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      Estelle Harris, George’s Mother on ‘Seinfeld,’ Dies at 93

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      Employing a high-powered screech, she took maternal exasperation and paranoia to comedic heights as one of the show’s most frequently recurring characters.Estelle Harris, who hyperventilated her way into the hearts of millions of “Seinfeld” fans as George’s mother, Estelle Costanza, died on Saturday in Palm Desert, Calif. She was 93.Her son Glen Harris announced the death in a statement sent by Ms. Harris’s agent.In 27 episodes — starting in 1992 during the fourth season of “Seinfeld,” around the time that the show became a pop culture sensation, and continuing until its final episode in 1998 — Ms. Harris embarrassed and harangued her son, one of the show’s four main characters, George Costanza (Jason Alexander), and his father, Frank (Jerry Stiller).During her character’s meltdowns, often in response to slights and offenses to propriety, Ms. Harris deployed a screech that had the urgency of a hyena in its death throes. When she whined about “waiting for hours,” that final word had three, maybe four moan-like syllables. The combination of stiffness and violence in her gesticulations expressed a forbidding level of psychological tension.Ms. Harris knew how to make outrage into a joke.“You don’t play comedy,” she told The Chicago Tribune in 1995. “It’s like that Jewish expression ‘crying laughter.’ All through the centuries the Jews had such terrible things happen to them that they had to laugh a little harder.”Her “Seinfeld” debut was one of the series’ most famous episodes: “The Contest.” After George’s mother catches him having a private moment with one of her issues of Glamour magazine, she falls in shock, throws out her back and enters a hospital.“I go out for a quart of milk; I come home and find my son treating his body like it was an amusement park,” Ms. Harris said. “Too bad you can’t do that for a living” — and now, with her voice rising, she used her working-class New Yorker’s accent to milk the script’s sarcasm: “You could sell out Madison Square GAAARDEN. Thousands of people could watch you. You could be a BIIIG STARRR.”That set the template for her subsequent appearances, including on other beloved episodes like “The Fusilli Jerry” (1995) and “The Rye” (1996). She began her scenes in a sane register of a volatile emotion — recrimination, self-pity, bafflement — and by the end of the sequence arrived at an outburst so intense it could only be farcical.Ms. Harris’s success in the role led to other opportunities to play the shrill and unhinged, including in the “Toy Story” movie franchise, for which she provided the voice of Mrs. Potato Head.At the height of the popularity of “Seinfeld,” Ms. Harris found herself with the kind of celebrity that drew looks on the street. Something in the emotionality with which she portrayed Estelle Costanza had prompted fond recognition in a national audience.“Black people, Asians, WASPs, Italians, Jews — they all say, ‘Oh, you’re just like my mom,’” she told The Tribune.Estelle Nussbaum was born on April 22, 1928, in the Hell’s Kitchen section of Manhattan, where her Polish-Jewish parents owned a candy store. She grew up largely in Tarentum, Pa., a coal-mining town where her parents moved to help relatives run a general store and to provide Estelle a gentler setting for her childhood.Though she faced antisemitic taunts in her small town, Estelle found an outlet in stage performances. Her father, who she said “spoke the King’s English,” insisted that she take elocution lessons from a young age.Ms. Harris in 2010 at the premiere of “Toy Story 3” in Hollywood. She provided the voice of Mrs. Potato Head in the movie.Kevin Winter/Getty ImagesShe moved back to New York in her late teens and later married Sy Harris, a salesman of window treatments. They had three children, and for a while, Ms. Harris was a homemaker.She wound her way through dinner theaters and television commercials, including a 1983 spot for Handi-Wrap: “It don’t mean a thing, if it ain’t got that cling: doo-wrap, doo-wrap, doo-wrap,” she sang with schmaltzy enthusiasm.After her big break on “Seinfeld,” Ms. Harris’s other major credits included the movies “Out to Sea” (1997), starring Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau, and “My Giant” (1998), with Billy Crystal.Mr. Harris died last year. In addition to her son Glen, Ms. Harris is survived by another son, Eric; a daughter, Taryn; three grandsons; and a great-grandson.In her Tribune profile, Ms. Harris said she had complained to Larry David, the co-creator of “Seinfeld,” about her character’s constant yelling, but experience proved him right: “The more I yell, the more they laugh,” she said.Ms. Harris admitted that her personal life prepared her for the part.“I yell at my husband, but he doesn’t mind,” she said. “He’s grateful for the attention.”Tiffany May More

