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      Nehemiah Persoff, Actor With a Familiar Face (and Voice), Dies at 102

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      His most prominent roles included three tenderly caring parents, but he was most associated with the dapper gangsters he portrayed in the movies and on television.Nehemiah Persoff, a ubiquitous character actor whose gravelly voice and knack for conveying an air of menace magnified his portrayals of a bevy of sinister types, most notably a half-dozen Prohibition-era gangsters, died on Tuesday in San Luis Obispo, Calif. He was 102. The cause was heart failure, his grandson, Joey Persoff, said.For decades Mr. Persoff was one of most recognizable faces on television, by face if not by name; he was seen on hundreds of shows, beginning in the late 1940s. He usually played a supporting character, sometimes kindly, sometimes malevolent, but, given his gift for dialect, frequently with an undefined foreign accent.He appeared on such durable series of the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s as “Gunsmoke,” “The Twilight Zone,” “Route 66,” “Gilligan’s Island,” “Mission: Impossible,” “Hawaii Five-O” and “Columbo,” and he continued into the 1990s, with parts on “Law & Order” and “Chicago Hope.”Mr. Persoff, a native of Jerusalem who emigrated to the United States when he was 9, was in real life an amiable father of four who was married to the same woman for seven decades, and who in retirement became an accomplished painter.His most prominent roles included three tenderly caring parents: a Jewish refugee escaping the Nazis and hoping to reunite with his daughter in Havana in the 1976 film “Voyage of the Damned”; the father of an Orthodox Jewish girl in early-20th-century Poland who poses as a boy so that she can study in a yeshiva, in Barbra Streisand’s “Yentl” (1983); and the voice of the father of Fievel Mousekewitz, the Russian Jewish mouse who emigrates to the United States to escape marauding cats, in the 1986 animated feature “An American Tail” and its sequels.Yet he was most associated with the dapper gangsters he portrayed in the movies and on television. He was the underworld boss Johnny Torrio in the 1959 film “Al Capone,” which starred Rod Steiger in the title role. In the TV series “The Untouchables,” he played two different real-life gangsters: Jake Guzik, the financial brains of Capone’s bootleg liquor gang, in a few episodes, and Waxey Gordon, New York’s king of illicit beer, in a 1960 episode in which he gleefully aimed a Tommy gun into a competitor’s barrels.His most memorable supporting role may have been his outsize parody of a mobster, Little Bonaparte, in the classic Billy Wilder comedy “Some Like It Hot” (1959). Two of his lines from that movie are often quoted by film buffs.In one, addressing a mob gathering disguised as an opera lovers’ convention, he says: “In the last fiscal year we made a hundred an’ twelve million dollars before taxes … only we didn’t pay no taxes!”And after a hit man pops out of a huge birthday cake and machine-guns another mobster, played by George Raft, and his entourage, Mr. Persoff tells an inquiring detective, “There was something in that cake that didn’t agree with ’em.”Mr. Persoff as the real-life mobster Jake Guzik in a 1962 episode of the TV series “The Untouchables.” He portrayed the gangster Waxey Gordon in another episode.Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty ImagesMr. Persoff once said he loved working on “The Untouchables” because he could lock horns with Elliot Ness, the federal agent played with righteous hauteur by Robert Stack.“Bob Stack was so nose-in-the-air stuck up, he was so correct and superior, so aristocratic, that without any effort on my part it brought out the rebel in me,” he told the magazine Cinema Retro. “It struck a vein of anger in me, anger which in my mind is such an important part of what makes a gangster.”Nehemiah Persoff was born in Jerusalem on Aug. 2, 1919, during the years when the territory was transitioning from Ottoman rule to a British mandate. His father, Shmuel, a silversmith, jeweler and art teacher, decided that his prospects would improve in America and emigrated on his own. After six years he brought over his wife, Puah (Holman) Persoff, a homemaker, and his three sons and two daughters.It was the start of the Depression, and the family lived in a cold-water flat in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, though they eventually moved to the Bronx.Nehemiah attended the Hebrew Technical Institute to study the electrician’s trade, and his first job was as a signal maintenance worker on the old IND subway line. It paid him $38 a week, more than his father earned.His introduction to acting happened by chance: He was asked to perform a walk-on in a play that was the highlight of a Zionist organization’s function. The experience planted a notion, and after completing three years in the stateside Army, he took a leave from subway work and began studying acting.Mr. Persoff was among the first students at the Actors Studio, where his teachers were Elia Kazan and Lee Strasberg, proponents of method acting. His fellow students included Julie Harris, Martin Balsam, Cloris Leachman and Kim Hunter.His first bit part was in the 1948 film noir “Naked City,” but it was another small part that brought him to widespread attention: He was the silent cabdriver in the memorable taxi scene in “On the Waterfront” (1954). His face appears briefly after one of film lore’s most famous conversations, when Marlon Brando tells Rod Steiger: “I could’ve had class, I could’ve been a contender. I could’ve been a somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am.”Mr. Persoff was usually cast in small supporting parts, but he often turned them into gems of characterization. One was Leo, the crooked accountant, in Humphrey Bogart’s last picture, “The Harder They Fall” (1956). He coolly tells a furious Bogart that out of the $1 million gate for a championship fight, the story’s overmatched boxer will receive $49.07.In 1951, Mr. Persoff married Thia Persov, a distant relation who had been a nurse with the Palmach, a Zionist military group, during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. She died of cancer last year. In addition to his grandson, Mr. Persoff is survived by three sons, Jeffrey, Dan and Perry; a daughter, Dahlia; and four granddaughters. He lived in the town of Cambria on the central Californian coast.In Barbra Streisand’s “Yentl” (1983), Mr. Persofff played the father of an Orthodox Jewish girl (Ms. Streisand) who poses as a boy so that she can study in a yeshiva.United Archives GmbH / Alamy Stock PhotoWhile acting in Hollywood, Mr. Persoff kept his hand in live theater. In 1959, he starred on Broadway as the newspaper editor and essayist Harry Golden in a short-lived adaptation of Mr. Golden’s folksy book “Only in America.” It was the last of his more than a dozen Broadway appearances.In California, he starred as a cantankerous socialist in his 80s in the Herb Gardner comedy “I’m Not Rappaport” and as the milkman Tevye in “Fiddler on the Roof.” And for almost two decades he appeared as Tevye’s creator, the Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem, in a one-man show for which Mr. Persoff adapted five of the writer’s fables.In 1975, he was awarded the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award for his supporting role in “The Dybbuk” at the Mark Taper Forum.When high blood pressure and other health problems forced him to reduce his workload, Mr. Persoff took up painting, studying in Los Angeles and producing watercolors that have been exhibited in galleries in Northern California. He kept painting until the last week of his life. In 2021 he published a memoir, “The Many of Faces of Nehemiah.”Beyond dialects and accents, he had a telling philosophy about acting. “If I’m playing a good guy, I’ll try to show that he has some bad in him,” he once said. “If I’m playing a bad guy, I’ll give him some dignity and love.”Alex Traub contributed reporting. More

