Actors and Actresses

Subterms

    More stories

    • 125 Shares129 Views

      in Music

      The Arts Are in Crisis. Here’s How Biden Can Help.

      by

      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsCredit…Invisible CreatureSkip to contentSkip to site indexThe Arts Are in Crisis. Here’s How Biden Can Help.The pandemic has decimated the livelihoods of those who work in the arts. How can the new administration intervene and make sure it doesn’t happen again? A critic offers an ambitious plan.Credit…Invisible CreatureSupported byContinue reading the main storyJan. 13, 2021, 5:02 a.m. ETWhat is art’s function? What does art do for a person, a country?Scholars, economists, revolutionaries keep debating, but one very good answer has held now for 2,500 years. The function of art, Aristotle told us, is catharsis. You go to the theater, you listen to a symphony, you look at a painting, you watch a ballet. You laugh, you cry. You feel pity, fear. You see in others’ lives a reflection of your own. And the catharsis comes: a cleansing, a clarity, a feeling of relief and understanding that you carry with you out of the theater or the concert hall. Art, music, drama — here is a point worth recalling in a pandemic — are instruments of psychic and social health.Not since 1945 has the United States required catharsis like it does in 2021. The coronavirus pandemic is the most universal trauma to befall the nation since World War II, its ravages compounded by a political nightmare that culminated, last week, in an actual assault on democratic rule. The last year’s mortal toll, its social isolation and its civic disintegration have brought this country to the brink. Yet just when Americans need them most, our artists and arts institutions are confronting a crisis that may endure long after infections abate.Professional creative artists are facing unemployment at rates well above the national average — more than 52 percent of actors and 55 percent of dancers were out of work in the third quarter of the year, at a time when the national unemployment rate was 8.5 percent. In California, the arts and entertainment fields generated a greater percentage of unemployment claims than even the hospitality sector. Several hundred independent music venues have closed; art galleries and dance companies have shuttered. And in my own life, I’ve listened to painters and performers weep over canceled shows and tours, salivate over more generous government support in Europe or Asia, and ask themselves whether 2021 is the year to abandon their careers.Beyond value in its own right, culture is also an industry sector accounting for more than 4.5 percent of this country’s gross domestic product, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.Credit…Invisible Creature“Hell, they’ve got to eat just like other people,” said Harry Hopkins, the first supervisor of the Works Progress Administration, when an official in President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration queried whether artists merited federal employment. Art, music, dance and theater are social goods, but also individual professions — ones more endangered than at any time since the 1930s, and facing lasting damage even as the pandemic abates.The effects of this cultural depression will be excruciating, and not only for the symphony not written, the dance not choreographed, the sculpture not cast, the musical not staged. Beyond value in its own right, culture is also an industry sector accounting for more than 4.5 percent of this country’s gross domestic product, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.Other leaders have noticed: in their New Year addresses, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, singled out culture as a sector in economic peril, while Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany said that “freelancers and artists fear for their livelihood.” But until last month, when the outgoing U.S. president belatedly signed a stimulus package with targeted arts relief bundled within, this government had barely acknowledged the crisis that Covid-19 has posed to culture. Nor have private philanthropists filled the gap; while some large foundations have stepped up their disbursements, total giving to North American arts organizations has slackened by 14 percent on average.As President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. prepares to take office next week, and begins to flesh out his proposals to help the nation recover, he and his cabinet have the chance — the responsibility — to offer a new settlement for American culture. Mr. Biden had planned an “F.D.R.-size” presidency, and, with the Democrats’ recapture of the Senate, such heft seems more viable than it did after Election Day. What can the new administration do for culture in crisis? What examples should they draw from in American history, and current international practice? How should Washington approach culture policy with state and local authorities, with nonprofits, and with the entertainment industry? Does the U.S. government need a “Dr. Fauci of culture,” as the Washington Post theater critic Peter Marks called for last month — or even a full-bore Department of Culture, with a cabinet-level secretary?As a senator and as vice president, Mr. Biden repeatedly backed government support for the arts. The country he will now lead, as the pandemic wanes and as the economy recovers, is going to require major social catharsis — and he needs to ensure that the arts are still there to provide it.Reach for a new New Deal.The Biden campaign promised that America could “build back better,” and throughout 2020 the president-elect extolled F.D.R.’s New Deal as a blueprint for American renewal. For the administration to show that sort of Rooseveltian resolve — and, with control of the Senate, it just about can — it’s going to have to put millions of Americans on the federal payroll: among them artists, musicians and actors, tasked to restore a battered nation.Arshile Gorky at work on “Activities on the Field,” his 1936 mural project for Newark Airport sponsored by the W.P.A, which underwrote 2,500-odd murals in addition to sculpture, painting, posters and advertisements.Credit…Eisman, via The Arshile Gorky Foundation/Artists Rights Society, New YorkThe Works Progress Administration was a latecomer to Roosevelt’s economic recovery plans, begun in 1935 as part of the so-called second New Deal. Federal Project Number One, as its cultural division was known, accounted for only about one-half of 1 percent of the W.P.A.’s budget — but it endures as its most visible legacy, especially in the murals that adorn the country’s post offices, courthouses, school buildings and even prisons. And it should offer the Biden administration a blueprint for a new, federal cultural works project, which treats artists, musicians and writers as essential workers, and sees culture as a linchpin of economic recovery.Today cultural advocates like to offer a roll call of American artists employed by the W.P.A. as proof of its necessity: Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Lee Krasner, Mark Rothko, Arshile Gorky, Louise Nevelson, Norman Lewis, Alice Neel, Jacob Lawrence, Philip Guston. The programs, notably, offered Black artists more public support than at any time in the 20th century. Charles White’s mural “Five Great American Negroes,” now in the collection of Howard University, was a W.P.A. commission.But the bulk of the 2,500-odd murals the program underwrote, plus piles of sculpture, painting, posters and advertisements, came from artists who never achieved fame. Most were under 40. Most favored folksy, realist scenes of American life. And most worked in places that America’s culture industry habitually ignores: for example, Bonners Ferry, Idaho (pop. 2,543), where the artist Fletcher Martin decorated the courthouse with bas-reliefs of local loggers and miners.Zora Neale Hurston, far left, during a recording expedition in 1935 for the Federal Writers’ Project. The interviews Ms. Hurston did for the project would profoundly influence her novel “Their Eyes Were Watching God.”Credit…Alan Lomax, via Library of CongressVisual art was the largest of the four (later, five) cultural divisions, but other branches were just as vital. Ralph Ellison, John Cheever and Saul Bellow worked for the Federal Writers’ Project, compiling life stories of American workers; the interviews Zora Neale Hurston did for the project would profoundly influence her novel “Their Eyes Were Watching God.” The Federal Theater Project put out-of-work actors and writers on stages far from Broadway, where audiences saw free plays about Dust Bowl farmers or tenement dwellers known as “living newspapers.”Unlike today, when grantmaking institutions routinely require artists to justify their work before they make it, the W.P.A. programs did not mandate a style; all the government required was an engagement with an American theme, no strident politics, and no nudity. If a few of the program’s murals have stood the test of time, such as Gorky’s bulbous compositions originally at Newark Airport, there’s a reason that Pollock, Krasner and other figures of the postwar avant-garde turned so thoroughly from the socially engaged projects of their youth. More than a fair bit of the art produced under W.P.A. programs was boosterish, conservative, forgettable.But artistic quality was not the principal point — because these were works programs, not cultural grants, awarded on the basis of need rather than merit. (Another New Deal program, run by the Treasury, had a smaller and more selective roster of artists.) A new W.P.A.-style program, likewise, shouldn’t be thought of as government support for “the arts” — that lightning rod of budget negotiations year after year. Nor should it be treated in the same manner as, say, New York’s Percent for Art, which requires city-funded construction to set aside money for public art works.A new W.P.A. is, as the name indicates, an emergency work scheme, whose motivation is economic stimulus. Artists shouldn’t have to prove their “social impact,” shouldn’t have to get a dozen stakeholders to sign off on every note or brush stroke. They should demonstrate what their forebears did in the 1930s — that they are professional artists and they need work.”The Cradle Will Rock,” a play written by Marc Blitzstein and directed by Orson Welles, was part of the Federal Theater Project intended to put unemployed actors and writers to work.Credit…Library of CongressSuch a program might be especially valuable in America’s rural areas and in economically imperiled regions: the parts of the country where Mr. Biden did worst electorally, and whose support for President Trump came in part from a legitimate grievance that cultural elites looked down on them. (That Idaho courthouse lies in a county where Mr. Trump beat Mr. Biden by more than four votes to one.) Embedding unemployed artists nationwide, and tasking them to focus on local populations and local circumstances, should likewise animate any Biden administration cultural works program.The administration should also bring artists on board for infrastructure projects, especially as Mr. Biden’s government pursues an ambitious climate strategy that will require nationwide transformations. Europe already has plans for this. Since the fall Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, has been talking up a “New European Bauhaus,” which will bring artists and designers into the E.U.’s green development program to “give our systemic change its own distinct aesthetic — to match style with sustainability.” Including artists here could help the Biden administration build public support as the country begins, we hope, a decades-long program of green reconstruction.A final place to boost support for culture is the Department of State. Cultural diplomacy has shrunk considerably since the days of the Cold War, when the department sent Dizzy Gillespie to Yugoslavia, Martha Graham to Southeast Asia, Louis Armstrong to Congo, and the New York Philharmonic to Moscow. (“Music costs so much less and produces so