Word: janes
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Holly Hunter touches all of Jane's moods -- funny, flinty, vulnerable, bizarrely controlled -- before the opening credits of Writer-Director James L. Brooks' Broadcast News are concluded. At first, this protean display seems the equivalent of a Save the Children billboard on Sunset Strip: "Won't someone please nominate this girl for an Oscar?" But Hunter, 29 and 5 ft. 2 in., is no late entry in the prima donna sweepstakes. She is a hardscrabble sprite from Conyers, Ga., a dues payer from off-Broadway (Beth Henley's The Miss Firecracker Contest) and off-Hollywood (Joel and Ethan Coen...
...Brooks' beguilingly skeptical romance, Jane is the Lois Lane of the '80s, a newswoman whose affections are torn between a Clark Kent reporter (Albert Brooks) and a flawed Superman-anchorman (William Hurt). The male leads had long been cast, but until just before rehearsals, Jim Brooks was still looking for his "little steamroller." Debra Winger, who had shone in his Terms of Endearment, was pregnant and unavailable. Sigourney Weaver, Mary Beth Hurt, Christine Lahti, Judy Davis -- all were fine, but nobody was right...
...Within moments, Brooks thought otherwise. "She read her part like a dream," he says. "No, wait, I'm building legends here. She read better than a dream. She read like a gifted actress." And once this non-star got the part, she assumed a control and drive worthy of Jane. "The best thing in her is that Holly never questioned that this was exactly where she should be," Brooks observes. "She gives it everything all the time. She floors it and goes till she drops...
CONTRIBUTORS: Kurt Andersen, Patricia Blake, Gerald Clarke, Jay Cocks, John Elson, Thomas Griffith, Pico Iyer, Leon Jaroff, Stefan Kanfer, Charles Krauthammer, John Leo, Jane O' Reilly, Kenneth M. Pierce, Richard Schickel, Mimi Sheraton, John Skow
...Gomez, Christine Gorman, Rodman Griffin, Janice M. Horowitz, Jeanette Isaac, Carol A. Johmann, Sinting Lai, Daniel S. Levy, JoAnn Lum, Katherine Mihok, Emily Mitchell, Lawrence Mondi, Christine Morgan, Adrianne Jucius Navon, Jeannie Park, Michael Quinn, Theodore P. Roth, Megan Rutherford, Andrea Sachs, David Seideman, David E. Thigpen, Sidney Urquhart, Jane Van Tassel, Leslie Whitaker, Linda Williams, Linda Young...