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      ‘Gossip Girl’ and ‘Buffy’ Actors Mourn Michelle Trachtenberg

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      Blake Lively, Sarah Michelle Gellar and other stars remembered Trachtenberg’s work ethic and friendship in social media posts.News of Michelle Trachtenberg’s death at 39 on Wednesday sent shock waves through Hollywood, especially among actors who worked with her on movies like “Harriet the Spy” and the beloved TV shows “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Gossip Girl.”Blake LivelyLively, who played Serena van der Woodsen on “Gossip Girl,” called Trachtenberg “electricity” and shared a photo on Instagram of the first day they met. She also praised the work ethic of Trachtenberg, who played Georgina Sparks in 27 episodes of the show.“Everything she did, she did 200%,” Lively wrote in an Instagram story. “She laughed the fullest at someone’s joke, she faced authority head on when she felt something was wrong, she cared deeply about her work, she was proud to be a part of this community and industry as painful as it could be sometimes.”Sarah Michelle GellarGellar, the star of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” shared a stack of eight photos with Trachtenberg, who played Dawn Summers in more than 60 episodes of the show. One photo showed Buffy embracing Dawn in an episode titled “Forever.”“Michelle, listen to me,” Gellar captioned the photos, referring to a famous “Buffy” quote. “Listen. I love you. I will always love you. The hardest thing in this world, is to live in it. I will be brave. I will live… for you.”Chace CrawfordCrawford praised Trachtenberg as one of a kind and recalled her strong presence on the set of “Gossip Girl,” where he played Nate Archibald. “I remember her coming on set for the first time and just absolutely owning it,” he wrote on Instagram. “She was a force of nature and just so, so unapologetically funny and magnetic.”Alyson HanniganHannigan, who played Willow Rosenberg on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” said on Instagram that Trachtenberg “brought a loving energy to the set.”J. Smith-CameronSmith-Cameron, who also starred in the 1996 movie “Harriet the Spy,” told People that the young actress was excited to lead her first film at the age of 11. “Her natural ebullient nature was ratcheted up into giddiness as she tried to learn how to handle all that came with that,” she said.Additional TributesTributes also poured in from Melissa Joan Hart, Chris Colfer and Kenan Thompson. Rosie O’Donnell, who worked with Trachtenberg on “Harriet the Spy,” told People that the younger actor had “struggled the last few years” without providing specifics. More

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      Morgan Freeman, Gwyneth Paltrow and Others Mourn Gene Hackman

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      A two-time Academy Award winner and a dogged Everyman in many of his roles, Hackman was remembered by collaborators and co-stars after his death.Tributes for the actor Gene Hackman, who was found dead on Wednesday at the age of 95 at his home in Santa Fe, N.M., with his wife and one of their dogs, streamed in from collaborators and co-stars as the news spread.Hackman, who played flawed Everymen, inflexible patriarchs and inspirational mentors, had decades of notable roles, prompting generations of mourners to remember their time working with the actor.Francis Ford CoppolaCoppola, who directed Hackman in the 1974 neo-noir “The Conversation,” in which the actor played a wiretapping expert enmeshed in paranoia, posted a photo of them on the set together.“The loss of a great artist, always cause for both mourning and celebration: Gene Hackman a great actor, inspiring and magnificent in his work and complexity,” Coppola wrote in the caption. “I mourn his loss, and celebrate his existence and contribution.”Morgan FreemanFreeman, who co-starred with Hackman in the 1992 neo-western “Unforgiven,” which won best picture and best supporting actor for Hackman at the Academy Awards, posted a picture of them from a later collaboration with Monica Bellucci. In the caption, he said working with Hackman on that movie, “Under Suspicion,” from 2000, was “one of the personal highlights of my career.”Gwyneth PaltrowPaltrow, who played the daughter to Hackman’s eccentric patriarch in Wes Anderson’s 2001 dramedy “The Royal Tenenbaums,” posted a cropped image of that movie’s cast that centered her, Luke Wilson and Hackman. She captioned it only with an emoji of a broken heart.Barry SonnenfeldSonnenfeld posted a still from “Get Shorty,” the 1995 gangster comedy he directed in which Hackman played a B-movie director with a large gambling debt who was chased down by a mobbed-up loan shark played by John Travolta.“He was brilliant, hilarious and always real,” Sonnenfeld wrote in the caption. “And always knew his lines. Couldn’t ask for more from an actor.”Nathan LaneLane, one of Hackman’s co-stars in the 1996 queer farce comedy “The Birdcage,” said in a statement that he thought he told Hackman he was his favorite actor every day during filming. He also praised Hackman’s range in both comedy and drama, saying it was a privilege to share the screen with him.“Getting to watch him up close, it was easy to see why he was one of our greatest,” Lane said in the statement, reported by Variety and People magazine. “You could never catch him acting. Simple and true, thoughtful and soulful, with just a hint of danger.”Hank AzariaAzaria, who played the Guatemalan housekeeper and aspiring drag queen Agador Spartacus in “The Birdcage,” posted stills from that movie with him and Hackman, who played an ultraconservative Republican senator meeting the gay parents of his future son-in-law.“It was an honor and an education working with Gene Hackman,” Azaria wrote. “Mike Nichols said of his genius character acting: ‘He always brought just enough of a different part of the real gene to each role he played.’” More

