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      Michael Gandolfini and the Riddle of Tony Soprano

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      In “The Many Saints of Newark,” James Gandolfini’s son takes on his father’s iconic role. But knowing his dad hardly prepared him for the work ahead.When Michael Gandolfini was filming his role in “The Many Saints of Newark,” a period crime drama that casts him as a precocious teenage troublemaker named Tony Soprano, he was having trouble sleeping and would stay up late at night, working on his scenes for the next day.Sometimes he would reflect on the motivations of his character, whose loyalty is torn between two paternal figures: his frequently absent father, a New Jersey gangster named Johnny Boy; and the film’s protagonist, a charismatic mobster named Dickie Moltisanti.In his efforts to get inside his character, Gandolfini would try to identify with Tony’s desire to please both men. He would find himself drawn back to Johnny Boy and repeat the wish to himself like a mantra.As Gandolfini recalled recently, “I was always like, ‘I want to make my dad proud. I want to make my dad proud.’”It didn’t take a psychiatrist to decipher what it all meant. “Of course that was something inside of me,” he said.Gandolfini is the son of the actor James Gandolfini, who played the menacing but undeniably engrossing Mafia boss Tony Soprano for six seasons on the revered HBO series “The Sopranos,” and who died suddenly of a heart attack at age 51 in 2013.The 22-year-old Michael has naturally inherited many of his famous father’s features. They share the same immersive eyes and smirking smiles; like his dad, Michael is soft-spoken with a salty vocabulary and admits to an occasionally argumentative temper.And when Michael — who was born four months after “The Sopranos” made its debut in 1999 and had barely watched the show before preparing for “The Many Saints of Newark” — thinks of his father, he does not conjure up Tony Soprano, the larger-than-life character. He remembers James Gandolfini, the man.He treasures good times they shared, grumbles about life lessons his father imposed, admires him as an actor and misses him the way any child would yearn for a parent taken too soon. “I truly wasn’t aware of the legacy of him,” Michael said. “My dad was just my dad.”Now as he pursues his own prospering acting career, Michael Gandolfini is consciously and irrevocably tying himself to his father with “The Many Saints of Newark”; in his most prominent film part to date, he is playing James Gandolfini’s quintessential role — one of the most talked-about and influential characters in TV history — at a younger, more innocent age.Gandolfini as a young Tony Soprano opposite Jon Bernthal as his father in “The Many Saints of Newark.”Barry Wetcher/Warner Bros.With that decision comes demands — to fulfill an audience’s expectations and to meet his father’s benchmark — that Michael anticipated. But there’s an added responsibility he didn’t consider until he started making the film.“The pressure is real,” he said. “There’s fear. But the second layer, that a lot of people don’t think about, which was actually harder, is to play Tony Soprano.” When he stepped inside the role, Gandolfini said, “not only was it the feeling of my dad — it was like, Tony Soprano is a [expletive] hard character.”On a bright morning in September, Gandolfini, wearing a stubbly beard and a denim shirt, was walking through the Tribeca neighborhood where he’d lived as a boy: past the cobblestone alley where he’d learned to ride a bike and storefronts he visited after being given his first rudimentary cellphone, programmed with his parents’ numbers, at the age of 8 or 9.Though his father and mother, Marcy, divorced when Michael was 3, James remained a continuous presence in his life. Sometimes young Michael would tag along to neighborhood bars where his father hung out with friends. But more often Michael was doing chores his dad assigned him: “Mowing lawns, cleaning my room and getting $5 for it, going to shelters to feed the homeless and I would be grumpy about it,” Michael said.Despite the fame that his father enjoyed from “The Sopranos,” Michael said he showed little interest in the series: “I remember asking my dad, maybe at 13, what the hell is this? Why do I hear about this all the time? What is this about? He’s like, ‘It’s about this mobster who goes to therapy and I don’t know, that’s about it.’”After Michael attended middle school and high school in Los Angeles, he returned here to study acting at New York University. The craft, he said, called out to him not because it had been his father’s but because he wanted to see if he could do it himself.“I was craving an answer,” he said. “How do you do that — transform like that? Am I good? Am I not good? Am I going to get up and be embarrassed? That fear is an indicator that there was something that I wanted.”At a preproduction dinner, the “Many Saints” director recalls, Gandolfini thanked everyone “for giving me a chance to say hello to my dad again and goodbye again.” Devin Oktar Yalkin for The New York TimesBut in his first semester at Tisch School of the Arts, Gandolfini said, “I did feel a target on my back.” He was insecure and lonely, unable to find a community with other students and eager to mix it up with his teachers. (“I’m a bit of an arguer,” he said with a grin. “I find it fun.”)Instead, Gandolfini transferred to N.Y.U.’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study and, within a few weeks, had booked a role on the HBO series “The Deuce.” “It was a cosmic sign of a good move,” he said.Elsewhere in the WarnerMedia empire, plans for a “Sopranos” film were starting to come together. David Chase, the creator and mastermind of the original HBO drama, said that Warner Bros. gave him no restrictions on the scope of this film. So he and his co-screenwriter, Lawrence Konner, decided to focus on the show’s 1960s and ’70s prehistory — particularly on the character of Dickie Moltisanti (father of Michael Imperioli’s character, Christopher Moltisanti), who had been referenced on the TV series but never fleshed out.“We wanted to make a gangster film, more than anything else,” Chase said. “And we wanted to have a credible, believable, realistic member of La Cosa Nostra. And right there for the taking was Dickie Moltisanti.”The prequel story also allowed the screenwriters to show Tony Soprano in boyhood before he has committed to pursuing a life of crime.