The Missouri Policeman Who Prepared Sam Rockwell for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Sam Rockwell’s character, Officer Dixon, is by no means a model police officer in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. He’s violent, bigoted, temperamental and aloof. Yet, in order to play a character that gets everything wrong, sometimes you have to know what it looks like to get the job right. To research the role, Rockwell ...
Talking to Oscar-Nominee Gary Oldman & Director Joe Wright About Darkest Hour—Part II
As part of our Oscars week coverage, we’re re-posting our conversations with some of this year’s Oscar-nominees. Gary Oldman is nominated for Actor in a Leading Role, alongside Daniel Kaluuya (Get Out), Denzel Washington (Roman J. Israel, Esq), Daniel Day-Lewis (Phantom Thread) and Timothée Chalamet (Call Me By Your Name). In Part 2 of an ...
Talking to Oscar-Nominee Gary Oldman & Director Joe Wright About Darkest Hour—Part I
As part of our Oscars week coverage, we’re re-posting our conversations with some of this year’s Oscar-nominees. Gary Oldman is nominated for Actor in a Leading Role, alongside Daniel Kaluuya (Get Out), Denzel Washington (Roman J. Israel, Esq), Daniel Day-Lewis (Phantom Thread) and Timothée Chalamet (Call Me By Your Name). In a film career that ...
Billy Zane on Playing the Evil King Balek in Samson
Samson’s tyrannical King Balek is not the first time Billy Zane has played the bad guy. He is probably best remembered as the arrogant Caledon Hockley in the Oscar-winning blockbuster Titanic. And he played a villain in the thriller Dead Calm. But he also was a quintessential “cool dude” in Zoolander, and his roles have ...
Hostiles Actor Wes Studi on Capturing an Audience Without Speaking Their Language
The stars of writer-director Scott Cooper’s Hostiles are Christian Bale, playing U.S. Army Capt. Joseph Blocker, and Rosamund Pike, as Rosalie Quaid, the lone survivor of a Comanche massacre. But this stark Western relies just as much on Wes Studi, whose dying Chief Yellow Hawk is released from prison to be escorted to Montana by ...
Sundance 2018: A Conversation with the Director and Cast of Daring Heist Film American Animals
Whether it’s the reluctant exploitation of a super skill in Baby Driver or the stylish and sophisticated execution of Ocean’s Eleven, heist movies are an American cinematic staple. The masterminded plans, daring escapes, and thrilling shootouts look easy on screen, but what would happen in a real life do-it-yourself caper? Enter Sundance selection, American Animals. ...
Talking to Gary Oldman & Director Joe Wright About Darkest Hour—Part II
In Part 2 of an interview with Darkest Hour director Joe Wright and star Gary Oldman, who has been receiving glowing reviews for his portrait of Winston Churchill in the film that opens November 22, they discuss the physical part of his performance, a few noteworthy props and why the actor who brought to life ...
Talking to Gary Oldman & Director Joe Wright About Darkest Hour—Part I
In a film career that spans four decades, actor Gary Oldman, 59, has displayed a chameleon-like ability to play a multitude of far-ranging roles. That includes punk pioneer Sid Vicious, JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, Count Dracula, classical composer Beethoven, Harry Potter wizard Sirius Black and John le Carre’s spy guy George Smiley. Ever since ...
The Florida Project’s Young Stars & Director Discuss Dazzling new Film
The Florida Project shows a side of Disney’s influence on the Sunshine State that tourists rarely see from inside the glittery artifice of the Magic Kingdom in Orlando. Namely, the economic reality of those struggling to make ends meet as they are forced to reside in the budget motels populating roadside areas beyond the theme park. Amazingly, ...
Jake Gyllenhaal & Jeff Bauman on Their Bond, Using Real Pain to Fuel Stronger
When it comes to cinematic accounts of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, Stronger is the flip side to last year’s Patriots Day. The earlier film – an action thriller about catching the bad guys – focused on Beantown native Mark Wahlberg’s fictional composite-character cop being celebrated as a hero. Stronger, opening this Friday, instead is ...
Ali Fazal on Playing Queen Victoria’s Friend & Teacher in Victoria and Abdul
Victoria and Abdul director Stephen Frears said he had to go to India to find an actor to play the Muslim who was Queen Victoria’s friend and munshi (teacher) in the last years of her life. “I knew that you needed somebody from India,” he said, to get “that sort of wide-eyed quality….When Ali [Fazal] came ...
Karen Allen on her new Film Year by the Sea (and yes, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Too)
Karen Allen shows a different kind of courage in Year by the Sea than she did in her most iconic role as Marian in Raiders of the Lost Ark. But she looks just a few years older and still shows the same fearless engagement in the world in the story based on the memoir by ...
Gretchen Mol on Finding the Complexity in a Mother’s Story in A Family Man
In A Family Man, Gerard Butler plays an ambitious headhunter determined to win an important promotion – until his young son becomes critically ill and he has to rethink his priorities. Gretchen Mol plays Butler’s wife and the mother of the sick child. In an interview with The Credits, she talked about what she learned ...
Double Emmy Nominee Ann Dowd Talks The Handmaid’s Tale and The Leftovers
Frightening to begin with, The Handmaid’s Tale gets even more creepy fifteen minutes into the first episode with the introduction of “Aunt Lydia.” Played with fierce authority by Ann Dowd, Lydia hectors a group of young women forced to bear children for the men who rule near-future “Gilead.” Striding around the classroom in short hair, ...
Legendary Playwright, Author, Actor & All Around Icon Sam Shepard Passes Away
Sam Shepard, age 73, has died from complications due to Lou Gehrig’s disease at his home in Kentucky. It is hard to measure Sam Shepard’s impact on contemporary art, performing and otherwise, for several reasons. He was a prolific worker, yielding a vast array of award winning plays, short stories, film scripts, and memorable performances ...
Talking to Emmy-Nominated Ewan McGregor About Splitting Himself for his Fargo Dual Roles
For years, Ewan McGregor yearned to play a role that required complete physical transformation, but the timing couldn’t have been worse when Fargo creator Noah Hawley asked the svelte actor to grow a beer belly. “I had a jawline that you could cut paper on and I’d never been so fit in my life,” laughs ...
Talking to the Director and the Star of the Sensational Documentary Step
Ever since Step wowed them at Sundance, the documentary that follows an all-girls step-dance team at an inner-city charter school dedicated to helping female African-American students pursue a college degree has been winning fans at festivals. Even Michelle Obama gave her seal of approval to “Step” in May, when the Lethal Ladies squad from the Baltimore Leadership School for ...
Remembering Adam West
Friday night, the world lost the original Batman, Adam West. West, 88, passed away after a short battle with leukemia. West played the original Batman in the 1960s television series. Following his run on the show, he went on to pursue other ventures in his acting career, and was beloved for never taking himself too ...
Luke Hemsworth on Playing Legendary Wild West Gunslinger in Hickok
Luke Hemsworth’s younger brothers Chris (Thor) and Liam (The Hunger Games) are known for blockbusters, and now Luke Hemsworth (Westworld) is making a name in some smaller projects. His latest is the title role in Hickok, a western about the legendary gunslinger, co-starring Kris Kristofferson and Trace Atkins. In an interview, Hemsworth explained why Wild Bill Hickok wears ...
Matt Smith on Playing Petulant Royalty in Netflix’s The Crown
One of television’s priciest shows to date, the first season of The Crown offers a faithfully detailed portrait of Elizabeth II’s early years as sovereign. Claire Foy plays the graceful if young queen; the difficult glory faced by her husband, Prince Philip, is portrayed equally well by the British actor Matt Smith (previously one of the ...