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      How Yura Borisov of ‘Anora’ Went From the Kremlin to the Oscars

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      Yura Borisov, who is nominated for an Academy Award on Sunday, is pulling off a rare feat: pleasing audiences at home in Russia as well as in the West.On the face of it, the Russian actor Yura Borisov was an unlikely actor to land an Oscar nomination in 2025.Just a few years ago he played a guileless soldier in a Kremlin-sponsored movie that celebrated a Soviet tank model. Later, he starred in a biopic of Mikhail Kalashnikov, the man who invented the Russian automatic rifle.But after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, he stopped playing in militaristic movies. Last year, Western audiences fell in love with him as a tight-lipped but sentimental mafia errand boy in “Anora,” a Brooklyn-based indie dramedy about a stripper who impulsively marries the son of a Russian oligarch.At the Academy Awards on Sunday, Borisov is up for best supporting actor for the role.The war in Ukraine cut many Russian artists off from the West, but Borisov has been among the few who managed to transcend the dividing lines. He has continued a career in Russia, without endorsing or condemning the war, while in the West, he has evaded being seen as a representative of state-sponsored Russian culture.“Borisov hasn’t picked a side,” said Anton Dolin, a leading Russian film critic. “Maybe he is just very smart, or maybe he thinks he is not smart enough,” Dolin said by phone from Riga, Latvia, where he now lives in exile.“It doesn’t matter,” Dolin added. “His behavior and strategy have been impeccable.”Borisov at the BAFTA Film Awards in London this month. Over the past weeks, he has been on the road campaigning for awards for “Anora” and attending ceremonies.Andy Rain/EPA, via ShutterstockWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Gene Hackman’s Career Is a Tribute to the Pugnacious Nature of Surprise

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      He could be both paternal and terrifying, and had the ability to almost goad you into liking men who would otherwise be despicable.When you first see Gene Hackman in “The French Connection,” he’s wearing a Santa suit, conversing with a bunch of kids. It’s a jolly image that runs counter to what we’ll soon come to know about Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle, the porkpie-hat-wearing detective that became one of Hackman’s most notable roles. The Santa disguise starts to peel off as he leaves the children behind to sprint after and brutalize a perp. Kindly Santa, this man is not.But that was the extraordinary power of Hackman, who was found dead Wednesday at his home in Santa Fe., N.M., at the age of 95. Throughout his long career — that was somehow too short, thanks to a conscious retirement — he mixed warmth with menace. He could be paternal as well as terrifying, sometimes all within the same film.Hackman often played men doggedly pursuing impossible goals despite looming threats and their superiors telling them to back off, but there was a doggedness about him, too. He had a pugnacious ability to almost goad you into liking guys who would otherwise be despicable, be they criminals, cops or just absentee fathers. Despite their often unsavory behavior, Hackman made it fun to spend time with these people, even if you might not want to encounter them in real life.Hackman never quite made sense as a movie star. When he was cast alongside Warren Beatty in Arthur Penn’s “Bonnie and Clyde” (1967), the movie that would net him his first Oscar nomination, that became obvious. While Beatty as one of the eponymous robbers was smooth with a luscious mane of black hair, Hackman’s Buck Barrow, Clyde’s brother, was jittery and balding — but no less an entrancing and terrifying presence, with a livewire energy that felt genuinely unmoored.“Bonnie and Clyde” cast members, from left: Hackman, Estelle Parsons, Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway and Michael J. Pollard.Bettman, via GettyHackman routinely inspired the use of the term “Everyman” in articles, but that seemed like an incomplete way of capturing his appeal. In 1989, The New York Times Magazine qualified that description by calling him “Hollywood’s Uncommon Everyman.” Twelve years later, The Times described him as “Hollywood’s Every Angry Man.” He was an Everyman with an asterisk.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Gene Hackman: 5 Memorable Performances to Stream

