where great acting performances are regarded as sacred.

Negating the murmurs, somewhat, is the fact that Werner Herzog directed this one.  He’s solidly in the master league of directors; and you can’t get any more artistic, as a definition, than Mr. Herzog;  whether he’s doing documentaries, or narrative films.

Besides  Nicolas Cage, this Bad Lieutenant also has an exciting cast list. Here are just a few actor names to throw: Val Kilmer, Eva Mendez, Michael Shannon, Fairuza Balk, Brad Dourif, Vondie Curtis-Hall…See the full list of actors at this IMDB page link.

Enjoy!

;~Dana

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The actor, Ben Whishaw first became known at age 21, when acting in a Shakespeare play. Time Magazine says about Whishaw’s acting, in Hamlet:

Whishaw has been anointed the next great British actor from his Hamlet, at 21, in 2004. “Go and see Trevor Nunn’s Hamlet,” one London critic wrote. “In 40 years’ time you will be able to tell the grandchildren that you saw Ben Whishaw’s first great role.

Ben Whishaw is still in his early-ish 20’s, and some of his other acting credits include: ‘Perfume: The Story Of A Murderer’ and ‘I’m Not There’.

The currently showing film, where Whishaw’s got the lead acting role, is Jane Campion’s ‘Bright Star’. He plays the poet, John Keats. The entire film covers only two years in Keats’ life: when he was in love; and when he also wrote his best poetry.

YAMATO: Keats’ style of poetry emphasized nature and the poet giving himself over as a vessel to channel the universe. Is there a similar sense for you about the craft of acting?

WHISHAW: Yes, definitely. I think that’s one of the things I said to Jane when I auditioned. At the audition, we worked a little bit on the scene where I say that line, that a poet doesn’t have an identity because he’s always filling another body; whatever he’s looking at, he becomes that thing. I said, I think that’s a bit what it’s like to be an actor — sometimes you can lose a sense of yourself because you’re always trying to understand this other person. So I think you’re absolutely right, both are trying to become a vessel, a channel or something.

The entire interview, by Jen Yamato can be found, by clicking on the interviewer’s name. I do plan on running more excerpts, pertinent to actors and the craft of acting, throughout the rest of this this week.

Thank you to Jen Yamato, for the excerpts; and for doing the types of interviews that have the type of depth that can be appreciated by those in the acting arts.

Before she was a professional actor…Before she knew wanted to be an actor…

…Audrey Tautou wanted to study monkeys.

The lead actor in the film: ‘Coco Before Chanel’ admits acting was never her ambition until she reached her late teens–which is when she started to enjoy socializing.

She said: “I didn’t plan to become an actress. I had no clue fame would land on me. As a child, I wanted to study monkeys but I changed my mind with the onset of hormones and suddenly I was a teenager and I found partying more interesting than nature and got into art and theatre and movies.”

Audrey mainly works in her native France because she prefers the anonymity it gives her compared with life in America.

She explained to Britain’s Independent newspaper: “I like working once in a while in Hollywood because it’s like a holiday but I am happy in France doing what I do.

“I am happy with my life, I have enough money, I like to be myself. I like to dance when I am drunk and have a good time. I don’t go out much. I stay with my friends. This is what I like.”

—From Britain’s BANG Media

This was in the LA Times, but I am reprinting it for you. Auspicious for actors? Good news for those that aren’t stars? Perhaps.

Instead of igniting the box office, this season’s star-studded flicks have dramatically underperformed. Hollywood’s most lucrative films mostly have been those with no-name actors.

By Claudia Eller

The stars are not twinkling bright this summer.

Hollywood’s movie studios, hopeful that marquee-name actors would push their summer box-office receipts to record levels, are finding that the heavyweights aren’t winning over audiences like they used to. With all but a couple of big-budget films already opened, the summer of 2009 is shaping up to be one of the worst on record for Hollywood’s A-list talent.

The studios stocked this summer’s release schedule with so-called star vehicles, including “Land of the Lost” with Will Ferrell, “Year One” featuring Jack Black, the comedy “Imagine That” with Eddie Murphy, and Denzel Washington and John Travolta in a remake of “The Taking of Pelham 123.” But rather than igniting ticket sales, the star-studded movies have dramatically underperformed.

The brightest stars of the lucrative popcorn season — which typically accounts for about 40% of annual ticket sales — instead have turned out to be mostly movies with no-name actors — or no actors at all on screen.