much better a result than any propaganda or weaponry,” said its conductor, Leonard Bernstein.) Antony Blinken, nominated for Secretary of State, could provide the country both a diplomatic and an economic fillip by bolstering the agency’s diminished Bureau for Educational and Cultural Affairs, which the Trump administration tried to eliminate entirely. In Akron or Accra, American artists have work to do.Knit a better safety net.In the past, unemployment insurance was available only to those “employed” in the first place — and artists rarely were. A violinist furloughed from a full-time orchestra job could get unemployment, but not a gigging saxophonist whose nightclubs were shuttered. A receptionist laid off from a talent agency qualified, but not the actors the agency represents.That changed in March, when the previous Congress passed the first coronavirus stimulus package. It included a program called Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, which, for the first time expanded unemployment eligibility to independent contractors and freelance workers. In their ranks are millions of actors, writers, artists, musicians and dancers, who are three and a half times more likely than the average American to be self-employed, according to a 2019 report from the National Endowment for the Arts. (Where do you think the name “gig economy” came from, after all? From the music industry, where artists first cobbled together an income from stage to stage.)Like so many music venues, Elsewhere in Bushwick, Brooklyn, had to temporarily close because of coronavirus restrictions. Federal support for venues finally came through in December with the Save Our Stages Act.Credit…George Etheredge for The New York TimesA singer who qualified for pandemic assistance didn’t just get unemployment from her home state. She was also eligible for the same $600-a-week federal supplement as others receiving unemployment: a critical lifeline, though one that expired in July. (There have been two smaller supplements since then. The current $300-a-week boost, bundled into the December stimulus package, expires in mid-March, long before stages are expected to reopen.) For all its shortcomings, the program has established a precedent that the Biden administration must build upon: that artists, like other gig workers, are full participants in the national economy — and need to be taken care of as such.So the most immediate measure the new administration can take to stanch the arts crisis is simply to get money into artists’ pockets — by pushing Congress to expand and improve unemployment benefits for them and other independent contractors and gig workers. Congress also needs to smooth out discrepancies in pandemic assistance, including the way it severely undercompensates jobless aid to artists with a little salaried work on the side, such as an actor with a one-day-a-week desk job.If the program establishes that actors, musicians and dancers are true workers, how do we keep them working? Janet Yellen, the Treasury secretary nominee, and Marty Walsh, the Boston mayor nominated to lead the Labor Department, can answer this question by supporting changes to the tax code and to unemployment rights, with both economic and cultural benefits.One model comes from France, where performers, technicians and other workers in theater, dance, movies and television can qualify for a special artists’ unemployment program, known as intermittence, which includes maternity leave, retirement and other benefits.It allows performers to rehearse and train rather than wait tables, which makes a big contribution to the quality of French opera, dance and theater. But more fundamentally, it recognizes that musicians and dancers and the like are not truly self-employed. They are professionals, in a socially necessary industry with an uncommon economic organization. They need to be paid, taxed and insured as such if they are to thrive.Ms. Yellen and the new Congress also need to disburse additional funds to keep other arts professionals on the payroll. Bundled into the December stimulus package was the Save Our Stages Act, which earmarked $15 billion for small-business grants to music venues, movie theaters and the like. The grants (initially, 45 percent of a theater or club’s 2019 income) are a fantastic start — but it’s a Band-Aid when we need a full-scale tourniquet. Berlin’s nightclubs and other for-profit cultural venues were eligible for 80 percent grants.And given both the slow rollout of the vaccine and the continued need for social distancing, venues for the performing arts will be among the last public places to reopen. Congress ought therefore to bundle a second round of Save Our Stages emergency funding with a measure also drawn from the German bailout: cash for pandemic-appropriate infrastructural improvements, from new ventilation systems to digital distribution tools. I used to like a dirty disco; now I want gleaming HVAC.Does culture need a cabinet seat?Compared with Canada, Australia and most of Europe, the U.S. has relatively few cultural institutions funded through federal appropriations. The memorials on the National Mall are erected almost entirely with private cash; the Kennedy Center earns most of its income from donations and ticket sales. Even the Smithsonian Institution is a public-private partnership; its most recent Congressional disbursement of $1 billion a year accounts for 62 percent of its annual budget. At the Venice Biennale, where nations mount exhibitions in a kind of Olympics of contemporary art, the United States is one of the few participants whose government doesn’t pay for the show.Now some emboldened liberals have been dreaming, as they did when Barack Obama took office, that Mr. Biden might establish a cabinet-level Department of Culture — the first new department since George W. Bush established the Department of Homeland Security in 2002. Such a department might absorb the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services (all independent federal agencies), the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (a nonprofit), as well as parts of the State, Interior, and Education Departments.I get the impulse! Artsy Americans have long been jealous of Europe’s government-funded theaters and opera houses — and as cultural institutions have shed jobs over the last year, it’s easy to envy public institutions abroad. Our own museums, symphonies and ballet companies are financed principally through philanthropy, while our film, television and music industries are driven by the profit motive. There is, in consequence, hardly a large enough federal culture budget to merit a department. And as I don’t see a strong argument to nationalize the Metropolitan Museum of Art or Carnegie Hall, a federal culture department risks, at least right now, being more bureaucratic than beneficial.Nor are we so long gone from the (first?) culture wars, of the 1980s and early 1990s, when meager federal support for artists and performers became a flash point in a much larger political battle. Senator Jesse Helms and Republican colleagues fulminated against the photographers Andres Serrano and Robert Mapplethorpe, and then against performers known as the N.E.A. Four — and got on the books a decency test for federal arts grants, barring support for art with gay and feminist themes. (Later the N.E.A.’s budget was slashed, and individual artists’ grants were eliminated.) That history is one good reason for the Biden administration to — at least at first — aid artists on economic and infrastructural grounds, rather than as individual grants for “deserving” artists.And in countries in democratic decline — a category which, after last week’s siege, I struggle not to include the United States — culture ministries have lately become instruments of political wrath. In Poland, governed by the right-wing Law and Justice party, the culture minister has fired or refused to reappoint numerous museum directors; last year he installed a far-right fellow traveler as the head of Warsaw’s leading contemporary art center. The Hungarian government has used its funding rules to control what appears on theater stages; in Brazil, the last culture minister parroted the rhetoric of Joseph Goebbels.A Department of Culture, under a future American presidency, could be as antagonistic to culture as the outgoing administration’s Environmental Protection Agency has been to protecting the environment. Honestly, have the Culture Department boosters forgotten that President Trump promulgated a single style of classical architecture for all federal buildings? That sort of directive would have doomed designs like Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s federal building in Chicago, or David Adjaye’s National Museum of African American History and Culture.Giving the federal government more dominion over culture could have, for example, doomed designs like those of David Adjaye for the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C.Credit…Lexey Swall for The New York TimesAmerican arts institutions ought not to give up their independence for crumbs. For now, especially as the pandemic subsides, the more urgent task is to encourage a richer cultural offering at the local level. A nimbler and more practicable solution to do that is with a White House Office for Culture, akin to the National Economic Council or the Domestic Policy Council, that could research and coordinate arts policy across the federal government.An arts center inside the executive office of the president — led, why not, by a “Dr. Fauci of culture” — could be sharper and swifter than a full department. This team could help Treasury create cultural tax policy, advise the Education Department on music instruction, liaise with Congress on arts stimulus. Importantly, it could ensure that stimulus funds for states and municipalities, whose budgets have been pitted by shutdown-induced tax shortfalls, shore up and eventually strengthen local arts organizations. (“Almost no one has been hurt more by Covid than our artists,” said Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York this week, when he announced a public-private partnership supporting the state’s arts organizations.)The new administration should also re-establish the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, whose members resigned en masse in 2017 after Mr. Trump’s response to the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va. (The artists who resigned included the director George C. Wolfe, the author Jhumpa Lahiri, the actor Kal Penn and the architect Thom Mayne.) To use a metaphor I detest but politicians seem to like, this committee should be the sizzle to the steak that is the Office for Culture. Any transformation this large needs a sales pitch; well-known actors, writers and musicians should be the pitchmen, linking Broadway and Hollywood to the town library and the school theater.During last year’s campaign, Mr. Biden had a phrase he invoked with almost musical regularity: the election, he always said, was a “battle for the soul of America.” As a piece of political rhetoric, it might have been just a platitude. How can I deny, though, that the near-sacking of the Capitol — in a week when, for the first time, the daily death toll from Covid-19 reached an unendurable 4,000 Americans — indicates that the United States has undergone, these last years, a kind of soul-death? And if you were treating a patient whose soul had curdled, what sort of medicine might you prescribe?I’ve always been wary of arguments about art’s “necessity.” But a soul-sick nation is not likely to recover if it loses fundamental parts of its humanity. Without actors and dancers and musicians and artists, a society will indeed have lost something necessary — for these citizens, these workers, are the technicians of a social catharsis that cannot come soon enough. A respiratory virus and an insurrection have, in their own ways, taken the country’s breath away. Artists, if they are still with us in the years ahead, can teach us to exhale.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Television