“We certainly didn’t want to depict him as the schoolyard rat or punk,” Chase said. “He was up to no good, in certain cases, even as a 9-year-old. But then, what boys aren’t, except the ones you want to beat up?”But as the filmmakers looked to cast the role of the adolescent Tony, they were unsatisfied with the actors they saw. As the start of production drew nearer, Chase and his wife, Denise, happened to be having lunch with Michael Gandolfini, whom they’d known intermittently when Michael was growing up.Father and son on a Jersey Shore family vacation in 2004.Brian Ach/Getty ImagesChase said he expected a boy to sit down with them but he looked across the table “and there was an entirely grown man.”During their casting dilemma, Chase said he remembered that lunch. “I just thought, that’s going to be the guy,” he said. “That’s the guy. It has to happen.”Gandolfini was not nearly as certain that he wanted the role. He knew it would require him to immerse himself in the life of his father, whose painful absence he is constantly reminded of.“I had spent so much time thinking about my dad, the last thing I wanted to do was think about my dad,” he said.Even so, Gandolfini agreed to an audition, if only in hopes of impressing the film’s casting director, Douglas Aibel, and landing other roles with him later on.To prepare, Gandolfini studied “The Sopranos” at length for the first time. Before, he’d only caught glimpses of the pilot, but now he watched the entire 13-episode first season, by himself, knowing it would be an emotional process. “It was hard to watch my dad alone and then having no one to lean onto,” he said.As he watched his father play the character, Gandolfini realized that his unique connection as a son had taught him nothing about being Tony Soprano. “Maybe I could know how to play my dad,” he said, “but I don’t know how to play Tony. I have to create my own Tony from my life and still play the things that made him Tony.”And he was utterly fascinated with the multifaceted Tony — “a character who will cry, become angry at himself that he’s crying and then laugh at himself all in one scene,” he said.Gandolfini was determined to assimilate the physical quirks and tics that he saw in his father’s performance: Tony’s lumbering walk and hunched posture; the way he bit his lip when he smiled and clenched his fists in his therapy sessions.After a weekslong audition process, Gandolfini came away with the role and a new appreciation for his father. “He so was not Tony,” he said. “The only insight that I think I gained was deep pride in him. I’m exhausted after three months — you did that for nine years?”Gandolfini in “The Deuce,” which he booked the first year he was also studying at New York University.Paul Schiraldi/HBOOnce Gandolfini won the “Many Saints” part, he realized, “Maybe I could know how to play my dad, but I don’t know how to play Tony.”Warner Bros.Alan Taylor, the director of “The Many Saints of Newark,” said he had some wariness about having Gandolfini try the role. “I’d never really seen him act,” Taylor said. “It was not knowing if he was up to it and not knowing if was the right thing, emotionally, to ask him to do. Because it’s such explosive territory to ask a young guy to go into.”But Taylor, who directed several episodes of “The Sopranos,” said he was won over by Gandolfini’s carefully prepared audition — and by remarks that Gandolfini made to his colleagues at a dinner just before filming started.As Taylor recalled, “He stood up and said, ‘I want to thank everybody here for giving me a chance to say hello to my dad again and goodbye again.’ From that point on, I never questioned it.”In the weeks before production, Gandolfini spent time getting to know Alessandro Nivola, who plays Dickie Moltisanti, as they went to diners, talked about life and watched “Dirty Harry” together.These exercises were necessary, Nivola said, because the film is so unsentimental in how it depicts the relationship between Dickie and Tony. “We don’t talk about how much we love each other,” he said. “So that feeling had to exist without our needing to put it in words.”Nivola said that it was easy to bond with Gandolfini over the important opportunity that the movie represented for both of them.“He being at the beginning of his career and knowing that he was going to be defined so early by this role that was originally his father’s, me because I was late in my career for a break,” Nivola said. “He was incredibly humble and told me, somewhat unnervingly, that he was relying on my expertise to guide him.”What impressed him most about Gandolfini, Nivola said, “was his ability to completely remove the sentimental, personal, genetic connection that he had to his dad and the legacy of the role and approach it forensically, the way that you would any other role that you were cast in.”With a chuckle, Nivola added, “You could say that kind of compartmentalization is the quality of a psychopath, but also people who are able to perform in these kinds of situations.”Jon Bernthal, who plays Johnny Boy, said that he and Gandolfini had spoken before filming about the burden they felt to live up to James Gandolfini’s standards — one that disproportionately falls on Michael’s shoulders.“He had talked to me about this mission he had been on, to get to know his dad better,” Bernthal said. “To try to fill the shoes of Mike’s dad, it’s an impossible task for all of us but especially for him. And Mike did that the whole time, with the rigor of his work and how much he put into it.”Despite their being from different generations, the 45-year-old Bernthal said he was surprised at how easy he found it to bond with Gandolfini as a peer and a friend.“His dad was my favorite actor and I think he’s striving enormously to be the kind of artist his dad was,” Bernthal said. “Similarly, so am I. We hold each other accountable to that. It’s remarkable that I can go to this man, who’s half my age, for advice just as much as he goes to me. He’s wise beyond his years and a committed and gifted actor.”Though Gandolfini has also worked with the directors Anthony and Joe Russo (on “Cherry”) and Ari Aster (on the upcoming “Disappointment Blvd.”), he is hardly a star and has enjoyed his low profile up to this point. But whatever reception greets “The Many Saints of Newark,” he knows his inconspicuousness won’t last long after its release.“I love my anonymity,” he said. “I get recognized from time to time and it gives me definite anxiety.” He said he still had a few remaining safeguards, though: “My beard helps.”As he steps into a world beyond Tony Soprano and the shadow of his father, Gandolfini also has a personal philosophy that is neatly distilled into a tattoo on his left arm: the word “faith” underlined above the word “fear.”Gandolfini explained, “You can live your life in fear and I mostly do,” he said, rattling off the self-criticism that runs constantly through his mind: “I’m not right for this. Don’t hire me. This is a bad idea.”He continued, “Or, because it’s all hypothetical, you can live your life with some faith that it’ll work out: ‘It’s going to be good.’ ‘I am right for this.’ ‘Someone knows what they’re doing.’”Gandolfini flashed a familiar smile and said, “If it’s not up to me, why not have a positive outlook?” More

