Word: actorisms
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...seraphic face and said, "I bet that's him." Etel didn't give as good a reading of the lines in Frank Cottrell Boyce's script as some of the other boys, but that didn't trouble the director. "I didn't really want an actor," Boyle says. "I was looking for an innocence, a simplicity and a beauty that make you feel like you're not watching a manipulated piece of commercial art, which is what films are." Boyle has to feel lucky that Etel wasn't home sick that day; Millions might lack a spark without this...
...work. Left alone for a moment, he feels mournful, bereft--and then panicky, when he thinks he has been deserted again. In an ordinary movie, the situation might call for a freshet of tears to guarantee an audience's instant pity. But in this film, Millions, with this young actor, Alex Etel, subtlety is the key. His eyes mist up, just enough to cue the attentive viewer to the desperation of the sweetest child in the English Midlands...
...Child actors have been stealing scenes and hearts at least since Jackie Coogan teamed with Charlie Chaplin in the 1921 weepy The Kid. For three years in the '30s, Shirley Temple was Hollywood's biggest box-office star; she was just 6 when the Motion Picture Academy voted her a special Oscar. Since then, the Academy has honored 16 actors under 14 with nominations or Oscars. Keisha Castle-Hughes, 14, the Maori charmer of Whale Rider, was cited last year. Tatum O'Neal (Paper Moon) and Anna Paquin (The Piano) won supporting-actress Oscars on their first acting jobs. Standards...
...scouts traveling the country trying to find the next young stars. But the show-biz sass that works on sitcoms may look grotesque on the big screen. Those reflexes anticipate what a director wants, when maybe what he wants is to be surprised. "You don't want some actor child who does everything perfectly and doesn't have a childlike aura," says Campbell Scott, who directed the then 13-year-old Valentina de Angelis in Off the Map, opening next week. "They have to be professional enough to not want to go home after three hours but unprofessional enough...
...last. That's what director Wayne Wang did in Winn-Dixie: he let Robb ease in to the heavy lifting with early lighthearted scenes. "I was nervous until the day she did a scene of consequence," says producer Albert. "But in those scenes she was surrounded by very strong actors. So by the end of the movie she was a better actor than she was at the start." Wang would also hold Robb's hand, a technique that seemed to focus her attention...