Word: actor
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...book defies simple categorizing, The Bright Lights is neither a collection of "Famous Theater Personalities I Have Known" anecdotes, though many celebrated names fill its pages, nor an intellectual sermon on the theater, though it contains many epigrams that any actor, established or aspiring, should cut out and tape to his mirror. Instead, the book combines both these elements, forming a recitation of memories interspersed with philosophy. It reads like a dreamy monologue, as if the reader and Miss Seldes went home together after her evening performance, and she began to describe her career. The soliloquy soon disregards the rules...
...captures the human foibles of theatrical luminaries, such as Katharine Cornell's tendency to flutter her hands immediately before going onstage. Artists like Sir John Gieglud and Alfred Lunt are for the author magnificent human beings. Olivier in particular emerges not so much as the world's finest actor but as a perfect gentleman, treating young, awed actors as collegues, drinking with them, exchanging stories with them and giving advice. The gift of great actors is first and foremost their love and devotion to their fellow actors and their craft...
...play cannot live, Seldes says, if the actor fails to feel for it with "a caring" that embraces the whole meatrical enterprise. Her theme emerges clearly: "To act without love is cruel...
Gregory Peck has gleefully transformed himself into a hulking, slit-eyed, "embodiment of evil." He isn't as awful as you'd expect--he tries hard and he can't help the screenplay, but as an actor he tends to be as stolid and uninspired as this movie. You could, in fact, label The Boys from Brazil "the Gregory Peck of thrillers." But there are compensations...
...elongation of select syllables until they detonate, and he fuses all this with bravura good-humor. Compare this portrait to his massive, thick-featured, iron-rimmed Nazi dentist in the Marathon Man and you've good example of why people label this great man the most versatile actor who's ever lived. Olivier is on-screen more than anyone else in the The Boys from Brazil, and he hasn't had a movie role this large since Sleuth in 1972. If for no other reason, you should see this film, to see him biting Gregory Peck, hissing at Uta Hagen...