      Rupert Grint Sees a Stage Mother in His Daughter’s Future

      by

      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyRupert Grint Sees a Stage Mother in His Daughter’s FutureThe former “Harry Potter” actor, now starring in Season 2 of Apple TV+’s “Servant,” puts miniature pottery, backgammon and John C. Reilly’s unsung alter ego, Dr. Steve Brule, on his list of cultural must-haves.Credit…Eugene Gologursky/Getty Images For ReedpopJan. 12, 2021, 2:16 p.m. ETRupert Grint wasn’t too put out when, in March, the pandemic halted production on “Servant,” the M. Night Shyamalan psychological thriller about a couple who replace their dead baby with a doll.His partner, the actress Georgia Groome, was pregnant with their daughter, Wednesday, and the lockdown meant that Grint could savor the early months of her life in the sanctuary of their North London home. He could also purge his mind of the freakish, claustrophobic “Servant” world — a Philadelphia brownstone cluttered with baby paraphernalia, including, rather eerily, the same stroller they’d bought for Wednesday.“I guess it’s not the best show to be involved with when you become a father,” said Grint, who plays the doll-baby’s brash, hard-drinking uncle, Julian. “The set does have this kind of weird energy because the tragic event that has taken place does linger in the walls. I’d often feel a sense of relief when I snuck off.”Still, new fatherhood helped him to better understand the psychology of Dorothy (Lauren Ambrose), the show’s tormented mother, once he returned to set this fall.“It’s something I wasn’t aware of about love,” he said, calling to discuss his cultural must-haves as Wednesday babbled in the background, “and how you’ll do anything to get your baby back.”These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1. “Rose’s Turn” From “Gypsy,” the Ethel Merman Version Weirdly, I’ve never seen the show, never seen a movie version. I don’t know how I’ve escaped it because I know it’s huge. But this winter, around Christmas, I heard the song by chance on the radio and got obsessed with it. There are just so many different levels to it. I know the context now, and it really moved me. I saw Imelda Staunton [Dolores Umbridge in “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1”] perform it on YouTube, which is absolutely incredible. But I love listening to Ethel’s version. Just the maternal kind of passion that comes through. I also think I’m going to be a huge stage mom, so maybe I was connecting to that.2. Children’s Books by Tomi Ungerer I think Wednesday is still slightly young for them, but we’ve got a massive library ready for her. And these are great books — so ahead of their time and so beautifully illustrated. There’s one called “Otto,” and it’s the autobiography of this [teddy] bear, and I was an absolute wreck after reading it. It goes through his whole life, but I guess you could say it’s really about Auschwitz and how the bear experiences the camp. It sounds not suitable for kids, but I think Ungerer is not afraid of showing the darkness of humanity.3. Miniature Pottery This has been a lockdown hobby that I’ve taken up. You actually throw pots on a proper wheel, which is about the size of a dollar coin. The wheel is something I’ve always been in awe of, just making something from something as raw as a blob of clay. It’s such a therapeutic thing, and you completely get lost in thought. They’re so quick as well. I’ve made some really cool things, like miniature vases, cookie jars, teapots. They’re an inch or a little bigger, kind of a doll’s house scale. They’re all completely useless.4. Malcolm Gladwell’s “Revisionist History” This has been my go-to nighttime podcast for a while now. He has a great way of dissecting moments in history that I had no idea about and subverting them, making me understand what happened. It’s quite short and easy to digest. A really good one was the redo of the McDonald’s fries and how they changed the recipe over the years. Another was about Leonard Cohen’s song “Hallelujah,” the struggles he had writing it. It goes quite in depth about the kind of minutiae that I always, always love.5. “The Curse of Oak Island” I have always been intrigued about this group of treasure hunters on this island off Nova Scotia. It’s this great ensemble of personalities of these quite weathered, denim-wearing men just obsessed with this treasure that possibly isn’t there. There’s something quite tragic about it, but also it’s just beautifully made. And the real treasure is them finding each other to do this thing that they can only do for a few months of the year. It’s never-ending.6. “The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild” It’s sheer escapism. I’ve always loved the Zelda world. It’s not like I’m some huge pro gamer, but this game absolutely took hours of my life. It has incredible stories, beautiful graphics. You can forage for berries and cook on a campfire. I haven’t completed it in its entirety, but it’s a really special piece of work. I don’t think gamers get enough credit for what they create. There are amazing worlds where you can completely immerse yourself when they’re done well. I think Zelda just may be perfect.7. Backgammon I’ve always loved board games and got a huge collection over the years. Probably about four years ago, Georgia and I got a backgammon board and taught ourselves to play. We take a board everywhere we go now. Everyone’s mad about chess after “The Queen’s Gambit.” But backgammon, I think, is an older game, and there’s an element of luck that involves the dice. We went through a phase of playing like 10 games a day. It really changes the brain.8. Middle Child Sandwiches It’s an absolute go-to place that I discovered when I first went to Philly, and Philly is such a great place for food anyway that you don’t have to go far. Middle Child does one thing perfectly: The hoagie is the space it’s playing in. They’re simple but they’re just so good. And the décor is very hipster, very cool. I go for the Shopsin Club or the Surfer. You can’t go wrong there.9. Urban Beekeeping I’ve done this for four years now. It’s not easy, but it’s absolutely fascinating. I’m not sure what prompted us to get into it, because I am terrified of being stung. Bees are such an important thing and watching them in this hive is just incredible — how hard they’re working and how each has a different job. There are nurse bees, and undertaker bees that carry out the dead bees like coffin-bearers. It’s insane to watch. I have one hive in our backyard, just in a quiet corner. They keep to themselves. You think you’d be invaded by bees everywhere, but they’re very deliberate. They know exactly where to go to get pollen. It’s a really happy colony. I am in absolute awe of the queen.10. “Check It Out! With Dr. Steve Brule” I think he never really admitted it, but I find it fascinating that [John C. Reilly] has created this character that really is a whole different person. It’s just such an absurd character and so well-formed that he can let us know what they’re thinking. It’s a real skill to create something like that. I’m getting into more American comedy. Lots of old “S.N.L.” and “Tim & Eric,” which is where Steve Brule was born from. I love that anarchy and chaos they create.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