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      Paul Herman, Mainstay of Gangster Movies, Is Dead at 76

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      Over a four-decade career, he was perhaps best known for his role on “The Sopranos.” But he also had dozens of film credits, including “Goodfellas” and “The Irishman.”Paul Herman, who put in appearances as wiseguys and schlemiels in movies like Martin Scorsese’s “Goodfellas” and “Casino” and three seasons of “The Sopranos,” died on Tuesday, his 76th birthday.His manager, T Keaton-Woods, confirmed the death in a statement but did not specify the cause or say where Mr. Herman died.Over a four-decade career, Mr. Herman was perhaps best known for his role on “The Sopranos” as Peter Gaeta, known as Beansie, the owner of pizza parlors who gets in trouble with a mobster — his travails include being hit on the head with a pot of hot coffee — but who manages to re-establish himself.Mr. Herman also appeared for five seasons on another beloved HBO series, “Entourage,” as an accountant who pleads unsuccessfully with his celebrity client to be less of a wastrel.He frequently played unnamed characters in the roughly half-dozen films by Mr. Scorsese in which he appeared, but in the director’s most recent feature, “The Irishman,” he had a more notable part: Whispers DiTullio, who, like Beansie, is a businessman involved with the Mafia who angers the wrong people and comes to grief.Mr. Herman at an awards show in Santa Monica, Calif., in 2014.John Shearer/Invision, via Associated PressMr. Herman’s dozens of other film credits include such crime-themed movies as “The Cotton Club” (1984), “Once Upon a Time in America” (1984), “Heat” (1995) and “American Hustle” (2013), a screwball comedy about political corruption for which he and other members of the cast shared a Screen Actors Guild Award.“The only one who ever gave me the chance to play a saint is Marty,” Mr. Herman told The New York Times in 1989, referring to his role as Philip the Apostle in Mr. Scorsese’s 1988 film, “The Last Temptation of Christ.”Paul Herman was born on March 29, 1946, in Brooklyn. His movie career got going with “Dear Mr. Wonderful,” a 1982 West German film about working-class life in Newark and New York City that featured Joe Pesci in his first starring role.From there, Mr. Herman made a specialty of using his haggard but trusting mug to play bit characters like a burglar (in Woody Allen’s “Radio Days”), a headwaiter (in another Allen film, “Bullets Over Broadway”) and a bartender (in Sondra Locke’s “Trading Favors”), along with a motley assortment of gangsters.Information on survivors was not immediately available. Mr. Herman had homes in New York and Santa Monica, Calif.Offscreen, he was known for being friendly and well connected. “If you visited NYC from LA, he was the entertainment director,” the actor Tony Danza said on Twitter after his death.The music executive Tommy Mottola posted an undated black-and-white photo on Instagram of Mr. Herman sitting at a restaurant between young versions of Robert De Niro and the actress and the director Penny Marshall, who died in 2018. Mr. Mottola said Mr. Herman had been on a “first name basis with every superstar actor and musician in the world.”Mr. Herman was a part owner of the now closed but once buzzy Upper West Side restaurant Columbus, where one evening in 1989, sitting beside Al Pacino, he told The Times that he served as the nightly “social director.” The restaurant’s patrons included Mr. Scorsese, Mr. Allen and Francis Ford Coppola — all friends who had cast him in their movies over the years.Those three men had very different directing styles, Mr. Herman told The Times in 1989.With Mr. Scorsese and Mr. Coppola, “you can give them your ideas on a scene,” he said. “But with Woody, well, you just don’t do that with him because he has ideas he’s working out. You really can’t say one style is better than another, though.” More

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      Bruce Willis Has Aphasia and Is ‘Stepping Away’ From His Career