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      He played a complicated hero in “The French Connection” and an arch-villain in “Superman.” Here are some of Hackman’s career highlights.Although Gene Hackman, who died at age 95, was one of Hollywood’s most enduring and recognizable stars, it was nearly impossible to put the actor in a box. In a five-decade career, he portrayed cops, villains and men of the cloth, in thrillers, comedies and superhero blockbusters.His accolades included two Academy Awards and four Golden Globes, including, in 2003, the Cecil B. DeMille Award for outstanding contributions to entertainment.Here are some of his most notable performances.‘The French Connection’Hackman’s breakout role was as Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle, a cop investigating a heroin deal in William Friedkin’s “The French Connection.” Hackman won the best actor Academy Award for this performance, and critics immediately recognized his star quality. Stephen Farber, reviewing the movie for The Times, said that Hackman had brought “a new kind of police hero” to the screen. His character was “brutal, racist, foulmouthed, petty, compulsive, lecherous,” Farber wrote, “but even at his most appalling, he is recognizably human.”Stream, rent or buy it on Prime, YouTube, Apple TV or Fandango.‘The Poseidon Adventure’Hackman followed up “The French Connection” with three movies in 1972, including “The Poseidon Adventure,” directed by Ronald Neame, about an ill-fated ocean liner’s final voyage. Hackman played a minister who leads the other frantic passengers to safety.Stream, rent or buy it on Apple TV, Prime, Fandango or YouTube.“Superman”In the 1970s, Hackman became known as one of Hollywood’s hardest-working actors, completing movies at a frenetic pace, as shown by his appearances in the “Superman” franchise. While filming his role as arch-villain Lex Luthor for the first installment, Hackman simultaneously shot his scenes for that movie’s sequel, “Superman II.”Stream, rent or buy it on Max, YouTube, Fandango, Apple TV or Prime.‘Unforgiven’Hackman won his second Oscar — a best supporting actor award in 1993 — for “Unforgiven,” in which he played a sadistic small-town sheriff who comes up against a string of bounty hunters, including one played by Clint Eastwood. In The Times review of the film, Vincent Canby said that Hackman “delights” in the role, and he noted a shift for the performer: “No more Mr. Good Guy.”Stream, rent or buy it on Prime, Fandango, Apple TV or YouTube.‘The Royal Tenenbaums’James Hamilton/Touchstone Pictures, via The Kobal CollectionHackman also won acclaim playing in comedies. In 2001, he starred in Wes Anderson’s “The Royal Tenenbaums” as a disbarred lawyer who tries to reconcile with his eccentric children. A.O. Scott, reviewing the movie for The Times, said that Hackman had “the amazing ability to register belligerence, tenderness, confusion and guile within the space of a few lines of dialogue. You never know where he’s going, but it always turns out to be exactly the right place.”Stream, rent or buy it on Apple TV, Prime, Fandango or YouTube. More

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      Oscars 2025 Predictions: Who Will Win Best Picture, Actor and Actress?

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      The best picture race has been full of twists and turns. The best actress race is closely contested. Our expert predicts which films and artists will get trophies on Sunday.Best PictureMark Eydelshteyn and Mikey Madison in “Anora.”Neon✓ “Anora”“The Brutalist”“A Complete Unknown”“Conclave”“Dune: Part Two”“Emilia Pérez”“I’m Still Here”“Nickel Boys”“The Substance”“Wicked”After a few years where the best picture winner was practically ordained from the start of the season, at least this race has given us some twists and turns.First, there was the saga of “Emilia Pérez,” which led the field with a near-record 13 nominations but collapsed in controversy after the unearthing of disparaging tweets by its star, Karla Sofía Gascón. Then “Anora,” a front-runner that was utterly shut out at January’s Golden Globes, scored top prizes from the producers, directors and writers guilds.Those wins usually presage a best picture victory, especially because the producers guild uses a preferential ballot similar to the Academy’s. But in the late going, another contender began to surge as “Conclave” took the top prize at the Screen Actors Guild Awards (where “Anora” was once again shut out) as well as best film honors at the BAFTAs, the British equivalent to the Oscars.One thing gives me pause, though: If “Conclave” had the sort of across-the-board Academy support that a best picture winner can usually count on, it shouldn’t have missed out on slam-dunk Oscar nominations for directing and cinematography. “Anora” earned all the nominations it needed to, and its guild spread is hard to argue with, so that’s the film I project will win.Best DirectorJacques Audiard, “Emilia Pérez”✓ Sean Baker, “Anora”Brady Corbet, “The Brutalist”Coralie Fargeat, “The Substance”James Mangold, “A Complete Unknown”Baker picked up the DGA trophy but has strong competition from Corbet, who won best director at the BAFTAs. Still, I suspect the Academy will embrace “Anora” in both of the top categories. It helps that Baker has turned every acceptance speech he’s made this season into an upbeat rallying cry for theatrical independent filmmaking.Best ActorAdrien Brody in “The Brutalist.”Lol Crawley/A24✓ Adrien Brody, “The Brutalist”Timothée Chalamet, “A Complete Unknown”Colman Domingo, “Sing Sing”Ralph Fiennes, “Conclave”Sebastian Stan, “The Apprentice”Brody has been collecting prizes all season, though his reign was halted last weekend when Chalamet scored a last-minute SAG win. But Chalamet faces headwinds from an Academy that remains stubbornly resistant to recognizing young men: No one under 30 has ever won the best actor Oscar except for Brody himself, who notched his win for “The Pianist” at age 29. Come Sunday, he’ll add a second Oscar to the mantel.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Ione Skye Was an Enigma in Her 1990s Heyday. Now She’d Like a Word.