    • 163 Shares139 Views

      in Movies

      Tanya Roberts, a Charlie’s Angel and a Bond Girl, Is Dead at 65

      by

      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeHoliday TVBest Netflix DocumentariesAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTanya Roberts, a Charlie’s Angel and a Bond Girl, Is Dead at 65After finding stardom in the 1980s, she fell out of the spotlight until re-emerging in 1998 in the sitcom “That ’70s Show.”Tanya Roberts with Roger Moore in the 1985 James Bond film “A View to a Kill.” She had earlier starred in the last season of “Charlie’s Angels.”Credit…Alexis Duclos./Associated PressJan. 5, 2021Updated 1:30 p.m. ETTanya Roberts, the breathy-voiced actress who found fame in the 1980s as a detective on “Charlie’s Angels” and as a brave earth scientist in the James Bond film “A View to a Kill,” died on Monday night in Los Angeles. She was 65.Her death, at Cedars-Sinai Hospital, was confirmed on Tuesday by her companion, Lance O’Brien. Her publicist, who was given erroneous information, had announced her death to the news media early Monday, and some news organizations published obituaries about her prematurely.The publicist, Mike Pingel, said Ms. Roberts collapsed on Dec. 24 after walking her dogs near her Hollywood Hills home and was put on a ventilator at the hospital. He did not give the cause of death, but said it was not related to Covid-19. He said she had not been noticeably ill before she collapsed.Ms. Roberts’s big acting break came in her mid-20s, when she was cast in the fifth and last season of “Charlie’s Angels,” the ABC drama series that, trading on its stars’ sex appeal, followed the exploits of three attractive former police officers who often fought crime wearing short shorts, low-cut blouses and even bikinis.The show was an immediate hit in 1976, but Farrah Fawcett, its breakout star, left after one season, replaced by Cheryl Ladd. Kate Jackson quit in 1979, and her replacement, Shelley Hack, was gone after just one season. Ms. Roberts replaced Ms. Hack. Jaclyn Smith appeared throughout the series run.There were high hopes for Ms. Roberts when she joined the cast. Her character, Julie, had some of Ms. Jackson’s character’s streetwise attitude; Julie was known to knock a handgun right out of a tough criminal’s hand. Her part couldn’t save the show’s plummeting ratings, but it did lead to an active decade for her in Hollywood.Ms. Roberts, second from left, starred in “Charlie’s Angels” in its fifth and final season. The other “angels” in this 1980 photo were Cheryl Ladd, left, and Jaclyn Smith, right. Second from right is Patti D’Arbanville, who appeared in an episode.Credit…Getty ImagesMost notably, she was a “Bond girl,” playing a geologist threatened by a microchip-monopolist madman (Christopher Walken) in “A View to a Kill” (1985), Roger Moore’s last appearance as Agent 007.Ms. Roberts also appeared in “The Beastmaster” (1982), a fantasy film. And she played the title role in “Sheena” (1984), a highly publicized adventure film inspired by a queen-of-the-jungle comic book character. Sheena, a female Tarzan type, wore skimpy fur outfits with décolletage, rode a zebra, talked to animals and shape-shifted. The film flopped at the box office, and Ms. Roberts began fading from public view.She returned to the spotlight in 1998 on the sitcom “That ’70s Show” as the glamorous, youngish Midwestern mom of a teenage girl (Laura Prepon). In that role she was beautiful, slim and sexy — and delightfully dimwitted. The comic mystery, year after year, was how her short, dumpy husband, played by Don Stark with frighteningly overgrown sideburns, had ever won her heart. Ms. Roberts appeared on the show for three seasons and later made guest visits.She was born Victoria Leigh Blum in the Bronx on Oct. 15, 1955, the second of two daughters of Oscar Maximilian Blum, a fountain pen salesman, and Dorothy Leigh (Smith) Blum. According to some sources, Tanya was her nickname. She spent her childhood in the Bronx and lived briefly in Canada after her parents’ divorce. She began her career by running away from home to become a model when she was 15.Back in New York, she studied acting, appeared in some Off Broadway productions and worked as a model and a dance instructor to make ends meet. Her modeling career included work for Clairol and Ultra-Brite toothpaste. She made her screen debut in the horror thriller “The Last Victim” (1976), about a serial rapist-murderer.Ms. Roberts, right, in 1999 in a scene from the sitcom “That ’70s Show” with Laura Prepon, another star of the show. Ms. Roberts had kept a low profile for many years until re-emerging in the show.Credit…Frank Carroll/FoxAfter “Charlie’s Angels,” Ms. Roberts acted in both television and films. Her roles included the private eye Mike Hammer’s secretary in the television movie “Murder Me, Murder You” (1983), a detective working undercover at a sex clinic in “Sins of Desire” (1993) and a talk-radio host on the erotic anthology series “Hot Line” (1994-96). Her final screen appearance was on the Showtime series “Barbershop” in 2005.Even in her heyday, Ms. Roberts appeared not to enjoy being interviewed. Chatting with Johnny Carson on “The Tonight Show” in 1981, she laughed nervously, gave short answers and flirted with Michael Landon, her fellow guest. At one point, Mr. Carson mentioned a cover article about her in People magazine, prompting Ed McMahon, the host’s sidekick, to suggest, “Maybe there’s something in the magazine that’d be interesting.”Ms. Roberts was a teenager when she married in 1971, but the union was quickly annulled at the insistence of her new mother-in-law. In 1974, she met Barry Roberts, a psychology student, while both were standing in line at a movie theater. They married that year. Mr. Roberts became a screenwriter and died in 2006 at 60.In addition to Mr. O’Brien, she is survived by a sister, Barbara Chase, who was Timothy Leary’s fourth wife.Ms. Roberts had always insisted that she was a New Yorker at heart, and not just because she hated driving.“L.A. drives you crazy,” she said in the 1981 People magazine article. “I’m used to weather and walking and people who say what they mean.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

