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      Playing a British Rogue, With Added Firepower

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      Daniel Ings has built a career playing charming, posh men. His latest role is a chaotic aristocrat in Guy Ritchie’s series “The Gentlemen.”In the first episode of Guy Ritchie’s new Netflix series “The Gentlemen,” a British aristocrat is forced to dress up in a chicken suit and dance on camera at the pleasure of a gangster to whom he owes money. He flaps his arms wildly, thrusts his head forward and crows at the top of his voice, as tears stream down his face.The man in the costume is Daniel Ings, an actor whose face people might recognize more than his name. He is best known for playing Luke, a lovable womanizer on the sitcom “Lovesick,” but he has also appeared in many other television roles that fit a certain archetype: the charming, posh British man, who is a bit of a cad.In “The Crown,” he played a roguish friend of Prince Philip; he was the unreliable father of Dr. Jean Milburn’s baby on “Sex Education” and the resentful husband on Lucy Prebble’s “I Hate Suzie.”“I probably should show some range at some point,” Ings, 38, joked in a recent interview at a London hotel. But he enjoyed playing “the cheeky chappy,” he said, as well as the challenge of transforming characters who, on paper, seem quite unlikable into endearing onscreen presences. When Ings reads a script that frames his prospective role as a villain, he said, he thinks, “I bet I can find something childlike, something fun in there.”To play Freddy in “The Gentlemen,” Ings brought this approach to what might be his most reprehensible character yet. The arrogant, drug-addled eldest son of a duke, Freddy is passed over in his father’s will in favor of his younger brother, Eddie (Theo James), who discovers organized criminals running an enormous weed farm underneath the family estate.Ings as Freddy Horniman, wearing a chicken suit, in “The Gentlemen.”Christopher Rafael/NetflixFreddy is passed over in his father’s will in favor of his younger brother, who discovers that organized criminals are running an enormous weed farm under the family’s estate.NetflixWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Drake Bell Will Detail Abuse He Suffered as a Child Star

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      The former Nickelodeon actor is set to describe sexual abuse he experienced at the hands of a former dialogue coach, according to a new docuseries. Court documents detail the back story.Jared Drake Bell, a former star of the hit Nickelodeon series “Drake & Josh,” will speak publicly about abuse he suffered at the hands of a 41-year-old dialogue coach when he was 15, according to the network airing a new docuseries about the grimmer aspects of children’s television.Mr. Bell, now 37, will describe his relationship with the dialogue coach, Brian Peck, who pleaded no contest in 2004 to two felonies: oral copulation with a minor, and lewd and lascivious acts with a child, according to public records.Mr. Peck was sentenced to 16 months in prison and registered as a sex offender in California, according to state records. Before entering his pleas, he worked in children’s television for years, including on hit Nickelodeon shows like “All That.”Mr. Bell could not be reached for comment and a trailer released by Investigation Discovery, which produced the docuseries, coming out March 17, “Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV,” did not contain any details of his account. But a transcript of Mr. Peck’s sentencing hearing in 2004 quotes the victim, who is not identified, as saying, “I have to live with this for the rest of my life. And let me tell you, it’s horrific.”Attempts to reach Mr. Peck were also not successful. In the transcript, Mr. Peck said he felt “deep and profound remorse” for his actions and took responsibility for them. He said he found the victim to be an “extremely talented” working professional who he considered “equal to me and my friends.”In court records reviewed by The New York Times, prosecutors said Mr. Peck sexually abused the teenager over a period of four months in 2001 and 2002. Mr. Peck was 41 and the victim was identified as being 15 years old.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Mark Dodson, Voice of ‘Star Wars’ and ‘Gremlins’ Characters, Dies at 64