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      The news of his diagnosis, initially announced by his ex-wife, Demi Moore, prompted an outpouring of support and appreciation for Willis from fans, stars and other notable figures.Bruce Willis, the prolific action-movie star, has been diagnosed with aphasia — a disorder that affects the brain’s language center and a person’s ability to understand or express speech — and will step away from acting, his ex-wife, Demi Moore, announced in an Instagram post on Wednesday.“To Bruce’s amazing supporters, as a family we wanted to share that our beloved Bruce has been experiencing some health issues and has recently been diagnosed with aphasia, which is impacting his cognitive abilities,” Moore’s post reads. “As a result of this and with much consideration Bruce is stepping away from the career that has meant so much to him.”“We are moving through this as a strong family unit, and wanted to bring his fans in because we know how much he means to you, as you do to him,” it continued. “As Bruce always says, ‘Live it up,’ and together we plan to do just that.”The post is signed “Emma, Demi, Rumer, Scout, Tallulah, Mabel & Evelyn” — referring to Emma Heming Willis, Willis’s wife, and his children. Moore is the mother of Rumer, Scout and Tallulah, and Heming Willis is mother to Mabel and Evelyn.The post was accompanied by a comical photo of a younger, smirking Willis wearing a bathrobe, sunglasses, a gold chain with a cross, and a towel around his head.His wife, and Rumer, Scout and Tallulah all posted the same message and image on their Instagram pages.Representatives for Willis did not respond to a request for comment.Willis, who turned 67 this month, is most famous for his role as the rough-around-the-edges, yet clever, New York City cop John McClane in the highly successful “Die Hard” movie series, made up of five films from 1988 to 2013.He has also starred in critically acclaimed films like “Pulp Fiction” (1994), “The Sixth Sense” (1999) and “Moonrise Kingdom” (2012).M. Night Shyamalan, the director of “The Sixth Sense,” has said that it was Willis’s admirably level performance in “Die Hard” that showed him that Willis could pull off the subdued child psychiatrist Malcolm Crowe in his horror-thriller, which would go on to be nominated for six Oscars, including best picture. And when Shyamalan wrote the screenplay for 2000’s “Unbreakable,” he said he did so with Willis in mind.In her New York Times review of “Pulp Fiction,” Janet Maslin said that Willis and his co-stars John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson “may all sound like known quantities, but none of them have ever had quite the opportunities this material offers.” Willis “displays a tough, agile energy when placed in the most mind-boggling situation,” she wrote.In 1997, during the last days of filming the action-thriller “Mercury Rising,” Willis told The New York Times that he was, in a way, surprised to have found success on the big screen. “When I was coming up, there were guys like Robert Redford and Paul Newman and Warren Beatty — those were movie stars,” he said. “It all got handed to me pretty quickly.” Just days later, he would begin working on the highest-grossing film of 1998, “Armageddon,” from the director Michael Bay.In 2013, when asked by GQ magazine to complete the sentence: “If I live long enough, I —,” Willis said: “should approach a bigger task than I approach now.”When asked if he has a motto, he said: “‘Live and let live’ is the closest I have. It works for pretty much everything. It has comic aspects to it and it has the real-deal aspects to it.”On Wednesday, there was an outpouring of appreciation for Willis and support for his family on social media from fans, stars and other notable figures.In response to Rumer Willis’s Instagram post, Sarah Paulson, who worked with Bruce Willis in “Glass,” Shyamalan’s 2019 sci-fi thriller, said: “He was such an incredible acting partner to me, and is the loveliest, most gentle & hilarious man. He reigns supreme in my book.” (In her Times review of “Glass,” Manohla Dargis wrote, “[Samuel L.] Jackson and especially Willis remind you again of how fine they can be when asked for more than booming shtick and smirk.”)In response to Moore’s Instagram post, Jamie Lee Curtis wrote: “Grace and guts! Love to you all!”; and Rita Wilson wrote: “My heart goes out to Bruce, and all of the family. So thankful you shared this with us. Keeping you all in our prayers.”On Twitter, Gabrielle Giffords, a gun control advocate and former congresswoman, wrote: “I’m thinking of Bruce Willis and his family today. Aphasia makes it hard for me to find the right words. It can be lonely and isolating.”The actor Seth Green tweeted, “I have so much love for Bruce Willis, and am grateful for every character he’s given us.”And the actor-director Kevin Smith wrote, “Long before any of the ‘Cop Out’ stuff, I was a big Bruce Willis fan — so this is really heartbreaking to read,” referring to his 2010 movie that Willis starred in. “He loved to act and sing and the loss of that has to be devastating for him,” Smith said. He said he felt badly about his “petty complaints from 2010.” In 2011, on the Marc Maron podcast, Smith had complained openly about working with Willis, saying that working with the action star was “soul crushing.”Thought of primarily as a movie star, Willis has received more accolades for his work on television: For his role as the private detective David Addison (played opposite Cybill Shepherd) in “Moonlighting” — an ABC comedy-drama-romance that ran from 1985 to 1989 — he earned three Golden Globe nominations, winning one, and two lead actor Emmy nominations, winning one.In a 1985 Times review of “Moonlighting,” John J. O’Connor wrote of Willis: “In repose, the actor is not your average leading-man type. He could easily be mistaken for the quiet guy down the street.”Confronted with Shepherd’s “flamboyantly insinuating” character, though, Willis “becomes almost debonair,” O’Connor wrote. “He appears to be constantly bemused, complete with twinkling eyes.”In 2000, Willis also won a guest actor in a comedy Emmy for his role as Paul Stevens, the father of Ross Geller’s much-younger girlfriend, on the NBC series “Friends.”Since 2015, his filmography has mostly been an onslaught of B-movie action productions, including “Breach,” in 2020, and “Fortress,” in 2021. According to his IMDb page, Willis currently has nearly 10 movies in postproduction. More