    • 113 Shares179 Views

      in Television

      Jovan Adepo Pushes Through With Rachmaninoff and ‘Love Island’

      by

      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyMy TenJovan Adepo Pushes Through With Rachmaninoff and ‘Love Island’The actor, starring in the latest adaptation of Stephen King’s “The Stand,” shared an eclectic list of what he is consuming to pass the time.Credit…David Livingston/Getty ImagesJan. 1, 2021, 10:00 a.m. ETJovan Adepo, known for his breakout turn in “Watchmen,” wasn’t familiar with “The Stand,” Stephen King’s dark fantasy novel about the survivors of an apocalyptic pandemic, before filming the TV adaptation that premiered as a mini-series in December on CBS All Access — and had no idea how close to home it would hit.Filming in Vancouver wrapped up in March, shortly before some parts of North America went into lockdown because of Covid-19. “To look back now, and comparing some of the imagery that we have in ‘The Stand,’ if you see some of the stills of guys in hazmat suits and how it kind of mirrors some of the actual photos we’re seeing in the world now — it’s eerie,” he said.Since returning to Los Angeles, Adepo said, the pandemic has forced him, like many others, to try and embrace different routines and hobbies. He shared the highlights of what he has read, watched and listened to this year. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1. “Ishmael” by Daniel Quinn I read through it once, and I’m actually passing through it again because there were some topics that I didn’t grasp as strongly as I wanted to. It gives an interesting take on our purpose as humans on this planet and how it relates to animals and other beings. It’s been an interesting eye-opener for me.2. “Meditations” by Marcus Aurelius I guess you would consider it a collection of anecdotes or sayings from Marcus Aurelius about leadership, courage, fear; about all things that we experience as people and the best way to handle obstacles that present themselves in your life.3. Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in G minor There’s a darkness to it. I was listening to this a lot when I was filming “The Stand.” A lot of classical pieces tell stories, and as you know, there’s no lyrics in these pieces. But if you’re careful and you’re quiet, you can really sense the story that the composer is telling. That’s just one particular song, of many songs, that I’ve always been attracted to because even though it is very dark, it still has a sweetness and a tenderness to it that I was really attracted to. In certain seasons, for whatever reasons, you come back to a song. When it resurfaced in my playlist, I was like, yeah, this is something that’s going to sit in a different way.4. “Contagion”The things that creep me out the most are the movies where whatever is going on in the film could actually happen. If it’s super fantastical or whimsical, then you’re like, OK, this is obviously not real. But with anything that has to do with the plague, those stay with me when the credits are done. When I turned it off, I was like, I hope we’re not in this lockdown forever! But it’s all good. Movies are movies.5. “Love Island”I ended up knocking out four seasons in like a weekend. It was bad; there was a period where I wasn’t watching anything but “Love Island.” And I’m usually not even a fan of reality TV.6. “It”I’m referring to the remake with Bill Skarsgard, who I thought was brilliant as [Pennywise]. The kids were all super funny and they all played off each other well, and their comedic timing was just like A-1.7. The “Evil Dead” seriesThe remake that came out in 2013 was also done really well. It’s just about imagery. It doesn’t always have to be super gory, but it’s how the images stick with you after the movie is done. I couldn’t stand them when I was younger, but then I was like, we’re in lockdown, whatever, I’m an adult, I’ll be fine. I won’t be scared. And then I rewatched it again, and I made it.8. “Jazz” by Ken BurnsA colleague of mine that I worked with on “Jack Ryan,” Wendell Pierce — we share a really strong love and respect for jazz music, and I get that from my father as well. That was a series that he asked me to look into just for further education and further awareness about the music.I think the documentary is probably most beneficial to people who just aren’t familiar with the genre and who are interested in the history. They highlight Louis Armstrong and Miles Davis, all of the great artists and the inception of jazz into the American history of music.9. “Lush Life,” by John Coltrane and Johnny HartmanJohn Coltrane has his own version of that album, but this one is with the singer Johnny Hartman. There’s a few tracks on this album that I liked — there’s the titular song, which I think is worth the listen, but I have to warn you, it can be depressing if you listen to it in the wrong light. He’s almost talking about all of his unfulfilled dreams. He’s like, no matter what, I’m going to have this glass of whatever he’s drinking, and I’m going to live a lush life in one small dive.10. “Texas Sun,” by Khruangbin and Leon BridgesI got it right when I got home from Vancouver. My favorite song on the vinyl is called “Conversion.” It can play as a spiritual or religious song, but it can also play as just whatever it is. It’s a beautiful song. It’s just a funky album. “Conversion” is a slower tune and the other tracks on there are kind of upbeat and seaside.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      Vanessa Kirby Has Been Waiting for a Role That Scares Her

