Word: actorisms
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Sitting down to a scrambled-egg breakfast at the Shutters on the Beach hotel in Santa Monica, Calif., McShane, 62, has the happy air of a man who has got away with something. The British character actor just won the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a TV drama, and though in real life he's a grandpa and, for 20 years now, a teetotaler, he betrays a bit of his character's roguish confidence. As soon as he landed the role, he says, he bought a house just down the coast. "I had a feeling it would...
McShane too was no obvious bet. A working actor since age 17, he was a minor TV star in Britain and little known in the U.S. His best-known role here was as another baddie, in the 2000 indie crime movie Sexy Beast. "The question was how his [Mancunian] accent would play in such a quintessentially American role," says HBO entertainment president Carolyn Strauss. But, says creator David Milch, McShane dropped the accent and inhabited the role so thoroughly that he overcame Milch's doubts...
Just as a Shakespearean actor can make iambic pentameter sound natural, so McShane brings Milch's profane yet lofty dialogue to life. And he makes Swearengen the embodiment of the feral, vital greed that fueled a nation's growth. His character is loathsome but, McShane notes, also "the galvanizing force behind what the camp would become--a legitimate place for people to live." Civilization may be closing in on Al Swearengen's mining town, but his rich character offers Ian McShane plenty of gold yet to strike. --Reported by Jeanne McDowell/Los Angeles
...WHEN YOUR FANS SORT OF GOT OUT OF HAND. YOU SAID, "WELL, WHEN YOU SIGN ON, YOU SIGN ON FOR THE WHOLE RIDE." WOULD YOU LIKE TO EXPAND ON THAT A LITTLE? It's just, you know, a trail boss--ism. I used to get a kick out of actors who'd have 10 minutes of fame and they'd start going, "Oh, my God, I can't stand this, and I don't really like it and I just wanted to be an actor. I didn't want to really be successful." And you go, "Oh, come...
...SEEMS TO ME, ONE OF THE THINGS THAT HAPPENS TO AN ACTOR IS THAT FAME CUTS HIM OFF FROM HIS SOURCES. Yeah, You can't see out if everybody is seeing...