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      He voiced Salacious B. Crumb, the monkey-lizard pet of Jabba the Hutt in “Return of the Jedi,” as well as Mogwai in both “Gremlins” films.Mark Dodson, who voiced strange puppet creatures in “Star Wars,” including Salacious B. Crumb, the cackling monkey-lizard pet of Jabba the Hutt, and “Gremlins” films, died on Saturday. He was 64.His death was confirmed in statements on social media by his agent, Peter DeLorme, and the Evansville Horror Con, the Indiana fan convention where he had been scheduled to appear over the weekend. No cause of death was given.Mr. Dodson’s voice acting career began in 1983 on “Star Wars: Return of the Jedi,” when he voiced Salacious B. Crumb, the court jester of Jabba the Hutt that was known for its maniacal laugh, as well as some of the furry forest creatures known as Ewoks.In a 2020 interview with “Screaming Soup!,” Mr. Dodson explained how he had gotten the Crumb role by accident.He was auditioning for Adm. Ackbar, a leader during the Clone Wars, but was so nervous that he asked for a break to compose himself, he said. He was then overheard using a deranged voice that the casting director thought was perfect for Crumb.That led Mr. Dodson to voice several of the Mogwai in “Gremlins,” the 1984 comedy-horror film about a young man who accidentally unleashes a horde of malevolently mischievous monsters on a small town on Christmas Eve.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Kate Winslet on ‘The Regime’ and Resilience In Hollywood

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      Kate Winslet was standing in front of a microphone, breathing hard. Sometimes she did it fast; sometimes she slowed it down. Sometimes the breathing sounded anxious; other times, it was clearly the gasping of someone who was winded. Before beginning a new take, Winslet stood stock still, hands opening and closing at her sides; she looked like a gymnast about to bound into a floor routine. Every breath seemed high-stakes, even though she was well into a long day of recording in a dim, windowless studio in London. Listen to this article, read by Kirsten PotterOpen this article in the New York Times Audio app on iOS.Winslet was adding grace notes to scenes of herself in “The Regime,” a dark satire created by Will Tracy, a writer and producer on “Succession,” that began airing on Max in early March. Winslet plays Elena Vernham, a dictator ruling precariously over an imaginary Central European country, and she was in the studio rerecording (as is common practice) lines that needed improving, including snippets of Elena’s propaganda: “Even if the protests happening in Westgate were real, which they are not” and “He’s still out there, working with the global elite to destroy everything we’ve built.” Sometimes Winslet laughed out loud after delivering a line, and sometimes she fell completely silent, absorbed in watching a scene of herself with her new recording looped in. “God, she’s such an awful, awful cow,” she said at one point, sounding appalled but also a little awed. The part of Elena, a despot on the verge of a nervous breakdown, is a departure for Winslet, who has chosen, over the course of her career, a wide range of characters who have in common an intrinsic power. Elena is erratic and grasping, with a facade of strength that covers up a sinkhole of oozing insecurity. Winslet gave a lot of thought to how Elena would sound: She chose a high, tight voice, the sound of someone disconnected from the feelings that reside deep in the body. Elena has the slightest of speech impediments, a strange move she makes with her mouth, a hand that flies to her cheek when she is under real stress — those tells are her answer to King Richard’s hump, the body politic deformed. Onscreen, as Elena, Winslet is coifed and practically corseted into form-fitting skirt suits, with lacquered fake nails. The day she was recording, in early January, Winslet might have been any woman at the office: blond hair, a hint of roots starting to show, jeans of no particular timely style that she occasionally tugged up from the waist, a black V-neck sweater she occasionally pulled down at the hem. It’s only when you look directly at her, face to face, that you see the extraordinary — the dark blue eyes, the beauty marks (not one, but two), the elaborately curved mouth.As Winslet recorded, Stephen Frears, one of the show’s two directors, guided Winslet with considerable understatement from his seat across the room: a half-nod here, a thumbs-up there. “Was that all right, Stephen?” Winslet called over after one take; she peered over in his direction, expectant, obedient, professional. Frears, who directed “The Queen” and “Dangerous Liaisons,” among others, was silent, with his eyes closed, his head back. Winslet and a few members of the production team waited for his approval. As the moment stretched on, it seemed that Frears was not deep in thought but deep in sleep. Winslet appeared to register a brief moment of surprise, then smiled and moved on — all right, no problem. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Sarayu Blue Is Pristine on ‘Expats’ but ‘Such a Little Weirdo’ IRL