      by

      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyVanessa Kirby Has Been Waiting for a Role That Scares HerFor her first lead in a film, the actress wanted a character as challenging as many of those she’s played onstage. She found it in Kornel Mundruczo’s “Pieces of a Woman.”“Pieces of a Woman,” which debuts Jan. 7 on Netflix, is the first lead film role for the actress Vanessa Kirby.Credit…Lauren Fleishman for The New York TimesDec. 31, 2020, 5:00 a.m. ETLONDON — Vanessa Kirby has never given birth, but after shooting her first lead movie role in “Pieces of a Woman,” she kind of feels like she has.“Whenever I see a pregnant woman now, or someone’s telling me that they’ve just given birth, I smile,” she said in a recent video chat. “I feel with them.”The two full days she spent shooting a searing scene for the film could explain this psychic confusion, as could the thorough way Kirby, 32, immersed herself in the role.In “Pieces of a Woman,” which debuts Jan. 7 on Netflix after a limited theatrical release in December, Kirby plays Martha, a pregnant woman whose home birth goes horribly wrong.This pivotal event at the beginning of the film plays out in a 24-minute, single-take scene that starts with Martha’s first contractions and ends in tragedy. The camera follows Martha, her partner Sean (Shia LaBeouf) and a midwife, Eva (Molly Parker), around the couple’s apartment, condensing the agonies of labor into under half an hour.Credit…Benjamin Loeb/NetflixCredit…Benjamin Loeb/NetflixIn September, the film premiered at the Venice Film Festival, where Kirby won the best actress award, and began to be talked about as an Oscar contender.Kirby said she wanted to portray Martha’s labor as authentically as possible. “That was terrifying, because I didn’t want to let women down,” she added.So she got down to research. Watching many onscreen depictions of birth left Kirby no closer to understanding the experience, she said, since they were so censored and sanitized.“Then I was even more scared, because I realized that I had a responsibility to show birth as it is, not as it’s even edited in documentaries,” Kirby said.She talked to women who had given birth and women who’d had miscarriages, as well as midwives and obstetrician-gynecologists at a London hospital. While she was there, a woman arrived having contractions, and agreed to let Kirby observe the birth.The experience of watching that six hour labor “changed me so profoundly,” Kirby said. “Every second of what was happening to her, I just absorbed.”“It was, I think, probably the best career experience I’ve ever had,” Kirby said of shooting the film.Credit…Lauren Fleishman for The New York TimesAnd she began to understand how to play Martha. The woman in the hospital went into a primal, animal-like state, Kirby said. “Her body was taking over and doing it, so that helped me so much for the scene,” she added.Over two days, that long take was shot six times. In a phone interview, the director, Kornel Mundruczo, who also works in theater and opera, said that preparing it was like getting a stunt scene ready: “Lots of planning, but you don’t know what’s actually going to happen.”In the end, each take was different, Kirby said: Martha and Sean’s conversations shifted, the way Martha’s body reacted to the contractions was distinctive each time.“It was, I think, probably the best career experience I’ve ever had,” Kirby said of those two days of shooting. Inspired by the labor she’d observed, she tried to think as little as possible, she said, and not judge what her body was doing in the scene.After a decade of work, “Pieces of a Woman” is Kirby’s first time leading a feature film, and it is a bold and memorable role that shows her flexing her acting muscles. Mundruczo said he needed an actor at Kirby’s exact career point: “Where all of the skills are already there, but the fear is not,” he said. “When you are very established, you are more and more careful.”Left to right: the actress Ellen Burstyn, the director Kornel Mundruczo, and Kirby in a scene from “Pieces of a Woman.” Credit…Philippe Bosse/NetflixKirby has been honing those skills since she was a teenager. She grew up in a wealthy, West London suburb, where she attended a private, all girls’ school and escaped the social pressures of teenage life onstage, in plays and youth drama clubs.“Every time I walked into that space, I suddenly felt not judged at all, I just felt accepted,” Kirby said. “You didn’t have to be anything, or do anything right.”After graduating from college, where she studied English literature, Kirby was accepted to the prestigious London Academy of Music & Dramatic Art in 2009. A few months before term began, though, she was offered three stage roles by David Thacker, a former director-in-residence at the Royal Shakespeare Company, who was then the artistic director of the Octagon Theater in Bolton, a town in northern England.Come to Bolton, he told her, and you will learn more from these roles — which included Helena in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and Ann Deever in “All My Sons” — than you will in three years of drama school. Kirby agreed, and now describes that season as her training.“I learned everything there,” she said. Working with Thacker taught her to trust herself, to find her own way as an actor, rather than waiting for other people to tell her what to do, she said.Kirby has been working steadily ever since, with lead roles in the West End, as well as high profile supporting roles in films and British TV costume dramas. She starred as Princess Margaret in the first two seasons of “The Crown,” a performance that earned her a BAFTA award. Her Margaret fizzes with restless energy, an ideal foil for Claire Foy’s restrained Queen Elizabeth.In 2018’s “Mission Impossible — Fallout,” she played the White Widow, a glamorous black-market broker who carries a knife in her garter, and knows how to use it. She is slated to appear in two further “Mission Impossible” sequels.Credit…Alex Bailey/NetflixCredit…Chiabella James/Paramount PicturesEven as these supporting roles brought her critical praise and awards, Kirby wasn’t in a hurry to find her first onscreen lead role, she said. She’s played many complex characters onstage: women like Rosalind, the fiercely intelligent heroine of Shakespeare’s “As You Like It.” She was holding out for an onscreen lead in whom she could feel some of Rosalind’s “magic,” she said, which made performing “like flying when you step onstage.”“I could never find those roles at all onscreen,” she said. So she waited, using her smaller parts as opportunities to observe and learn, asking Anthony Hopkins about his craft when they worked together on the British TV drama “The Dresser,” and watching how generous Rachel McAdams was onset for the film “About Time,” she said.It’s fitting, given Kirby’s theatrical background, that “Pieces of a Woman” started life as a play, written by Kata Weber, Mundruczo’s partner, who drew on the couple’s own experience of losing a child. The play “Pieces of a Woman,” which is set in Poland, consists of only two scenes: the birth, and an explosive dinner with Martha’s family that occurs about halfway through the film adaptation. Its 2018 premiere, directed by Mundruczo at the TR Warszawa theater in Warsaw, was a hit, and the production is still in the company’s repertoire.Around the time Mundruczo turned 40, five years ago, he started wanting a bigger audience for his work, he said, so he switched from working in German, Hungarian and Polish; “Pieces of a Woman” is his first English language film. In adapting the play for the big screen, Mundruczo set it in Boston, he said, because he felt the city’s Irish Catholic culture mirrored Poland’s conservative social landscape.The loss of a pregnancy is rarely featured in onscreen entertainment. Mundruczo said he hopes watching Martha’s experiences will encourage “people to be brave enough to have their own answer for any loss,” he said.Kirby said she found that women who had experienced pregnancy loss were “actually really relieved” to talk about it.Credit…Lauren Fleishman for The New York TimesIn recent months, the model Chrissy Teigen and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, (writing in The New York Times), have shared stories of their experiences with pregnancy loss. Kirby said that, while researching for the role before filming, she found that women who had experienced one were “actually really relieved to talk about it,” and appreciated that someone wanted to understand.“Pieces of a Woman” was shot over just 29 days last winter, but Kirby said it took months for her to shake off the experience of playing Martha. “I knew my job was to feel it, to feel what she felt,” she said. Carrying that degree of empathy was “really difficult and disturbing,” she said, but added that the privilege of spending time inside another’s experience is what she loves about her work.Kirby’s next project will see her co-starring as Tallie, one of two farmers’ wives who fall in love in the United States in the 19th-century in “The World To Come,” a meditative drama from the Norwegian filmmaker Mona Fastvold slated for theatrical release next month.And after that? Kirby said she was reading scripts, on the hunt for the next role that will scare her. She’s looking for an “untold story about women,” she said, that will feel as urgent to tell as Martha and Tallie’s did.“What’s that expression?” she said. “Feel the fear, and do it anyway.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Television