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      In Joan Collins Documentary, She Just Gets on With It

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      The actress (don’t call her an actor, please) reflects on her seven-decade career, predatory Hollywood and why sometimes it’s better not to relive the past.LOS ANGELES — “I’m not a bad girl,” said Joan Collins, draped across a white sofa. “I was a very innocent girl. But I had dark hair and green eyes and I suppose they said that I smoldered.”This was on a recent, sun-strafed California afternoon in her apartment, part of a luxury building on the edge of Beverly Hills. Collins, an actress whose career has ranged from the sublime (“Land of the Pharaohs”) to the ridiculous (“Empire of the Ants”) to the sublimely ridiculous (“Dynasty”), wore white slacks, an aquamarine blouse and white espadrilles. A pink diamond the size of a strawberry weighted one finger; her hair had been teased toward the heavens. How many synthetic zebras had died for those nearby pillows? That pouf? So many.As for the smoldering, well, it was 85 degrees out. Wouldn’t anyone?Collins, 88, had invited me over — plying me with coffee, water, an assortment of deluxe cookies — to talk about “This Is Joan Collins,” a documentary that ran on the BBC on New Year’s Day and arrives Tuesday on BritBox.What did it mean to look back on her life for the project? “I’m not very analytical,” she said languorously. “I just do a thing. I just get on with it.”For the film, Collins gave the producers access to her archives and home movies. She otherwise discounts her contribution. “I said, ‘Just don’t put in too many of the nude bits,’” she said. But she narrates the film, with much of what she says adapted from her memoirs. “Here I am,” she purrs in the opening moments, “after seven decades in the business, to tell you a thing or two about how to survive the perils of the profession and what it really feels like to get what you want.”Collins was born in 1933, the eldest child of a dance teacher and a talent agent. As a child, she lived through the Blitz in London — the bombings, evacuations, dislocations — which has made her impatient with what she perceives as whining.“I have to say, every time I read about an actor today, they’ve all been abused or had terrible childhoods,” she said. “I had a great childhood, other than the war.”At 17, she signed with a British film studio. She doesn’t believe she was glamorous. Not then. But the press disagreed and she recalled some of the nicknames she was given: Britain’s bad girl, coffee bar vixen, the torrid baggage. She was typecast accordingly.At first, it bothered her, she said, “then I shrugged and just got on with it.”“I was a very innocent girl,” Collins said. “But I had dark hair and green eyes and I suppose they said that I smoldered.”Ryan Pfluger for The New York TimesAt 21, Fox made her a contract player and she came to California. She had already separated from her first husband, Maxwell Reed, an actor who had raped her on their first date. As she wrote in her first memoir, “Past Imperfect: An Autobiography,” and reiterates in the documentary, most of the men she encountered in the business were predatory.She remembered being chased around a house in Palm Springs, a pass made in a car. Then she stopped remembering. “It’s all nasty memories that I don’t wish to relive,” she said. “It happened. It happened to girls all the time.”How did she survive it? She shrugged and got on with it. “A lot of the time, I would just laugh in their faces,” she said.In these early years, she developed a reputation for promiscuity, which wasn’t entirely deserved, even as it became part of her fame. (A 2015 auction of her belongings included not only love letters, but also her headboard.) “I did have a lot of boyfriends, but sequentially,” she said. “And I would sleep with some of them. Not at the same time. I think that I was ahead of my time, because women didn’t do that.”At 30, she married the actor and songwriter Anthony Newley and had two children. When her relationship with Newley ended, she married