Actors and Actresses

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares179 Views

      in Theater

      Brooke Shields Has Worn Many Hats. Now She’s a Labor Boss.

      by

      The model-turned-actress-turned-businesswoman is the new president of Actors’ Equity. In an interview, she explained what she’s doing there.Brooke Shields has a new office. It’s empty, and she hasn’t figured out how she wants to furnish it, or even how often she’ll be there, but it’s a sign of her new and unexpected status, as president of Actors’ Equity Association, the labor union representing theater actors and stage managers in the United States.Shields’s candidacy was a surprise, even to herself. But when Kate Shindle, who had led the union for nine years, announced in April that she was stepping down, Shields’s music director suggested she consider the opening, and soon enough, she had tossed her hat in the ring, and in May she won the vote by members, defeating two more-seasoned labor activists. She’s already led her first meeting of the union’s council, and came away realizing she has a lot to learn, starting with parliamentary procedure.Shields, of course, is one of those people who has been famous for so long, and in so many ways, that even she can’t remember a different time. She was a childhood model, a preteen movie star, a sex object and an icon of beauty, all before she went off to college (Princeton, thank you very much). In the years since, she has acted onscreen and onstage, has written books, has spoken widely, particularly about depression, and has become a symbol and a subject for an evolving discussion about how women and girls have been sexualized by the entertainment and fashion industries.Shields (center as Brent Barrett’s ventriloquist’s dummy at a 2006 anniversary party) has had five roles on Broadway, including playing Roxie Hart in “Chicago.” Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesShe has had five roles on Broadway, each time replacing a principal in an already-running show (“Grease,” “Chicago,” “Cabaret,” “Wonderful Town” and “The Addams Family”). She has also performed occasionally at regional theaters (“The Exorcist” at the Geffen in Los Angeles, for example) and Off Broadway (in the star vehicles “Love Letters,” “The Vagina Monologues,” and “Love, Loss, and What I Wore,” among others).Now, at 59, she is thinking a lot about middle age. She is recovering from a foot surgery that attracted attention when she wore Crocs (yellow, matching her dress) to the Tony Awards. She has just started a new beauty business, Commence, with hair-care products developed for women over 40; she is writing another book, also aging-focused; and she is seeking new ways to harness the celebrity she can never shed. That’s where Equity comes in — she says actors and stage managers were extraordinarily supportive of her when she needed to jump quickly into an unfamiliar show. Now she wants to give back.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 150 Shares99 Views

      in Television

      Martin Mull, Comic Actor Who Starred in ‘Mary Hartman,’ Dies at 80

      by

      Mr. Mull was also known for his roles in “Clue,” “Roseanne” and “Veep.”Martin Mull, the comedic actor, musician and artist who gained widespread attention in the 1970s in shows such as “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman” and “Fernwood 2-Night,” and remained active in television and film over the next half-century, died on Thursday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 80.His wife, Wendy Mull, confirmed his death. He died after a long illness, his family said. No cause was given.In “Mary Hartman,” Mr. Mull played Garth Gimble, a domestic abuser who met his demise by being impaled on the star atop an aluminum Christmas tree.He starred in the show’s subsequent spinoff, “Fernwood 2-Night,” a parody of talk shows that aired in 1977. He played the talk-show host Barth Gimble, the twin brother of Garth Gimble.The actors Fred Willard, Martin Mull and Frank De Vol on “Fernwood 2-Night” in 1977.Everett Collection“With an undistinguished blond mustache, which may or may not be intended as a joke, Barth copes manic‐depressively with a shaky job situation and some hazy allegations about charges pending against him in Florida,” John J. O’Connor of The New York Times wrote in a review in 1977 of the show’s opening week. “Barth will say only that his lawyer thinks he has ‘a pretty darn good case for entrapment.’”He was also known for his roles in “Clue” (1985) and the television shows “Roseanne” and “Arrested Development.” He also played the character Bob Bradley, an aide to the main character in the political sitcom “Veep.”More recently, Mr. Mull appeared in the Fox television series “The Cool Kids,” about a group of rule-breaking friends living in a retirement community.Martin E. Mull was born on Aug. 18, 1943, in Chicago to Harold and Betty Mull. He earned degrees from the Rhode Island School of Design. His work appeared in gallery shows and in the Whitney and Metropolitan museums.In addition to his wife, he is survived by a daughter, Maggie Mull.In a 2018 interview with The Times, he described his approach to his art as “going back and finding old Life and Look magazines, people’s family photos and things like that, and then I collage from those, make my own images and then paint them.”A full obituary will follow.Alain Delaquérière More