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      Anthony Johnson, Actor Known for ‘Friday,’ Dies at 55

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      Mr. Johnson, whose other film credits include “House Party” and “Menace II Society,” died on Sept. 6, his agent said.Anthony Johnson, an actor and comedian known for small but memorable roles in “Friday,” “House Party” and about two dozen other movies, died on Sept. 6. He was 55.His death, in a hospital in Los Angeles County, Calif., was confirmed by his agent, LyNea Bell, and the county medical examiner’s office; neither specified a cause.Mr. Johnson is perhaps best known for playing Ezal, a drug addict and thief who unintentionally interrupts a heist, in the 1995 movie “Friday,” starring Ice Cube. Mr. Johnson’s other film credits, sometimes as A.J. Johnson, include “House Party” (1990), “Menace II Society” (1993) and “B.A.P.S.” (1997).Mr. Johnson was born on Feb. 1, 1966, and grew up in Compton, Calif.“If you made it out of Compton, you can make it anywhere,” he said in a 2018 interview with VladTV. “You had to be really careful and watch yourself back in them days.”In a 2013 interview for a YouTube series called “Conversations of an Actor,” Mr. Johnson said his father, Eddie Smith, was a stuntman who worked with Eddie Murphy, Arsenio Hall and other stars. His father, he said, helped him get his start in the industry by getting him involved in work behind the scenes.“He told me whenever I’m on camera to always stand out, to do something on camera to make people remember me,” Mr. Johnson said in the 2018 interview.In the 2013 interview, Mr. Johnson said he had never taken an acting class.“It’s, like, real easy to act,” he said. “You just put yourself in the situation that you’re not in but you really want to be in.”Mr. Johnson’s survivors include his wife, Lexis, and three children, as well as a brother, Edward Smith, and a sister, Sheila.As the news of Mr. Johnson’s death spread on Monday, actors and performers shared memories and brief appreciations on social media. Ice Cube described Mr. Johnson on Twitter as a “naturally funny dude.”The rapper and actor Shad Moss, who is also known by his stage name, Bow Wow, credited Mr. Johnson with helping to set his career in motion. In a video on Instagram, he said that Mr. Johnson had been serving as the M.C. on the 1993 Chronic Tour, headlined by Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg, when he picked Mr. Moss out of the crowd and invited him backstage.“If it wasn’t for A.J. Johnson’s eyes, and then picking me out of the crowd out of 20,000 people in Ohio, I don’t think there would have ever been a Bow Wow,” he said. “You will truly be missed, and you’re definitely going to go down in history as one of the greatest.”In addition to performing standup comedy and acting in movies, Mr. Johnson said in 2013 that he had also appeared in plays, and expressed a desire to return to the stage.“It’s like doing standup,” he said. “I love it. I love the theater. That’s where I’m going back.”Mr. Johnson said that Robin Harris, an actor and comedian who also appeared in “House Party,” had helped him early in his career, including by giving one of his first shots at doing standup.“I did about three minutes and got booed,” Mr. Johnson said in the 2013 interview. “He told me to go home and make up some jokes. I came back, and the rest is history.” More

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      'Mare of Easttown' Takes Supporting Actor Awards for Limited Series

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      “Mare of Easttown” was one of the buzziest limited series of the year, and it received 16 Emmy nominations, including for best limited or anthology series. Thus far Sunday night, the HBO crime drama has already claimed both supporting acting awards for a limited or anthology series or movie.Julianne Nicholson won best supporting actress for her heartbreaking role as Lori, the best friend of the main character, Mare Sheehan (Kate Winslet, also nominated, for best actress). Nicholson delivered a heartfelt speech that referenced recent world events, including the Texas abortion ban and the U.S. military’s withdrawal from the 20-year war in Afghanistan.“I owe this to you,” Nicholson said, “and all the ladies out there in Philadelphia, in Kabul, in Texas or anywhere who are struggling sometimes, finding it hard to be happy sometimes, understanding that life can be a lot sometimes, but never stopping, never losing hope never giving up.”Evan Peters also won a supporting actor award, for his performance as Detective Colin Zabel. Both he and Nicholson were first-time nominees.“This is a dream come true for me tonight,” a visibly shocked Peters said.The series, which garnered praise for the way it nailed the look, feel, sound and salty attitude of the people of Delaware County, Pa., became appointment viewing last spring. Although the series was initially billed as a single-season affair, there has been talk of a Season 2 after the overwhelming response to the first.“I think if we could ever crack a story that was as emotional and surprising, then I think maybe there’s a conversation,” the creator, Brad Ingelsby, told Esquire last month. “I mean, listen, I love Mare. If we could ever give her a great season, I would certainly consider it. More

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      2021 Emmy Winners: Complete List