the music executive Ron Kass and had a daughter. Later, there was a fourth marriage, to the Swedish singer Peter Holm. (“The only one I didn’t understand was the Swede,” she said. “That was such a total mistake.”) She now lives with her fifth husband, the theatrical producer Percy Gibson. He was the one who brought the water and took away the cookies.She left the business after she married Newley and she struggled to return to it. The documentary includes clips of a particular low point, the real estate investors vs. mutant insects B movie “The Empire of the Ants” (1977). How did she handle schlocky material? “You do the best you can,” she said. “You learn your lines, you hit your marks and you get on with it.”Only rarely could she escape typecasting, but she shrugged that off, too, recounting a conversation she had with the actor John Gielgud, in which he told her that because she could never escape her physicality, she could never play an ugly woman. “That was true for a certain amount of years,” she said.She believes that good looks can be a deterrent when it comes to quality roles: “Which the young actresses of today realize, which is why most of them try to look as ordinary as possible.”In the late 1970s, she made a comeback with two soft-core films — “The Stud” and “The Bitch” — adapted from novels by her sister Jackie Collins. This exposure led to her most famous role, Alexis in Aaron Spelling’s nighttime soap “Dynasty.”Despite well-publicized on-set struggles, and the producers’ petty reaction to her demands for equal pay, she remains proud of “Dynasty.” Much of the memorabilia hung throughout her apartment dates from that era. “It was glamorous,” she said. “It was about very, very rich people, most of them good looking.” She compared it to the current hit “Succession,” though she remarked that on “Succession” they wear shabbier clothes.“Dynasty” ended more than three decades ago. Collins hasn’t had a great role since. She thinks she knows why. “Casting directors say, ‘Oh, no, we can’t use Joan Collins in this vixen, bitch part, because it’s too obvious.’ And ‘Oh, no, we can’t have her in this other role. She can only do vixen bitches.’”Collins has struggled to escape typecasting in her career, but shrugged it off. Ryan Pfluger for The New York TimesStill, she has gone on, describing her glamorous life in columns for the British weekly magazine The Spectator, where Boris Johnson was once her boss. “Jolly, very funny, great buffoon,” was how she described him, acknowledging that buffoon was perhaps the wrong word.“He never cut a word of my diaries,” she added.Collins hasn’t changed much. (Even her look has altered very little, though she claims to have tried Botox only once: “I screamed and left the surgery.”) And she’s not sure if the entertainment industry has either. “I’m not having men making passes at me, so I don’t know,” she said. “But I think probably.” Still, in the wake of the #MeToo movement, she seemed worried mostly about the men.“Sadly, I think that now young men are suffering from being labeled toxically masculine,” she said, “because of this rise of anti-maleness.”And yet, she identifies as a feminist. “I believe that women are equal to men in every single way,” she said. “Except physical strength. People say you didn’t burn your bra, you wear lipstick. So what? I’m very proud of being a woman.” She added that she hates being called an actor, preferring actress.“What’s wrong with actress?” she said. “What’s wrong with mother? What’s wrong with woman? Girl? I don’t like having that word taken away.” (Had anyone tried?)This was about an hour into the conversation, just before I was ushered out of the apartment just as warmly as I had been welcomed in — a photographer had arrived, Collins had smoldering to do. But first I had to ask her about that opening line of the documentary: What does it really feel like to get what you want?She wakes up every morning and thanks “God or whoever it is,” she said. “I mean, I’m very lucky.”Then she added, with something that may have been a wink, “But you make your own luck sometimes, right?” More