    • 113 Shares179 Views

      in Movies

      The Voices of A.I. Are Telling Us a Lot

      by

      What does artificial intelligence sound like? Hollywood has been imagining it for decades. Now A.I. developers are cribbing from the movies, crafting voices for real machines based on dated cinematic fantasies of how machines should talk.Last month, OpenAI revealed upgrades to its artificially intelligent chatbot. ChatGPT, the company said, was learning how to hear, see and converse in a naturalistic voice — one that sounded much like the disembodied operating system voiced by Scarlett Johansson in the 2013 Spike Jonze movie “Her.”ChatGPT’s voice, called Sky, also had a husky timbre, a soothing affect and a sexy edge. She was agreeable and self-effacing; she sounded like she was game for anything. After Sky’s debut, Johansson expressed displeasure at the “eerily similar” sound, and said that she had previously declined OpenAI’s request that she voice the bot. The company protested that Sky was voiced by a “different professional actress,” but agreed to pause her voice in deference to Johansson. Bereft OpenAI users have started a petition to bring her back. More

    • 138 Shares129 Views

      in Theater

      Jeremy O. Harris’s ‘Slave Play’ Documentary Is Fueled by Experimental Films

      by

      The playwright Jeremy O. Harris’s “Slave Play. Not a Movie. A Play.” wears its intellectual references on its sleeve.Jeremy O. Harris’s new documentary — titled “Slave Play. Not A Movie. A Play.” — is ostensibly focused on acting students rehearsing scenes from his provocative “Slave Play,” which was nominated in 2020 for 12 Tony Awards.That’s only the beginning.The documentary, which is streaming on Max, becomes an examination of Harris’s artistic influences and why he wants his play to be seen solely as a work of theater. Part of the strategy is calling back to hallmark experimental documentaries.The playwright Jeremy O. Harris, left, providing feedback to acting students who are rehearsing “Slave Play.”HBO“It’s really important to pay homage to these figures who are just now starting to really get the celebration they deserve, but also opened the door for me to do what I’m doing,” Harris said in an interview.Here are some of the references that informed “Slave Play. Not A Movie. A Play.”:‘Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One’“Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One” is a movie about making a movie about directing a screen test.Janus FilmsUnderstanding the premise of this making-of-the-making-of documentary requires some investment.On its first layer, “Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One” (1968) is a screen test filmed in Central Park. On the next, it’s a movie about William Greaves directing the screen test. And then it’s a movie about making a movie about directing a screen test.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in Television

      Bill Cobbs, ‘Bodyguard’ and ‘Night at the Museum’ Actor, Dies at 90

      by

      Mr. Cobbs was not a household Hollywood name, but his face was one anyone who watched TV or movies over the past several decades could recognize.Bill Cobbs, a prolific character actor whose half-century career bloomed while he was middle-aged and ranged from “Sesame Street” to “The Sopranos” to “Night at the Museum,” died on Tuesday at his home in the Inland Empire region of California. He was 90.His death was announced on social media by his brother, Thomas G. Cobbs, and confirmed by his agent, Carmela Evangelista. No cause was given.Mr. Cobbs was not a Hollywood star, but his face was one anyone who watched TV or movies over the past several decades could recognize. He appeared in more than 200 films and television shows and was also a prominent theater actor.Born Wilbert Francisco Cobbs in Cleveland, Mr. Cobbs spent eight years working as a radar technician in the Air Force, where he started doing standup comedy, he said in a 2012 interview with the podcast “Movie Geeks United.” He also worked at I.B.M. and as a car salesman.His experience in the Ossie Davis play “Purlie Victorious,” a comedy about a Black preacher’s efforts to reclaim his hometown church, had an especially profound effect on his career.“That play taught me that there were a lot of things I could say in theater, on the stage and in movies and in television, that were very important, that were meaningful things, that in addition to being a means of entertaining people and touching them in different ways, there were things you could say related to the human condition,” he said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      The Long, Strange Road to Alec Baldwin’s Manslaughter Trial

      by

      On the afternoon of Oct. 21, 2021, Mary Carmack-Altwies, the district attorney for New Mexico’s First Judicial District, was driving along a lonely stretch of the mountain highway connecting Santa Fe and Taos when her cell service abruptly returned and her phone started pinging — message after message. She pulled over to the side of the road and began scrolling: Alec Baldwin had accidentally shot two people on a movie set in her jurisdiction. Carmack-Altwies had planned to spend the next couple of days alone in the mountains before celebrating her 43rd birthday with her wife, a retired investigator for the state, and their two children. Clearly that was not going to happen.Listen to this article, read by Pete SimonelliThe shooting occurred at 1:46 p.m. that day at the Bonanza Creek Ranch, a family-owned Old West movie set about 20 miles southeast of Santa Fe that had been rented out by “Rust,” an independent film that Baldwin was both starring in and producing. The bullet he inadvertently fired passed through the upper body of the film’s cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, and lodged near the spine of Joel Souza, the director. Souza was taken by ambulance to a hospital in Santa Fe; Hutchins was airlifted to a trauma center in Albuquerque and died a short time later.Carmack-Altwies was nearing the end of her first year in office. She had been an assistant district attorney specializing in violent crimes when her boss made a bid for Congress. She ran to succeed him — her first foray into electoral politics — and won easily, inheriting a jurisdiction that covers three counties: Los Alamos, Rio Arriba and Santa Fe. She’s a Democrat in a Democratic district, though the label connotes something very different in New Mexico, a rural hunting state whose voters tend to place a high value on the Second Amendment, than it does in, say, New York or California. Carmack-Altwies turned around and went back to her office in Santa Fe, where she spent most of the night on the phone with the local police, trying to make sure that the movie set, now a potential crime scene, was properly secured. In the days that followed, reporters from all over the world descended on Santa Fe. Carmack-Altwies held her first news conference about the incident six days later outside the Sheriff’s Department. She was asked if she intended to prosecute anyone. “I do not make rash decisions, and I do not rush to judgment,” she said. “All options are on the table at this point.”Bonanza Creek Ranch, the movie set where Alec Baldwin fatally shot the cinematographer Halyna Hutchins with a prop gun in October 2021, leading to his indictment on charges of involuntary manslaughter.Roberto E. Rosales/Albuquerque Journal, via ZUMA/AlamyWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Movies