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      The list of winners for the 73rd annual Emmy Awards.Streaming services dominated many people’s pandemic lives. Will they dominate at this year’s Emmys, too?The 73rd annual Emmy Awards are happening right now in Los Angeles. The ceremony is primarily in person this year — in contrast to last year’s largely virtual event — and it is being hosted by the comedian Cedric the Entertainer.Netflix’s British royal drama “The Crown” and the Disney+ “Star Wars” series “The Mandalorian” have the most nominations, with 24 each. HBO led all networks with 130 nominations. Apple TV+ has a good chance of winning its first major Emmy with “Ted Lasso,” which is the favorite in the comedy category.In the acting categories, Mj Rodriguez (FX’s “Pose”) could make history as the first transgender actor to win a Primetime Emmy in a lead acting category. And Michael K. Williams, who was found dead on Sept. 6, could win the best supporting actor in a drama award posthumously, for his work on the HBO series “Lovecraft Country.”Whatever happens, we will be following along live. See the list of winners, which will be updated throughout the night, below.Writing for a Drama SeriesPeter Morgan, “The Crown” (“War”)Supporting Actor, Limited Series or MovieEvan Peters, “Mare of Easttown”Supporting Actress, Limited Series or a MovieJulianne Nicholson, “Mare of Easttown”Supporting Actor, ComedyBrett Goldstein, “Ted Lasso”Supporting Actress, ComedyHannah Waddingham, “Ted Lasso”Directing for a Variety SpecialBo Burnham, “Inside”Directing for a Variety SeriesDon Roy King, “Saturday Night Live”Guest Actress, ComedyMaya Rudolph, “Saturday Night Live”Guest Actor, ComedyDave Chappelle, “Saturday Night Live”Guest Actress, DramaClaire Foy, “The Crown”Guest Actor, DramaCourtney B. Vance, “Lovecraft Country”Television Movie“Dolly Parton’s Christmas on the Square” (Netflix) More

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      Jane Powell, Hollywood’s Girl Next Door, Is Dead at 92

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      Typecast from the outset, she was a star of movie musicals before she was out of her teens. But her big-screen career peaked when she was in her 20s.Jane Powell, whose pert good looks and lyrical soprano voice brought her Hollywood stardom before she was out of her teens — but whose movie career peaked when she was still in her 20s with a starring role in one of the last great MGM musicals, the 1954 extravaganza “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” — died on Thursday at her home in Wilton, Conn. She was 92. Susan Granger, her friend, confirmed the death.Ms. Powell, who was just over five feet tall and retained the guileless features of an innocent teenager well past adolescence, found herself typecast from the outset.Ms. Powell in Los Angeles, in 1944, the year her first film, “Song of the Open Road,” was released. “I should have been the happiest girl in the world,” she said of becoming a movie star in her teens. “Well, I wasn’t.”Associated PressShe was only 15 when her first film, “Song of the Open Road” (1944), was released. She played a disenchanted young film star who finds happiness when she runs away from home and joins a group of young people picking crops while adult farmworkers are at war. The film is noteworthy mostly because the name of the character she played, Jane Powell, became hers as well when the movie was released. She was born Suzanne Lorraine Burce. Ms. Powell had already been signed by MGM, but the studio lent her to United Artists for “Song of the Open Road.” Her first several MGM movies were mostly forgettable musicals, with slender story lines that were little more than frameworks for the songs.In “Holiday in Mexico” (1946), she played the daughter of the American ambassador to that country (Walter Pidgeon), while the piano virtuoso José Iturbi, the bandleader Xavier Cugat and Ms. Powell provided the music. In “Luxury Liner” (1948), she was a stowaway on a cruise ship captained by her father (George Brent), with Mr. Cugat and the opera singer Lauritz Melchior among the passengers.Her breakthrough was “Royal Wedding” (1951), the first movie in which she played an adult. This time Ms. Powell had an outstanding director, Stanley Donen; an outstanding score, by Burton Lane and Alan Jay Lerner; and, most important, an outstanding co-star: Fred Astaire.Set just before the wedding of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, “Royal Wedding” centers on an American brother-sister song-and-dance act (Astaire and Ms. Powell) on tour in London. Cast at the last minute to replace Judy Garland, who had been fired (and who herself had replaced a pregnant June Allyson), Ms. Powell had almost no time to learn her dance routines. But she acquitted herself well, notably in a knockabout vaudeville-style number with Astaire, “How Could You Believe Me When I Said I Love You When You Know I’ve Been a Liar All My Life?”Her movie career appeared to be gaining steam. In fact, it was halfway over.After “Royal Wedding,” Ms. Powell, to her frustration, found