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      Blue performs alongside Nicole Kidman in the Prime Video series, but when she’s not working, she said, “I genuinely love just sitting somewhere and getting lost in a daydream.”Sarayu Blue describes Hilary Starr, the affluent professional she plays in the Prime Video series “Expats,” as sharp. Very sharp.“Hilary is somebody who presents herself in a very pristine manner,” Blue said of her character, who lives with her lawyer husband in Hong Kong. “She has a very specific and controlled way of handling her life. She likes her makeup put together, and her wardrobe is very neutral and tight and sleek.”“And then what’s really cool about the show is you get to see just how that sharpness starts to fragment and what happens as it falls apart,” she added.Set in 2014 amid pro-democracy protests in the city, “Expats” focuses on three American women, played by Blue, Ji-young Yoo and Nicole Kidman.“Before you get into it, you’re sort of like, ‘Oh my god, I’m about to work with Nicole [expletive] Kidman,’” Blue recalled. But she quickly got a grip, as Hilary would have.“What Nicole really brings to the table is she’s in it with you,” Blue said. “She doesn’t want to create any pomp and circumstance around the actual work.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Josh Brolin Never Thought He’d End Up in Malibu

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      How the “Dune” actor made a home in a place he once resisted.IN HIS EARLY 20s, long before he became a leading man, Josh Brolin took a writing class taught by the American Beat poet Allen Ginsberg. One of the assignments was to create an evocative phrase by combining two words. A fellow student came up with “Tylenol Christ”; Brolin, an enthusiastic storyteller, had trouble being that succinct. The experience has been on the actor’s mind recently as he finishes his forthcoming memoir, a mix of stories, anecdotes and poems scheduled to come out this fall. In a recently completed essay, he describes chasing a flock of sheep with two of his children when they were young on Scotland’s remote Isle of Skye. (His son, Trevor, and eldest daughter, Eden, both from his first marriage to the actress Alice Adair, are now 36 and 31.) To their horror, one of the fleeing animals broke its back. “It’s about what had to transpire for the next hour,” says Brolin, 56, from his writing hut in Malibu, Calif., a gift from his wife of nearly eight years, the photographer Kathryn Boyd Brolin, 37, who modeled it after ones used by the Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw and the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas. “It’s the clearest, most emotional thing I’ve written.”The actor gives a tour of his guesthouse and Airstream trailer in Malibu, Calif.Megan LovalloBrolin looks and presents like a modern-day cowboy. He was raised 200 miles up the Pacific Coast on a horse ranch in Paso Robles and inherited that property (which he sold in 2004 and bought back in 2010) from his mother, the wildlife conservationist Jane Cameron Agee, who died in a car accident the day after his 27th birthday. Although his father, the actor James Brolin, relocated to Malibu, where he now lives with his wife, Barbra Streisand, Brolin had always rejected the seaside community as a place for, as he puts it, celebrities “trying not to be seen as they’re trying to be seen.” He prefers the lawless energy of nearby Venice, in Los Angeles, where he’s been renting a beachfront apartment for almost 15 years. But in 2011, Brolin, who frequently looks at online real estate listings in bed, came across a 2,400-square-foot bungalow on one and a half acres in a part of Malibu once known as Poor Point. With money he made from “Men in Black 3” (2012), he bought the charmingly rundown four-bedroom house, which spoke, he says, to his “misfit, outcast mentality,” from the musician Jakob Dylan. Brolin, who also has a home in Atlanta, rented it out for years.Brolin’s Airstream trailer is furnished with a trefoil table by Herman Studio for Form & Refine and decorated with wallpaper by Anna Hayman Designs and custom pillows by Pierce & Ward.Ryan James CaruthersIn the guesthouse’s kitchen, a custom range hood in unlacquered brass with walnut accents and a 1960s Bijou desk lamp by Louis Kalff for Philips.Ryan James CaruthersIn 2018, he and Kathryn, who once worked as his assistant, decided to fix up the place and live there themselves. When the minimalist style of the first designer they hired didn’t align with Brolin’s vision — “Neutral makes no sense to me at all,” he says — Kathryn suggested they reach out to Louisa Pierce and Emily Ward, known professionally as Pierce & Ward. (Coincidentally, it was Ward’s partner, the actor Giovanni Ribisi, who had nearly outbid Brolin to buy the house.) The duo understood Brolin’s taste for what he calls “nutty kaleidoscope” and “Old World European busyness”: The walls of the residence are painted or papered in powdery colors, floral motifs and stripes; a playroom for the couple’s two daughters — Westlyn, 5, and Chapel, 3 — has been made to resemble the berth of a ship; the living and dining rooms are decorated with worn leather armchairs, creaky wooden tables and sun-faded kilim rugs. Except for the fake Academy Award in a closet that they use as a wet bar — and Brolin’s casual mentions of “Clooney’s place in the South of France” and “Momoa’s hundred motorcycles” — there’s barely any suggestion of Hollywood. “I was so in their face in the beginning [of the renovation],” he says about Pierce and Ward. “I’d send them hundreds of photographs. And then I thought, ‘The more I try to affect this whole thing, the worse it’s going to get.’ So I backed off.”Jay Miriam’s “The French Girls” (2019) hangs in the guesthouse’s pool table room.Ryan James CaruthersIn the living room, Holmes’s “Behind Golden Bars 2” (2021).Ryan James CaruthersWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Richard Lewis, Comedian and ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ Actor, Dies at 76