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      Will Smith’s Full Oscars Speech for Best Actor 

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      Will Smith, who started his acting career in 1990 in an after-school special on ABC and became one of Hollywood’s most bankable and prolific action stars and producers, finally achieved the one thing that had always eluded him: He won an Oscar.Moments earlier, Smith had brought the ceremony to an awkward standstill by striding onstage from his seat and — in what at first seemed like a preplanned bit — hitting Chris Rock, who had just cracked a joke about Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith. (“Jada, I love you. G.I. Jane 2, can’t wait,” Rock had said, an apparent reference to her short-cropped hair.)Smith then returned to his seat and angrily shouted twice at Rock to not utter his wife’s name, using an expletive that was bleeped by ABC. A rattled Rock tried to regain his composure, and a stunned audience, both in the theater and at home, tried to figure out what happened. “Right now, we’re moving on with love,” Sean Combs said, arriving onstage soon afterward to introduce a celebratory montage from “The Godfather.”Smith was celebrated for his performance in “King Richard” as the fiery, flawed coach and father of the tennis legends Venus and Serena Williams — mirroring best actor wins at major film awards ceremonies this year, including the Critics Choice Awards and the Screen Actors Guild Awards.“Richard Williams was a fierce defender of his family,” an emotional Smith said in his acceptance speech. “In this time in my life, in this moment, I am overwhelmed by what God is calling on me to do and be in this world.”He went on to apologize to the academy and to his fellow nominees, but not to Rock. “This is a beautiful moment,” Smith said. “And I’m not crying for winning an award. It’s not about winning an award for me, it’s about being able to shine a light on all of the people.”Smith was previously nominated for best actor in 2007 for “The Pursuit of Happyness” and in 2002 for “Ali.” Rather incredibly, given the lack of diversity in the movie business, he lost to a Black actor in both instances: first to Denzel Washington and then to Forest Whitaker.In 2016, however, Smith became part of the #OscarsSoWhite movement. After nominating only white actors and actresses for its awards in 2015, drawing widespread criticism, the academy did it again the next year — overlooking performances like the one Smith gave in “Concussion.” Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, was outspoken about what many people saw as an urgent need for the academy to become more inclusive. Smith was less pointed in his criticism, but joined her in a boycott of the ceremony. In the years since, the academy has dramatically expanded its voting membership.Also nominated for best actor on Sunday were Washington (“The Tragedy of Macbeth”), Javier Bardem (“Being the Ricardos”), Benedict Cumberbatch (“The Power of the Dog”) and a hard-campaigning Andrew Garfield (“Tick, Tick … Boom!”).Here is Smith’s entire acceptance speech:Oh, man. Richard Williams was a fierce defender of his family. In this time in my life, in this moment, I am overwhelmed by what God is calling on me to do and be in this world. Making this film, I got to protect Aunjanue Ellis, who is one of the most strongest, most delicate people I’ve ever met. I got to protect Saniyya [Sidney] and Demi [Singleton], the two actresses that played Venus and Serena.I’m being called on in my life to love people and to protect people and to be a river to my people. I know to do what we do, you got to be able to take abuse, you got to be able to have people talk crazy about you. In this business you got to be able to have people disrespecting you, and you got to smile and pretend like that’s OK. But Richard Williams, and what I loved — thank you, D. — Denzel [Washington] said to me a few minutes ago, he said, “At your highest moment, be careful. That’s when the devil comes for you.”It’s like, I want to be a vessel for love. I want to say thank you to Venus and Serena — I just spit, I hope they didn’t see that on TV — I want to say thank you to Venus and Serena and the entire Williams family for entrusting me with your story. That’s what I want to do. I want to be an ambassador for that kind of love and care and concern.I want to apologize to the Academy. I want to apologize to all my fellow nominees. This is a beautiful moment, and I’m not crying for winning an award. It’s not about winning an award for me. It’s about being able to shine light on all of the people: Tim [White] and Trevor [White] and Zach [Baylin] and Saniyya and Demi and Aunjanue and the entire cast and crew of “King Richard” and Venus and Serena, the entire Williams family. Art imitates life. I look like the crazy father, just like they said. I look like the crazy father, just like they said about Richard Williams. But love will make you do crazy things.To my mother, a lot of this moment is really complicated for me, but to my mother — she didn’t want to come out; she has her knitting friends, she has a knitting crew that she’s in Philly watching with. Being able to love and care for my mother and my family and my wife. I’m taking up too much time. Thank you for this honor. Thank you for this moment. And thank you on behalf of Richard and Oracene [Price] and the entire Williams family. Thank you. I hope the Academy invites me back. Thank you.Nancy Coleman More