herself once again cast as the girl next door in lightweight musicals like “Rich, Young and Pretty” (1951) and “Three Sailors and a Girl” (1953). It would be three years before she had another role of substance — but it was a memorable one.Set in a pioneer community in 19th-century Oregon, “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” told the story of newlyweds (Ms. Powell and Howard Keel) whose first order of business as a married couple is to find wives for the groom’s six rowdy brothers. Directed by Mr. Donen, with a lively score by Gene de Paul and Johnny Mercer and acrobatic choreography by Michael Kidd, it earned a place on many lists of the greatest film musicals of all time. It was, Ms. Powell later said, “my last really wonderful role in a film.”Suzanne Burce was born on April 1, 1929, in Portland, Ore. An only child, she was still a toddler when her parents — Paul Burce, who worked for a bread company, and Eileen (Baker) Burce — began grooming her as a potential successor to Shirley Temple.By the time she was 5 she was taking singing and dancing lessons and appearing on the radio. When she was 14 her parents took her to Hollywood, where her performance on a popular radio talent show led to an audition for Louis B. Mayer of MGM and, in short order, a seven-year contract.Looking back on that time in her 1988 autobiography, “The Girl Next Door and How She Grew,” Ms. Powell wrote: “I should have been the happiest girl in the world. Well, I wasn’t.” All she wanted to do, she said, was return home, go to high school and make friends. Her parents’ relentless efforts to make her a star had made for a lonely, artificial childhood. Despite her almost immediate success, she wrote, “Sometimes I just wanted to run away from it all.”Ms. Powell in performance at a nightclub in Las Vegas in 1957.David Smith/Associated PressWith musicals beginning to fall out of fashion, she had few film roles after “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.” (“I didn’t quit movies,” she once said. “They quit me.”) Two middling musicals followed: “Hit the Deck” (1955), her last film for MGM, and “The Girl Most Likely” (1958), in which she was courted by Cliff Robertson and two other men.Her big-screen career came to an anticlimactic end in 1958 with the dramas “The Female Animal,” in which she played the alcoholic daughter of a fading movie star (Hedy Lamarr), and “Enchanted Island,” in which she was improbably cast as a Polynesian islander. (“It was a terrible movie,” she said. “The best thing about it was that it gave the family a great vacation in Acapulco.”)Ms. Powell found a new home on television. A 1961 pilot for a sitcom, “The Jane Powell Show,” was not picked up, but she appeared regularly on dramatic anthology series, variety shows and musical specials, as well as in a recurring role as Alan Thicke’s mother on the sitcom “Growing Pains” in the late 1980s and in a long-running ad campaign for denture products. Her last TV appearance was on an episode of “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” in 2002.She also performed in touring productions of musicals, including “My Fair Lady,” “The Sound of Music” and “Carousel.” She made her Broadway debut in 1974, when she replaced her friend and frequent MGM co-star Debbie Reynolds as the title character in the hit revival of the 1919 musical “Irene.”Ms. Powell in 1984 with Dick Moore, who, like her, had been a child star, and whom she would marry four years later.G. Paul Burnett/Associated PressShe never returned to Broadway, although she played the queen in a 1995 New York City Opera production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Cinderella” and occasionally appeared Off Broadway. She seemed headed back to Broadway in 2003, when she played the mother of the entrepreneurial Mizner brothers in the Stephen Sondheim musical “Bounce” in Chicago and Washington. But the show was poorly received and never made it to New York. (It was later reworked, retitled “Road Show” and staged at the Public Theater in New York in 2008, without Ms. Powell in the cast.)Ms. Powell’s first four marriages ended in divorce. In 1988 she married Dick Moore, whom she met when he was writing a book about child actors. Although, as Dickie Moore, he had once been a child actor himself, their paths had never crossed until he interviewed her for his book.Ms. Powell at her apartment in New York in 1996. She appeared frequently on television until 2002.Jack Manning/The New York TimesMr. Moore died in 2015, and Ms. Powell died in the home they had shared. She is survived by a son, Geary Anthony Steffen III; two daughters, Suzanne Steffen and Lindsay Cavalli; and two granddaughters.Looking back in 1988 on her youthful stardom and her place in the Hollywood studio system, Ms. Powell was philosophical.“I get angry when I hear other actors blame the studios for all their problems,” she wrote in her autobiography. “It really bothered me when Judy Garland used to say, ‘The studio made me do this, the studio made me do that.’“Nobody makes you do anything. You make your own choices.”Alyssa Lukpat More