And, [one of ] the highest-grossing summer movie so far? Walt Disney’s Co.’s “Up,” the Pixar-animated movie starring the voice of . . . Ed Asner.
The studios, which for years have banked on richly paid stars to open their movies, are now witnessing a new reality: even the most reliable actors can be trumped by what Hollywood executives like to call “high concepts” (a bachelor party gone awry), movies based on brand-name products (Hasbro’s Transformers toys), and reinvented franchises (not your father’s “Star Trek”).

“I think we’re seeing a transformation in what the value of the star system represents,” said Marc Shmuger, chairman of Universal Pictures, which will take a significant loss on Ferrell’s “Land of the Lost,” which cost $100 million to make and tens of millions more to market and distribute. There’s also an “incredible hunger among audiences for something new and different,” he said.

Even before a major movie hits the big screen, Twitter users and bloggers are weighing in — which can help or hinder a studio opening a movie.

“The world has changed, throwing conventional wisdom out the window,” said former studio marketing executive Peter Sealey. “The star-power opening is fading in importance and the marketing and releasing of movies is going into new territory where the masses are molding the opinion of a movie. People no longer say, ‘It’s a Tom Cruise movie, let’s go see it!’ With social networking, you know everything about a movie before it comes out.”

Doug Belgrad, production president of Sony Pictures Entertainment, whose studio is behind “Year One” and “Pelham,” said stars alone no longer can compete against the draw of franchise movies and sequels like “Transformers” and “Harry Potter” that come with a high degree of public awareness.

“Movie stars in the right films provide a certain amount of value from a marketing point of view,” he said. “But there is no star power that you can throw at a movie that gives you the kind of brand awareness you get from pre-sold titles.”

This summer’s woes come at a time when studios are already battling the climbing cost of making and marketing movies as well as a decline in DVD sales, which have long supported the economics of the film business.

Of course, the right star in the right movie can still lure large audiences, as evidenced by 20th Century Fox’s Ben Stiller sequel “Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian” and “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” in which Hugh Jackman helped attract female moviegoers.

“The Proposal,” Disney’s romantic comedy starring Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds, had a strong opening less than two weeks ago at more than $33 million and will be profitable since it cost only about $40 million.

“There’s something to be said for chemistry between actors, and you don’t need to be a star to have chemistry,” said Oren Aviv, Disney’s production president, suggesting that is exactly what the casts of “Proposal,” “Star Trek” and “Hangover” all have in common — “combined with an idea that people connect with.”

But for the most part, audiences aren’t connecting with the stars this summer. Although it may be too early to know whether the weak reception will prompt the studios to rely less heavily on high-cost actors in big-budget movies as a linchpin of their summer strategy, some executives acknowledge they are reevaluating old nostrums.

“The star system was created from movies in the past,” said Universal’s Shmuger. “And clearly, we have to look forward and be aware of the shifts around us. We’re seeing the supremacy of a great idea and concept well told in a fresh way — of course that will inform our thinking.”

Best

Dana

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Los Angeles actor, Garret Dillahunt, plays quite an evil guy in ‘The Last House On The Left’.  In this interview, he makes a great point about “acting craft”.  

The interviewer asks him if he changes, as a person (inside) when he plays such a character; one who rapes, and easily carries out some very awful violence.  

From the Los Angeles Times:

Are you one of those people who has fundamental changes in yourself based on your work?

You mean like roles affecting you outside of the job? You know, I don’t think I am! There wouldn’t be much craft in it if you actually become those people. I like feeling like I have some skill.

I feel like you are going to have to defend “The Last House on the Left.”

You mean to you? I’m real proud of it, which is an odd thing to be proud of. I’m proud of this rape-and-pillage movie. There are reasons that I consciously did the thing — but there’s something about that basic story that is speaking to people, and I think did to me when I read the script. And I think it’s because the job situation is getting weird, people feel so powerless right now. People feel like they’ve been raped by — fill in the blank, the economy, 9/11. Wes Craven last night called 9/11 the ultimate home invasion. Not meaning to be glib — but that feeling of violation we all had. People are really responding to the film in a visceral way — and I think it gives them some release. I kind of feel like it will defend itself. Wow, I got so deep there.

OK. I will see this movie.