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      Ariana DeBose Becomes the Second Latina to Win an Acting Oscar

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      Ariana DeBose won the Oscar for best supporting actress for her role as Anita in Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of “West Side Story.” It is her first Academy Award. The outcome was expected but historic nonetheless as the 31-year-old actress becomes only the second Latina to nab an Oscar. The first one was Rita Moreno, who won in 1962 for the same role in the original film version. DeBose is also the first openly queer star to win an acting Oscar.DeBose beat out Jessie Buckley (“The Lost Daughter”), Judi Dench (“Belfast”), Kirsten Dunst (“The Power of the Dog”) and Aunjanue Ellis (“King Richard”). In accepting the award, DeBose made reference to being a queer woman of color and said:Imagine this little girl in the back seat of a white Ford Focus. Look into her eyes. You see a queer — openly queer — woman of color, an Afro-Latina, who found her strength in life through art, and that’s what I believe we are here to celebrate. So to anybody who has ever questioned your identity — ever, ever, ever, — or you find yourself living in the gray spaces, I promise you this: There is indeed a place for us.DeBose also nabbed statues at the Screen Actors Guild Awards and the British Academy Film Awards for her magnetic performance as an America-loving seamstress who adores both Bernardo and his younger sister, Maria. The actress-singer-dancer has also been nominated for a Tony for her role as Donna Summer in the short-lived musical “Summer: The Donna Summer Musical.”DeBose will next be seen in Matthew Vaughn’s spy movie, “Argylle,” for Apple TV+. More

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      Samuel L. Jackson, Danny Glover, Liv Ullmann and Elaine May Get Honorary Oscars