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      Joan Washington, Dialect Coach to the Stars, Dies at 74

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      She taught Barbra Streisand, Penélope Cruz and countless other performers how to sound like someone else.Joan Washington, an acclaimed dialect coach who taught Penélope Cruz to sound Greek, Jessica Chastain to sound Israeli and an entire cast of British actors to speak like Brooklyn Jews, died on Sept. 2 at her home in Avening, England. She was 74.Her husband, the actor Richard E. Grant, announced her death on Twitter. He later said the cause was lung cancer.In a career spanning four decades, Ms. Washington developed a reputation as a sort of reverse version of Henry Higgins, the elocutionist who taught Eliza Doolittle the King’s English in George Bernard Shaw’s play “Pygmalion.” She instructed actors to speak not just in national dialects but also in regional and local lilts, even historical ones.She taught actors for most of Britain’s leading national and regional theaters; if a British performer appeared onstage speaking a thick American patois — say, in Neil Simon’s “Brighton Beach Memoirs” — there was a good chance it was Ms. Washington’s handiwork.She also worked on a steady stream of films. She teamed up with Ms. Cruz for “Captain Corelli’s Mandolin” (2001), Ms. Chastain for “The Debt” (2010), Kate Beckinsale for “Emma” (1996) and the British actress Thandie Newton for “W.,” Oliver Stone’s 2008 take on the life of George W. Bush, in which she played Condoleezza Rice, the former U.S. national security adviser.Jessica Chastain in a scene from “The Debt” (2010). Ms. Washington trained Ms. Chastain to sound Israeli for that movie, in which she played a secret agent.Laurie Sparham/Focus FeaturesDialect, Ms. Washington said, was not just about mimicry, about reading a script with an accent. It had to be built into the core of a performance.“A dialect coach must be there from the start,” she told the British newspaper The Independent in 1991. “Otherwise the bad habits are set; it becomes just a bandaging job. There’s enough undoing as it is.”Ms. Washington was something of a performer herself, though never onstage or onscreen. She could instantly adopt whatever dialect she was teaching, and she claimed to have mastery over 124 vowel sounds — just six shy of what Professor Higgins boasted.Though she was born and raised in Scotland, Ms. Washington employed a standard English accent when teaching Americans. She said they brought too many assumptions about what “proper” English sounds like and might be confused by her natural Scottish elocution.“The problem for Americans doing English is that they pronounce their consonants too precisely, which makes it sound rather acquired and middle class,” she said in a 1986 interview with The Sunday Telegraph. “The grander we are, the less we rely on consonants.”Ms. Washington came about her talent thorough research. Before working with actors, she had taught standard English pronunciation at the Royal College of Nursing, whose students arrived from all over Britain and the Commonwealth. Her recordings of their accents formed the basis of a vast library of tapes she kept as reference.She interviewed and recorded older Britons to capture what Liverpudlian or Geordie — an accent from Tyneside, in northeast England — might have sounded like decades ago. To show what English sounded like in the 1910s, she relied on recordings of British prisoners made by Germans during World War I.Her instructional methods were intense. She would often begin by interviewing performers to gauge what they thought a Boston Brahmin or a Warsaw Pole might sound like. She took notes, reams of them, and then handed them to the actors along with copies of her tapes.Over a series of sessions, she would tweak Rs, adjust inflections and suppress unwanted sibilants until an American actress like Emma Stone sounded like an authentic 18th-century English courtier, as she did in the 2018 film “The Favourite.”Barbra Streisand in “Yentl” (1983), the first film on which Ms. Washington worked. She taught Ms. Streisand how to speak like an Ashkenazi Jew in early-20th-century Poland.MGMMs. Washington always worked freelance, but she was most closely associated with the Royal National Theater, where she worked on more than 70 shows. Her first film was “Yentl” (1983), for which she taught the star and director, Barbra Streisand, how to speak like an Ashkenazi Jew in early-20th-century Poland.Ms. Washington had her own theories about accents and where they came from. She said that Britain’s plethora of dialects and accents, all crammed onto a medium-size island, derived from its varying geography and climate.“Cornish is harder and more nasal than Devon because it’s a windy peninsula,” she told The Sunday Telegraph. “If you’ve got the wind in your face, you’ve got to speak without giving much away.”Joan Geddie was born in Aberdeen, Scotland, on Dec. 21, 1946. Her father, John, was a doctor, and her mother, Maggie (Cook) Geddie, was a nurse.When she was 18 she moved to London to attend the Central School of Speech and Drama. After graduating, she taught speech, first at a reform school for girls and then at the Royal College of Nursing.In 1969 she married Keith Washington; they later divorced. Along with Mr. Grant, she is survived by her son, Tom Washington; her daughter, Olivia Grant; and her brother, David Geddie.While teaching, Ms. Washington also picked up side jobs as a dialect coach. In the class-conscious England of the postwar decades, millions of Britain’s expanding middle class sought to erase any trace of their proletarian origins, starting with their accents, which provided her with an abundance of work.Her clients included doctors and clergymen as well as actors — the only ones, she said, who went the opposite direction, seeking instruction on how to sound less posh.She was teaching at the Actors Center in London in 1982 when she met Mr. Grant, who had been born and raised in Swaziland (now Eswatini), in Africa, and was taking her class to sound more like a native Englishman.Mr. Grant was smitten, he later recalled, and he asked if she could give him private lessons. She said yes, at £20 an hour — about $43 in today’s dollars.“But I can only afford £12,” he replied.“All right,” she said, “but you’ll have to repay me if you ever ‘make it.’”The two married in 1986, a year before Mr. Grant made his film debut in “Withnail and I,” which overnight made him one of Britain’s most in-demand actors. He later won acclaim for his performances in movies like “Gosford Park” (2001) and “Can You Ever Forgive Me?” (2018), for which he received an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actor.Ms. Washington learned she had lung cancer late last year, and the disease advanced quickly. She did have one final assignment, though: Mr. Grant had been cast to play Loco Chanelle, a drag queen, in the film version of the stage musical “Everybody’s Talking About Jamie,” and he needed help with his character’s Sheffield accent.A few days after her death, Mr. Grant posted a video on Twitter that Ms. Washington had made of him practicing for the role, with her, offscreen, giving instructions. More

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      Max Harwood Steps Up in 'Everybody's Talking About Jamie'