      Jonathan Majors Is Cast in First Movie Role Since Assault Conviction

      by

      Mr. Majors, who was sentenced to a year of domestic violence programming and was dropped by Marvel, is set to star in the independent thriller “Merciless.”Jonathan Majors will lead a feature film for the first time since he was found guilty of assaulting and harassing his girlfriend, a conviction that doomed a lucrative contract with Marvel Studios and imperiled his status as one of the fastest-rising stars in Hollywood.Mr. Majors, who starred in “Creed III” and “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” last year, has been cast in “Merciless,” a supernatural thriller about a C.I.A. interrogator out for revenge. The movie will be directed by Martin Villeneuve and produced by Christopher Tuffin, an executive producer of the films “Sound of Freedom” and “Peppermint.”Mr. Tuffin said he believed in second chances and had decided to work with Mr. Majors because he was a “generational talent.”“We live in a culture that treats people as disposable, on both sides,” he said. “I believe that this matter has been adjudicated in the courts and he has a right to go back to his career.”A representative for Mr. Majors declined to comment.Mr. Majors was convicted of a reckless assault misdemeanor and a harassment violation in December, months after an altercation inside an S.U.V. that his girlfriend Grace Jabbari said turned violent. He was acquitted of two other charges that required prosecutors to prove he had acted with intent.A judge sentenced Mr. Majors to 52 weeks of domestic violence programming.In court testimony, Ms. Jabbari said she and Mr. Majors had gotten into an argument in Manhattan while they were dating. She said that he had twisted her arm and that she subsequently felt “a really hard blow across my head.” Mr. Majors did not testify but through his lawyer and in an interview on “Good Morning America,” he disputed Ms. Jabbari’s account and denied assaulting her.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 113 Shares199 Views

      in Movies

      Kevin Costner’s ‘Horizon’ Is Debuting Friday. Will Audiences Follow?

      by

      To make “Horizon,” he put his own money on the line and left “Yellowstone,” the series that revived his career — all with little Hollywood support.Oh, to have the self-confidence of Kevin Costner.There are few actors in the final chapter of their career who would turn down a consistent $1 million-an-episode payday to pursue the vagaries of the Wild West. Yet there are few actors who are as single-minded as Costner.For the 69-year old star and director, who has made a career of taking the road less traveled, has embarked on what many would call a foolhardy quest to turn his long-percolating story of the settling of the West post-Civil War into four theatrical films. It’s an endeavor he’s undertaking without the true support of Hollywood: No legacy studio wanted to finance his sprawling epic. And it’s one that comes at great personal cost, both financially, with Costner investing $38 million of his own money, and professionally, with his commitment to the films causing a schism with the producers of “Yellowstone,” the television franchise that revitalized his career.There is no guarantee his grand experiment will succeed. “Horizon: An American Saga — Chapter 1” is set to debut Friday. And in an unprecedented move, “Chapter 2” will hit theaters less than two months later, on Aug. 16. Both features cost in the $100 million range. Warner Bros. is releasing the films in the United States, Canada and some international territories in a service deal calling for Costner to pay for the marketing costs while collaborating with the studio on the creation of the marketing materials. (Warner Bros., according to a representative who was not permitted to speak on the record, has a small financial stake in the production of the first two films.) The deal’s structure means that should the movies backfire, there will be little financial downside for the studio but much risk for Costner himself.Abbey Lee, left, with Costner, in the first of four films envisioned by the star-director.Richard Foreman/Warner Bros.But as he has put it, letting go was never an option. He first commissioned the script back in 1988. He almost made it with Disney, but the two parties couldn’t agree on a budget and the movie didn’t go forward. Then, instead of retooling one movie to fit the parameters of potential buyers, he and the screenwriter Jon Baird turned it into four. To partly finance the films, he mortgaged a 10-acre piece of undeveloped coastline in Santa Barbara that he’s owned since 2006.“It’s hard to fall out of love for me. I don’t do that,” he told journalists during the online debut of his teaser trailer in February, and added, “There’s a lot of people out there that know I’m a little bit of a hard-head or something. When no one wanted to make the first one, I got the bright idea to make four. So I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” (Costner declined to be interviewed for this story.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More