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      After rising to prominence for his stand-up act, he became a regular in movies and TV, most recently on “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”Richard Lewis, the stand-up comedian who first achieved fame in the 1970s and ’80s with his trademark acerbic, dark sense of humor, and who later parlayed that quality into an acting career that included movies like “Robin Hood: Men in Tights” and a recurring role as himself on HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” died on Tuesday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 76.His publicist, Jeff Abraham, said the cause was a heart attack. Mr. Lewis announced last year that he had Parkinson’s disease.Mr. Lewis was among the best-known names in a generation of comedians who came of age during the 1970s and ’80s, marked by a world-weary, sarcastic wit that mapped well onto the urban malaise in which many of them plied their trade.After finding success as a comedian in New York nightclubs, he became a regular on late-night talk shows, favored as much for his tight routine as for his casual, open affability as an interviewee. He appeared on “Late Night With David Letterman” 48 times.And he was at the forefront of the boom in stand-up comedy that came with the expansion of cable television in the late 1980s.Mr. Lewis performing as a standup in Las Vegas in 2005. He called himself “the Prince of Pain.” Ethan Miller/Getty ImagesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Micheline Presle, Actress Known for ‘Devil in the Flesh,’ Dies at 101

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      A link to France’s first golden age of cinema, she drew international attention for a 1947 film that created a scandal in France and was banned in Britain for years.Micheline Presle, a subtle and elegant actress who was a last link to the first golden age of French cinema, died on Feb. 21 in Nogent-sur-Marne, a suburb of Paris. She was 101.Her death, at the Maison des Artistes, a retirement home for artists partly funded by the government, was confirmed by her son-in-law, Olivier Bomsel.Ms. Presle (pronounced prell) was the final survivor of a trio of actresses — Danièlle Darrieux and Michèle Morgan were the other two — who were already stars in France by the outbreak of World War II, and who defined a certain style of French femininity, both at home and abroad. Ms. Presle’s subtle facial expressions conjured a wide range of human emotions, particularly in two films that, by critical consent, she never surpassed, “Le Diable au Corps,” or “Devil in the Flesh” (1947), and “Boule de Suif” (1945).A poster for “Le Diable au Corps,” known in English as “Devil in The Flesh,” featuring Ms. Presle and Gerard Philipe. The film was, one critic said, “the major work of her career.”Everette CollectionBoth of those films were based on masterpieces of French literature: The first was adapted from a novel by the brilliant but short-lived author Raymond Radiguet; the second from two short stories by Guy de Maupassant. These subtle and complex tales drew on Ms. Presle’s versatility.“Le Diable au Corps” depicted the passionate affair between a young woman, played by Ms. Presle, whose husband was away fighting in the trenches in World War I, and a teenage schoolboy, played by the very young Gérard Philipe, who during his brief career was both France’s leading heartthrob and its greatest actor.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