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      Two years ago, Max Harwood made a video in his bedroom.A second-year student at a musical theater school in London, he introduced himself and said where he was from. He talked about how, as a child, he would don a bouffant wig and perform Rizzo’s songs from “Grease,” making his grandmother laugh so hard that she nearly wet herself.That minute-long video was Harwood’s first audition for the movie “Everybody’s Talking About Jamie,” an adaptation of the sparkly West End musical about a teenager in the north of England with dreams of being a drag queen. Seeking new talent, the producers held an open call, which yielded thousands of tapes. Jonathan Butterell, the film’s director, watched nearly all of them, and Harwood’s stood out immediately.“He had this kind of magic about him,” Butterell recalled. “He is fabulous without being arrogant.” He called Harwood back six more times, for dance calls, for recording sessions, for chemistry reads, for drag challenges. The magic didn’t fade.So now Harwood — who had no professional credits, couldn’t get into a first-class drama school and had been told that he should aim for ensemble parts — is filling some very high-heeled shoes. His ice-blonde crop and princeling looks occupy nearly every frame of “Everybody’s Talking About Jamie,” which premieres on Amazon Prime Video on Friday.“I’ve had a process with this film where I’ve stepped into my queerness and my comfortability,” Harwood, 23, said on a recent evening while lolling on a sofa at the Crosby Street Hotel in New York. “This is who I am.”“I’ve had a process with this film where I’ve stepped into my queerness and my comfortability,” Harwood said.Justin J Wee for The New York TimesHarwood had arrived in the city the previous day, driving in from the Hamptons on a whistle-stop press tour for the film. The tour had taken him across America — which, mid-pandemic, mostly meant airports and hotels. He has louche, generous features, the outsize eyes of a startled deer and an unforced warmth. He wore a spotted T-shirt. And if his Converse sneakers lacked the pizazz of the glittery heels that Jamie covets, they did have platform soles. He carries himself like the dancer he trained to be, which makes him seem taller than 5 feet 10 inches.He grew up in Basingstoke, a town in south central England without a professional theater company. He knew he wanted to act, even if the drama schools that he applied to didn’t see it the same way. But his local theater society gave him a scholarship for a one-year course at the Guildford School of Acting. The teachers there weren’t entirely encouraging.“I was told that if I wanted to do musical theater, because of how I looked, I would be typically cast in the ensemble, and I needed to get my dancing up,” Harwood said. What exactly was wrong with his looks? “I’m not, like, the strapping leading man.”A scene from the film, an adaptation of the stage musical about an English teenager with dreams of being a drag performer.John Rogers/Amazon StudiosHe was directed to the Urdang Academy, a musical theater training program in London. Although he enjoyed the classes, he struggled there. He wanted to stand out, and the work of an ensemble member, who has to look and dance just like everybody else, never suited him. He wasn’t supposed to audition during the program, but he had seen “Everybody’s Talking About Jamie” onstage, and had loved the sight of a story centered around a young gay man that didn’t depend on trauma.“He didn’t die at the end,” Harwood said. “He wasn’t comic relief. He didn’t come in for two scenes to be the gay best friend. And that was really nice.”So, when a friend told him about the open call for the movie, he put himself on tape. During the months of auditions that followed, he kept up with his schoolwork and his part-time job as a supervisor at a sneaker store. He never really thought that Butterell and the producers would cast him, but when he was called back for a day that involved a full drag makeup test, he let himself dream.Butterell had conceived the musical after watching the BBC documentary “Jamie: Drag Queen at 16,” which followed Jamie Campbell, an English teenager who wanted to wear a dress to prom. “Everybody’s Talking About Jamie” opened in Sheffield, in the north of England, and quickly transferred to the West End in London. In The New York Times, the critic Ben Brantley called that production a “determinedly inspirational show.”In adapting the musical for the screen, Butterell and the other creators, the writer Tom MacRae and the composer Dan Gillespie Sells, didn’t want a strapping leading man to play Jamie. “Because what’s radical about Jamie is the fact that you’ve got an authentically effeminate male hero,” Gillespie Sells said in a phone interview. “That’s something you don’t see very often.”The creators saw it in Harwood. When Butterell told him that he had the part, Harwood screamed, swore and asked if he could call his mother.“Everybody’s Talking About Jamie” isn’t a coming out story; Jamie is out already. Instead it’s a tale of stepping confidently into your identity, in appropriately glamorous footwear. Jamie’s story isn’t really Harwood’s. Though Harwood liked playing dress-up, he never felt compelled to perform drag. But then again, maybe it’s everyone’s story: Doesn’t everyone want to be seen for who they really are?The dancing came easily to Harwood, and so did the songs, which are mostly pop- and R&B-inflected. Gillespie Sells praised his voice: “It was exactly that thing, that very pure, young male, perfect pop voice that was so good for Jamie because Jamie is pop personified. Everything about him is bright and hopeful.”Harwood didn’t always feel hopeful. Butterell, however, never doubted him. Neither did his colleagues, including Richard E. Grant, who gives a moving performance as Jamie’s drag mother. “He looks very young, sings and dances to the manner born, is emotionally open and giving, instantly likable, and of course, has talent by the bucket load,” Grant wrote of Harwood in an email.“I’m really happy to be a voice for my community,” Harwood said. “But there are so many more stories to be told.”Justin J Wee for The New York TimesBut there were moments — such as a scene between Jamie and his best friend, Pritti (Lauren Patel) — when Harwood worried whether he could deliver the right performance. He felt frightened. He felt vulnerable. Butterell took him aside and told him to breathe. Maybe in these moments Jamie felt vulnerable, too, Butterell suggested.The day they shot Jamie’s drag performance was even more anxiety-inducing, but Jamie Campbell, the musical’s inspiration, happened to be on set that day. “And I said to Jamie, ‘I’m so scared, I’m so scared,’” Harwood recalled. “And he was like: ‘You’re in exactly the right place. And if you weren’t in that place, you would not be human.’”So Harwood’s anxiety became Jamie’s anxiety, which layers the musical’s sequins and chiffon with a febrile authenticity. If the film is about Jamie coming into his own, it’s also about Harwood doing the same. “Max went on a similar journey to what Jamie’s going through,” Butterell said. “Max went looking for who he was in this. Where Max and Jamie meet is in this duality of sheer joy and the fear that you have to step through to maintain that joy.”Starring in a movie musical as your first professional gig is one more joy. But even a decade ago, young queer actors might have fretted about being birthed into the industry in a role like Jamie, because it could lead to a typecast future. That doesn’t bother Harwood. He believes in Jamie’s story, which he describes as “a little beacon of light and hope and joy.”Sprawled on that couch in New York, he said that story, however universal, is only one story — and queer youth deserve more. “I’m really happy to be a voice for my community,” he said. “But there are so many more stories to be told.” More

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      Ben Platt Isn’t the Oldest Adult to Play a Teenager Onscreen