It’s an art-house horror film. I saw it with a couple friends and, man, it’s so relentless and believable. I felt mugged. Sort of happily mugged? Is that possible?

I do hate reading a synopsis with the word “disembowel” in it.

I don’t think we disembowel! Sara Paxton, who plays Mari Collingwood, the victim of the assault, I’ve worked with her before. I was happy about that at first. Then I thought maybe it’s a bad thing — you don’t do this to friends! But she was so game and tired of playing mermaids and Snow White kind of characters. So she really went for it.

You’re at that age now where you feel like she’s really young, right?

I’m kind of in between. You’re like, oh, she’s of age now. And then you’re like, oh, pervert!

But you’ve been married forever, right?

I’ve only been married for a couple of years. We’ve been together for a long time. We don’t have to write about any of that!

Do you get “Terminator” blow-back from fans? 

I get recognized more — it’s one of the first characters I played that looks like me. There’s a lot of “Terminator” fans out there, which belies the ratings!

The “John From Cincinnati” set — I got the sensation that this was a very weird time and experience for people.

It seemed very similar to the “Deadwood” experience for me. I love writers! I get nervous around writers, because I’m a frustrated writer myself. I’m a terrible writer. I have a degree in journalism, and I thought that was what I was going to do. And I drifted through college and found acting kind of late. [David] Milch was so good to me, and it really changed me — I don’t mean professionally, it changed things for me, in the way I view material. . . . Working that inspirationally must be expensive, which you have to be realistic about if you’re a network or a money guy. What made “Deadwood” special killed it, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything. For anything! And I owe a lot to that experience. Spiritually. Praise the Lord! I do that too. I get embarrassed about waxing on and I cut myself off at the knees. That’s a nice little trait there, FYI.

Why did you think you bombed out as a writer?

I might be a little hard on myself. I was a fine writer! I worked for my little hometown newspaper. I thought I was going to write fiction.

And how do you do when you have to do TV?

A lot of shuffling of feet and blushing. But I’ve tried to minimize the stuttering. I try to look happier. I think I just have one of those faces. I can be having the greatest day and strangers will pass me and say, “Smile!” And I’ll say, “What’s my face doing — and . . . you!”

 

Actor Garret Dillahunt

Besides “The Last House On The Left”, Garret Dillahunt is a series regular on television, in ”Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles”. His other movie roles include “No Country for Old Men”, “John From Cincinnati”, and “Deadwood.”  

 

Academy Awards, In February: 

Mickey Rourke has not acted, in the limelight, for a long time. Now, he’s starring in “The Wrestler”* 

Perhaps you never even saw any of the movies,  which I posted as examples, of Rourke’s great acting talent, in my last Actor-Prep post.  (LInk to those acting scenes here.)

Mickey Rourke

Let’s cut to the present time…I think he is entitled to be nominated for an Oscar, and I think he may win:

Mickey Rourke may just take the Best Actor Category…this coming February…at the Academy Awards.

Look, he’s infamous for having a temper, being outspoken.  Some incomprehensible stuff: leaving acting to become a boxer, and getting his head all smashed up…the facial fixes…Vanity Fair articles on his relationship…and, he has dropped out of sight for a very long time.

Yuk. I don’t give a hoot.  I don’t think anybody else does, either.

Why?

Because Talent Trumps All

I’m not talking about acting style, chops, mojo, moxie, ability, appeal; although Mickey has them all.

I’m not talking about beauty, fashion, box office, “Page Six”, or TMZ…

…That stuff isn’t involved in this type of conversation.

That stuff all falls away, and it becomes so plain, clear:

Some people are born with a specialness, born with a blessedness. In all areas of humanity, there are rare ones that are blessed with such a pureness and powerful talent.  Mickey Rourke, clearly has such a gift.

When someone has a gift like that, everybody recognizes it.  Talent, like his, gifts us all.

The human race is proud of those with great talent. 

We love experiencing their talent

and

We are proud that he is “one of us” …a human with such magnificence…we all feel it represents us.

Too Abstract?

Okay, then, I’ll finish up.  A human being with such a powerful and easy talent makes us all look good.

And if the Academy doesn’t fault him; for being too human in the non-acting parts of Mickey Rourke, and votes because of the magic of his acting, then he will win.

He should win. He’s one of our finest, ever.

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Have a lovely weekend…

;-Dana

** “The Wrestler” opens, in theaters, on December 17, 2008.