      Dawn Wells, Mary Ann on ‘Gilligan’s Island,’ Dies at 82

      by

      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeHoliday TVBest Netflix DocumentariesAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTHOSE we’ve lostDawn Wells, Mary Ann on ‘Gilligan’s Island,’ Dies at 82Her character on the ’60s sitcom radiated all-American wholesomeness and youthful charm. After her TV career cooled, she focused on theater acting.Dawn Wells as Mary Ann Summers on an episode of “Gilligan’s Island” in 1964. Her character and her look — Gingham blouses, short shorts and double ponytails — personified the girl next door.Credit…CBS, via Getty ImagesDec. 30, 2020Updated 6:35 p.m. ETDawn Wells, the actress who radiated all-American wholesomeness, Midwestern practicality and a youthful naïve charm as the character Mary Ann on the hit 1960s sitcom “Gilligan’s Island,” died on Wednesday at a nursing home in Los Angeles. She was 82.Her publicist, Harlan Boll, said the cause was related to Covid-19.Debuting on CBS in 1964, “Gilligan’s Island” followed an unlikely septet of day trippers (on a “three-hour tour,” as the theme song explained) who ended up stranded on a desert island.There, shipwrecked alongside a movie star (who spent most of her time in evening gowns), a science professor, a pompous, older rich couple, and two wacky crew members was Mary Ann Summers (Ms. Wells), a farm girl from Kansas who had won the trip in a local radio contest.The character had a relatively scant back story — it was said that she worked at the hardware store back home and had a boyfriend — but Mary Ann’s persona alone made her memorable. Gingham blouses, short shorts, double ponytails and perky hair bows were all parts of her signature look.The first version of the show’s theme song mentioned five of the characters “and the rest,” but the lyrics were soon changed to name the professor (Russell Johnson) and Mary Ann as well. The others in the cast were Bob Denver (Gilligan), Alan Hale Jr. (the Skipper), Jim Backus and Natalie Schafer (as the couple Thurston Howell III and Lovey Howell), and Tina Louise (as the actress, Ginger). Ms. Louise is the last surviving member of the original cast.That the premise of “Gilligan’s Island” was pretty much implausible and its humor simplistic made no difference to the show’s millions of fans or its producers, who would discover in the years to come that they had spawned a cultural phenomenon.Though “Gilligan’s Island” lasted only three seasons, canceled in 1967, it hardly slipped from the horizon. Endless reruns ensued, and the cast members had a series of encore performances. Ms. Wells, for one, reprised her role as Mary Ann in three reunion TV movies: “Rescue From Gilligan’s Island” (1978), “The Castaways on Gilligan’s Island” (1979) and “The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan’s Island” (1981).In 1982, she did the voices of both her character and Ms. Louise’s movie star for “Gilligan’s Planet,” an animated spinoff series. And she went on to play Mary Ann in episodes of at least four other (unrelated) shows: “Alf” (1986), “Baywatch” (1989), “Herman’s Head” (1991) and “Meego” (1997). “Gilligan’s”-themed episodes had a certain camp value.The cast of “Gilligan’s Island” from a reunion television movie in 1978: sitting, from left, Bob Denver, Ms. Wells and Russell Johnson; standing, from left, Judith Baldwin (replacing Tina Louise in the movie star role), Jim Backus, Natalie Schafer and Alan Hale Jr.Credit…CBS, via Associated PressEven her career as an author related directly to the series. “Mary Ann’s Gilligan’s Island Cookbook,” which included Skipper’s Coconut Pie, was published in 1993. “What Would Mary Ann Do? A Guide to Life,” a memoir she wrote with Steve Stinson, appeared in 2014.Mary Ann’s advice in the book included this thought: “Failure builds character. What matters is what you do after you fail.” The San Francisco Book Review called the book “a worthwhile mix of classic values and sincerity.”Asked decades later about her favorite “Gilligan’s Island” episodes, Ms. Wells mentioned “And Then There Were None,” which included a dream sequence in which she got to do a Cockney accent. She also cited “Up at Bat,” an episode in which Gilligan imagined that he had turned into Dracula.“I loved being the old hag,” she said.Dawn Elberta Wells was born in Reno, Nev., on Oct. 18, 1938, the only child of Joe Wesley Wells, a real estate developer, and Evelyn (Steinbrenner) Wells. Dawn majored in chemistry at Stephens College in Columbia, Mo., then became interested in drama and went to the University of Washington in Seattle. She graduated in 1960 with a degree in theater arts and design, having taken some time off to win a state beauty title and compete in the 1960 Miss America pageant.“Big deal,” she said in a 2016 interview with Forbes, making light of her Miss Nevada win. “There were only 10 women in the whole state at the time.”For the Miss America pageant in Atlantic City, her talent performance was a dramatic reading from Sophocles’ “Antigone.”A 1961 episode of the drama “The Roaring Twenties” was her screen debut. When she was cast on “Gilligan’s Island,” she had appeared onscreen only about two dozen times, mostly in prime-time series, including “77 Sunset Strip” (multiple episodes), “Surfside Six,” “Hawaiian Eye,” “Bonanza” and “Maverick.”Ms. Wells in 2015. After her television career cooled down, she returned to her first love: theater acting.Credit…Jason Merritt/Getty ImagesAfter her television career cooled down, Ms. Wells returned to her first love: theater, doing at least 100 productions nationwide. Her last television role was in 2019, as the voice of a supernatural dentist on the animated Netflix series “The Epic Tales of Captain Underpants.”Her last onscreen appearance was in a 2018 episode of “Kaplan’s Korner,” about actors running an employment agency. Her only soap opera appearance was in a 2016 episode of “The Bold and the Beautiful,” in which she played a fashion buyer from a wealthy family.Ms. Wells’s marriage in 1962 to Larry Rosen, a talent agent, ended in divorce in 1967, the same year “Gilligan’s Island” went off the air. She is survived by a stepsister, Weslee Wells. Ms. Wells went on to operate charity-oriented businesses. She was a prominent supporter of the Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee, the nation’s largest natural habitat refuge developed for African and Asian elephants.She also taught acting, creating the nonprofit Idaho Film and Television Institute while living at her ranch in the Teton Valley. But a screen career was never her childhood dream.“I wanted to be a ballerina, then a chemist,” she recalled in the Forbes interview. “If I had to do it all over again, I’d go into genetic medicine.”Alex Traub contributed reporting.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