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      Here are our picks for the most memorable performances with the biggest age gaps between star and character. Did they pull it off?Can a mop of curly hair, a backpack and an outfit that looks like a mother’s choice for school picture day send a 27-year-old actor back to his senior year of high school?That will be the question facing filmgoers when Ben Platt reprises his performance as the titular awkward teenager in the film adaptation of the heartbreaking Broadway musical “Dear Evan Hansen,” due Sept. 24 in theaters.When the first trailer was released in May, initial reactions to Platt’s attempt to shave off a decade were, well, less than rosy.“Raise your hand if you felt personally victimized by Ben Platt’s wig this morning,” the writer Jorge Molina tweeted, prompting comparisons to the scene-stealing wig Sarah Paulson wore in “The People v. O.J. Simpson.”But that part of his look, at least, was the real thing. Platt set the record straight in a now-deleted Twitter post. “I’m v flattered that ppl think my locks are a wig and I hate to burst bubbles,” he wrote. “But sadly those are my own.”Platt is hardly the first full-grown adult to return to his locker and letterman jacket days for a film, and nowhere near the oldest, though some of them — *cough* Tobey Maguire — look like they should be carrying briefcases instead of backpacks. (Child labor laws make it easier to cast actors over 18 as high school students than to work around regulations for younger actors.)Here are some of the most memorable attempts by 20- and 30- somethings to pass as teenagers. Who makes the grade, and who should have dropped out?John Travolta as Danny Zuko in ‘Grease’John Travolta with, from left, fellow adults Michael Tucci, Barry Pearl and Kelly Ward.Paramount Pictures, via Getty ImagesDanny’s age: 18John Travolta’s age: 23Travolta’s not-so-malevolent gang leader might look a few years older than the “he was sweet, just turned 18” Sandy pegs him for, but it works because he’s a youngster compared with the fellow “high schoolers” around him. Olivia Newton-John was 29; the show-stealing Stockard Channing, at 33, was old enough to play Rizzo’s mother. “Grease” (1978) became the highest-grossing musical film up to that point, so audiences clearly weren’t too concerned — and Travolta’s schoolboy rhapsodizing over Newton-John in that skintight black bodysuit seemed all too real.Emma Thompson as Elinor Dashwood in ‘Sense and Sensibility’Emma Thompson, left, with her (much) younger screen sister, Kate Winslet, and Gemma Jones.Clive Coote/Columbia PicturesElinor’s age: 19Emma Thompson’s age: 36If you remember that Thompson’s character is supposed to be 19 in the Jane Austen novel on which the 1995 film is based, her matriarchal, self-possessed Elinor won’t fool you for a second. Kate Winslet, who was 20 when she played Elinor’s 16-year-old sister, Marianne, emphasizes the gulf. But if it’s been a while since you’ve read the novel and just assume that Elinor is in her late 20s or early 30s, you might give Thompson a passing grade. After all, her intellect and frequent apologies on behalf of the impassioned, though imprudent, Marianne make her closer to a mother than a sister.Alan Ruck as Cameron Frye in ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’Alan Ruck, left, and Matthew Broderick are high school seniors. We’ll buy it.Paramount Pictures, via Getty ImagesCameron’s age: 17Alan Ruck’s age: 29Actors pushing 30 don’t have a great track record of pulling off 17-year-olds, and Ruck, despite imbuing Cameron with pitch-perfect humor and sensitivity as Ferris’s wingman, is no exception. Matthew Broderick, who plays Ferris, helped distract from the true discrepancy — he was 24 when the 1986 film was released — but not enough to sell the subterfuge. Luckily, this was one case where the movie was so good that nobody seemed to care.Shirley Henderson as Moaning Myrtle in ‘Harry Potter’Shirley Henderson as a ghost isn’t as spooky as the 23-year difference between her and her character.Warner Bros.Myrtle’s age: 14Shirley Henderson’s age: 37All hail the power of pigtails! (And a 5-foot stature.) Is it creepy, in retrospect, for a fully grown woman to play a giggly 14-year-old ghost flirting with a prepubescent Daniel Radcliffe in “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” (2002)? Sure. (It would be weird enough to have an actual 14-year-old playing Myrtle, who would have been in her 60s had she not had a fateful encounter with a basilisk.) But honestly, watching the film when I was growing up, I’d never have guessed she was old enough to be Harry’s mother.Tobey Maguire as Peter Parker in ‘Spider-Man’An adult Tobey Maguire climbing the walls as a teenage Peter Parker.Zade Rosenthal/Columbia PicturesPeter’s age: 17Tobey Maguire’s age: 27Maguire, unfortunately, is about as successful at passing for a teenager as Peter Parker is at concealing his identity as the title character in “Spider-Man” (2002). When his character is bitten by a radioactive spider during a class field trip to Columbia University, the actor looks more like he should be a teaching assistant in the lab than a high school student. But he’s far from the only (relatively) over-the-hill Peter Parker, though things turned around in 2015 when a 19-year-old Tom Holland was cast as Marvel’s new Spider-Man.Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly in ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’Audrey Hepburn, opposite George Peppard and Patricia Neal, doesn’t look like a recent high schooler, but who cares?Paramount PicturesHolly’s age: 19Audrey Hepburn’s age: 31Sure, Hepburn’s doe eyes and elflike features shaved years off her appearance, but she was clearly a woman in the 1961 film based on the Truman Capote novel. (Though Capote’s first choice for Holly, Marilyn Monroe, then 35, was even older.) Yet Hepburn embodies the novel’s striking, self-sufficient young bohemian, and Holly’s free spirit is as alive in her as in a recent high school grad — even if she never looks like one in her sleek, sophisticated black gown.Jennifer Grey as Baby in ‘Dirty Dancing’Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze are both years apart from their characters.LionsgateBaby’s age: 17Jennifer Grey’s age: 27No one puts Baby in a corner, and no one was about to tell Grey she was a decade too old to play the doctor’s daughter who gets tangled up with Patrick Swayze’s bad-boy dance instructor in “Dirty Dancing” (1987). It helped that Swayze, who played 25-year-old Johnny Castle, was 34 at the time, but Grey’s small stature (she’s 5-foot-3), wild curls and big brown eyes made it entirely believable that she was 17.Rachel McAdams as Regina George in ‘Mean Girls’Rachel McAdams, left, Lacey Chabert and Amanda Seyfried as the title trio with more pressing concerns than age.Michael Gibson/Paramount PicturesRegina’s age: 16 or 17Rachel McAdams’s age: 26Do you want to call McAdams’s Regina George an impostor to her face? Mark Waters, the director of “Mean Girls” (2004), initially passed over McAdams for the part because he didn’t think she could pull off a teenager, but then he decided it would make sense if Regina grew up a little too fast. Our take: Even if Regina looks more like she should be gatekeeping for a sorority than a school-lunch table, it works for a conniving character who’s always a few steps ahead of her classmates. More