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      Denzel Washington and Bill Murray were on hand to present the awards during the off-camera ceremony.On Friday night in Hollywood, a Marvel superhero accepted an honorary Oscar from one of the biggest movie stars in the world.Too bad it wasn’t televised.The scene was the Governors Awards, an intimate ceremony at the Loews Hollywood Hotel where Samuel L. Jackson was given that Academy Award by an absolutely delighted Denzel Washington, who threw his arms around Jackson as they rocked back and forth, laughing. The 73-year-old honoree reminisced about a career that has included an Oscar-nominated “Pulp Fiction” performance as well as multiple appearances as the superspy Nick Fury in Marvel movies.“I got out there to entertain audiences the way Hollywood entertained me: Make them forget their lives for a few hours and be thrilled, awed or excited in the big room where make-believe lives,” Jackson said.He eyed his new piece of golden hardware. “When I got this call last year, it was unexpected,” Jackson said. “But I guarantee you, this thing is going to be cherished.”Though the honorary Oscars were once a staple of the live telecast, they were stripped from the show in 2009 because of still-continuing concerns over the its length. That led the academy to create the Governors Awards, an untelevised ceremony devoted solely to the honorary Oscars that also became one of the schmooziest nights of the season, a party where dozens of would-be contenders vied for face time with voters.Explore the 2022 Academy AwardsThe 94th Academy Awards will be held on March 27 in Los Angeles.Oscars Preview: Looking to catch up quickly on all the basics ahead of the event? This guide can help. The Hosts: Regina Hall and Wanda Sykes plan to keep the show moving and make it funny, though they will acknowledge the war in Ukraine.A Win for Streaming: A streaming service film could win the Oscar for best picture for the first time. A few years ago, it would have been hard to imagine.‘Seen That Before?’: Four of the best picture nominees this year are remakes or reboots of earlier films.Best Actress Race: Who will win? There are cases to be made for and against each contender, and no one has an obvious advantage.That element of the show was dramatically curtailed this year, when the Governors Awards were delayed from their original Jan. 15 berth because of Covid fears. By the time Jackson and writer-director Elaine May, actress-director Liv Ulmann, and actor Danny Glover gathered last night to receive their honorary awards, voting for this year’s Oscars had already been closed for days, and many of the nominees instead opted for Friday-night parties thrown by their agencies and studios.But while the ceremony was smaller, the speeches were allowed to go on at great length, as there was no frantic network executive demanding they be trimmed. Glover acknowledged as much after he spent several minutes speaking off the cuff about the political activism that led him to receive the academy’s Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. He also made room to lavish praise on Ulmann as well as his presenter, Alfre Woodard.“I haven’t referred to the teleprompter at all,” Glover said with an apologetic smile. “Sometimes we actors get a little lost without a script.”The Norwegian actress Ulmann told several stories about the winding path that led her to become a key collaborator with the director Ingmar Bergman. For a long time, Ulmann said, she was made to feel bashful about her calling.“In Norway, you have to live by a certain rule: Don’t brag,” she said, before slyly adding: “That’s why I brought 20 people tonight. They can tell Norway, ‘It is true, she got an Oscar.’”Our Reviews of the 10 Best-Picture Oscar NomineesCard 1 of 10“Belfast.” More

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      Rachel Zegler, ‘West Side Story’ Star, Is Invited to the Oscars After All

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      On Sunday she revealed on Instagram that she had not been invited to the ceremony, prompting an outcry. She has since been added as a presenter.It looks as if Rachel Zegler, who plays Maria in Steven Spielberg’s “West Side Story,” is going to the Oscars.She has been invited to be a presenter at the Oscars, and Disney is working to rearrange the production schedule on her current project, a live-action version of “Snow White,” to make it happen, according to two people briefed on the matter. They spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid a conflict with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which hosts the Oscars.How the arrangement came together provides a glimpse into how the Hollywood gears can sometimes grind.It started on Sunday, when Zegler, 20, posted a photo of herself in a blue gown on Instagram. A follower commented, “Can’t wait to see what you’ll be wearing on Oscar night.”Zegler replied that she had not received an invitation to the ceremony, during which “West Side Story” is up for seven awards. The ceremony will be broadcast this Sunday on ABC from Los Angeles. ABC is owned by Disney, which released the film last year.“I’m not invited,” she wrote, “so sweatpants and my boyfriend’s flannel.”She added that she would support the film from her couch. “I hope some last minute miracle occurs and I can celebrate our film in person,” she wrote, “but hey, that’s how it goes sometimes, I guess.”The challenge involves much more than invitations. Zegler is filming “Snow White” in London, and getting her to the Oscars and back will require Disney to rework schedules for hundreds of cast and crew members. The film, already on a tight schedule because of delays related to the coronavirus pandemic, is a $200 million production.A spokeswoman for the academy, which confirmed Zegler’s addition to the presenter lineup in a statement later on Wednesday, declined to comment. A representative for Zegler did not respond to a request for comment.Word that Zegler had not been invited to the ceremony drew a swift backlash from her followers and others on social media, including Russ Tamblyn, who played Riff, the leader of the Jets street gang, in the original “West Side Story” in 1961. They wondered why a lead actress in a film that had received a best picture nomination would not be invited to the ceremony.The film’s Oscar nominations include best picture, best director for Spielberg and best supporting actress for Ariana DeBose. Zegler, who is not nominated for an Oscar, won a Golden Globe for her role.Vimal Patel More