    • 125 Shares149 Views

      in Movies

      She’s Starring Opposite Tom Hanks. She’d Never Heard of Him.

      by

      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyShe’s Starring Opposite Tom Hanks. She’d Never Heard of Him.Helena Zengel is a giggly, chatty 12-year-old, whose movie roles take her into psychological territory that even adults would find tough.Helena Zengel in Berlin on Dec. 17. “I stand in front of the camera, I know what I want, and I do it,” she said.Credit…Katrin Streicher for The New York TimesDec. 30, 2020, 7:08 a.m. ETBERLIN — When the director Paul Greengrass was gearing up to make his new film, “News of the World,” about a Civil War veteran in 1870s Texas who escorts an orphaned girl to her relatives across the state, he was anticipating one major challenge. “This is the first film I made with a child actor at the heart of it,” he said recently by phone.The casting would be difficult on multiple levels, he realized. Although the character is onscreen for much of the movie, she has only a few lines of dialogue. Tom Hanks had already signed on as the lead, so she would have to go “toe to toe” with a superstar, Greengrass said. “It was a very, very hard ask.”One of the first children he saw during the casting in 2019, however, was Helena Zengel, a then 11-year-old from Berlin with a tomboyish energy and platinum hair. “She was the only person I really had to look at,” he said. “It was the easiest decision in the film.”Zengel on the set of “News of the World.”Credit…Bruce W. Talamon/Universal PicturesPaul Greengrass, center, the movie’s director.Credit…Bruce Talamon/Universal Pictures“News of the World,” which opened Dec. 25 in theaters in the United States and Canada, and will be available on Netflix in other countries from February, is an international breakthrough for Zengel, who has already become one of the most talked-about actors — let alone child actors — to emerge in Germany in recent years.She garnered widespread praise last year for her portrayal of a semi-feral 9-year-old in the movie “System Crasher,” which went on to be Germany’s official submission to the Academy Awards. That performance won her best actress this spring at the Lolas, Germany’s equivalent of the Oscars, making her the youngest recipient of that prize.In “News of the World,” Zengel’s character, Johanna Leonberger, is left orphaned after her German parents are violently murdered on their farm when she is four. Taken in and raised by the Kiowa tribe, she is later removed by soldiers, and a traveling veteran, played by Hanks, agrees to bring her to a surviving aunt and uncle.Zengel has received strong reviews for her performance, with critics praising her ability to imbue her defiant and alienated character with a sense of warmth and intelligence, and for channeling the emotional horrors of Johanna’s back story in near silence. Most of her lines are in Kiowa, a language she had to learn for the part.Zengel, left, and Tom Hanks in “News of the World.”Credit…Bruce Talamon/Universal PicturesSpeaking via Zoom recently, Ms. Zengel was far gigglier and chattier — which is to say, far more like a regular 12-year-old — than her recent roles might suggest. She said that, like most children in Germany, she had spent most of this year at home, and that she was currently quarantined because classmates had tested positive for the coronavirus.Before being cast in the film, she said, she had never heard of Hanks. “I think I’d seen the ‘Da Vinci Code’ before, but I didn’t know who he was,” she said. “I thought it was just some actor.”In an email, Hanks praised Zengel’s skill of performing “with no buildup, no apprehension and no self-consciousness,” and said he wished he had “her same ease, her simplicity.”Zengel said she had never taken an acting class, “because I’m not sure if there was much for me to learn.”“I stand in front of the camera, I know what I want, and I do it,” she said, matter-of-factly.This focus and willpower, her mother, Anne Zengel, explained, has been her daughter’s hallmark ever since she was a toddler. Her earliest forays into acting, at age 4, had emerged largely out of parental frustration, she said, because her daughter had “three times as much intensity” as other children and would act out if she was denied something she wanted.“She had to function in society, so we had to figure out how to redirect her energy,” she said.“The thing about acting is that you just need to do it, and as long as you’re happy with it, then you’re doing it right,” Zengel said.Credit…Katrin Streicher for The New York TimesShe enrolled Helena in ice-skating classes, and encouraged her to try acting. After a few small roles in German TV crime shows, as a bank robber’s daughter or a girl who falls from a bridge, she eventually landed a lead role in a German art-house film, “Dark Blue Girl,” at age 7.“At some point, the thing happened that I hoped would happen,” her mother said. “She was actually valued for being so intense.”In 2017, Zengel caught the attention of Nora Fingscheidt, the German director of “System Crasher,” a harrowing drama centered on a girl named Benni who is abused as a baby and abandoned by her mother, and who later lashes out at her caregivers and the society around her. The movie included a number of upsetting scenes, including of violence between children. In an interview, Fingscheidt said she needed a child actor who could convey Benni’s often terrifying physicality, while shouldering the psychological burden of the part.She was struck by Zengel’s “cinematographic quality, with almost translucent white skin, white hair that make her look like an angel, but with an ambivalence that is fascinating,” she said. During the child actor’s audition, in which she was asked to improvise a scene in which she “freaks out” by screaming and throwing things, Fingscheidt said that she was drawn in by the way her “eyes sparkled when I told her she could behave as badly as she wanted.”To help Zengel distinguish herself from her traumatized character, Fingscheidt said, the two would mime a little scene once shooting was over, with the director holding her hand like a shower head and the child actor pretending to wash underneath it, to indicate her transition back to herself. Zengel also wrote a journal, to help her process her feelings, the director added.Zengel said the experience of making “System Crasher” helped her prepare for her role as Johanna, which she conceded was “not as extreme.”“News of the World” was released in movie theaters in the United States and Canada on Dec. 25; it will be available on Netflix in other countries from February.Credit…Bruce Talamon/Universal PicturesNow Zengel is confronting the strange reality of international fame while being stuck at home, finishing seventh grade. This fall, Variety magazine selected her as one of its “actors to watch” and she said she had received offers for other roles in recent months, but that she was waiting until the pandemic subsided before making any decisions.She said she was open to moving to the United States, though her mother said she was intent on her daughter having a normal childhood, and that she was comforted by Germany’s comparatively low-key celebrity culture.“The thing about acting is that you just need to do it, and as long as you’re happy with it, then you’re doing it right,” Zengel said. “Also, it’s very fun to run around and scream.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More