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      When Ione Skye was in middle school in the early 1980s, a group of popular, mean girls she calls “the Aprils” brought her — shy, bookish, not yet famous — into their intimidating fold. She was surprised they even knew her name.“Part of me wanted to punch the girls’ smug faces,” she writes in her memoir “Say Everything,” due out from Gallery Books on March 4. Another part of her, though, “burned with excitement.”Those preteen memories, which she wrote down, felt important. Cinematic, even. “My own story captured my imagination,” Skye told me during a video interview from Los Angeles. “I had a big ego, I guess.”For almost 40 years, since Skye made her film debut at 15 alongside Keanu Reeves, Crispin Glover and Dennis Hopper in the teen crime drama “River’s Edge,” her name has been associated with powerful people, mostly men. There’s her father, the Scottish folk singer Donovan, whose early abandonment of Skye, her mother and brother, connects her experiences from “Girlhood,” as the first section of the book is called, to “Womanhood,” the second.Ione Skye with John Cusack in the 1989 movie “Say Anything.”20th Century FoxThere’s her relationship with the Red Hot Chili Peppers frontman Anthony Kiedis, which started when she was 16. There’s her marriage to Adam Horovitz, better known as Ad-Rock from the Beastie Boys, which ended in divorce after Skye (“I was a serial cheater,” she writes) rediscovered her bisexuality and embarked on a series of affairs with women, including Jenny Shimizu, Ingrid Casares and Alice Temple. She’s now a mother of two and has been married to Ben Lee, a musician, since 2008. They live in Los Angeles but just spent the last year in Sydney.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Television

      How Michelle Trachtenberg Made Mean Girl Georgina Sparks Sparkle on ‘Gossip Girl’

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      The actress embodied an arch flair that made the fabulous antagonist Georgina Sparks a fan favorite.Georgina Sparks was not Gossip Girl, but she might as well have been.The character, a socialite who trafficked in wild manipulation, convoluted scheming and plenty of narcotics, was a main antagonist of the 2000s teen drama series that aired on the CW network, an inveterate plotter in a statement necklace. (“Gossip Girl” is available to stream on Max, Netflix and Tubi.) A former queen bee turned problem child who refused to be banished to boarding school in Switzerland, she had the Upper East Side wrapped around her manicured finger.Georgina was played by the actress Michelle Trachtenberg, who was found dead at 39 in her Manhattan apartment on Wednesday. Her performance as the teenage supervillain brought an arch flair to a character who was only a minor figure in the novels that were the basis for the show, but became a fan favorite onscreen.As an actress, Trachtenberg was not a queen of mean — or at least not only that. She started performing as a child, and audiences watched her grow into the different modes of young womanhood throughout the ’90s and 2000s.In her title role in the 1996 children’s movie “Harriet the Spy,” she was clever, opinionated and driven in a way girls didn’t often get to be onscreen. In “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” the influential horror-dramedy, she was introduced mid-series as Buffy’s bubbly yet stubborn younger sister, Dawn, balancing supernatural forces with heartfelt teenage emotion.In the 2005 sports comedy-drama “Ice Princess,” she played a geeky teenager who dreamed of becoming a professional figure skater. I remember watching “Ice Princess” on the Disney Channel as a child, drawn in by Trachtenberg’s likability: She was beautiful, brainy and talented, unapologetic about her skills but never arrogant.On “Gossip Girl,” Trachtenberg made Georgina Sparks a charismatic scene-stealer.The CW, via MaxWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More