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      Late Night Celebrates Obama’s First White House Visit in Five Years

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      Stephen Colbert joked that he hoped “they locked the doors to keep him in.”Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.Obama in the HouseFormer President Barack Obama made his first return to the White House in five years on Tuesday.“Then, hopefully, they locked the doors to keep him in,” Stephen Colbert joked.“He was there to promote Obamacare and to get that pack of smokes he forgot in the Lincoln bedroom.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Former President Barack Obama today visited the White House, and out of habit, Jeanine Pirro called for his impeachment.” — SETH MEYERS“Yep, Obama said he would have visited sooner, but gas prices were too expensive.” — JIMMY FALLON“But it was fun to see the former president at the White House. Obama felt like a guy who was visiting his old high school, and Biden was like the old gym teacher who never left.” — JIMMY FALLON“It was great to see him today. It was like the ‘White Men Can’t Jump’ reunion at the Oscars.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Obama was there celebrating the 12-year anniversary of the Affordable Care Act, Obamacare, and also to help Joe set up his Roku.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“That’s really got to bother Trump. All these lies and schemes and lawsuits to get back to the White House, Obama just strolls right in there.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (On Bezos’ Grave Edition)“Over the weekend, workers at an Amazon fulfillment center in Staten Island were able to successfully unionize. It’s the first Amazon union. And the new president of the union said something funny. The president of the union said, ‘We want to thank Jeff Bezos for going to space, because when he was up there, we were signing people up.’” — JIMMY KIMMEL“This is great news. That is fantastic. And Amazon is now going all out to make sure it doesn’t happen again.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“The app essentially censors anything that’s controversial at Amazon, including the word ‘restroom,’ which, you know, may not be missed. Many Amazon workers are more familiar with the phrases ‘empty Powerade bottle’ or ‘on Bezos’ grave.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT, on Amazon’s new internal messaging app“So these are all words Amazon will not allow: ‘Unions,’ ‘strike,’ ‘wages,’ ‘restrooms,’ ‘pee bottles,’ ‘empty Dasani,’ ‘bladder infections,’ ‘happiness,’ ‘life outside of work,’ ‘home,’ ‘going home,’ ‘I think I live at home but can’t remember,’ ‘help,’ ‘help us,’ ‘penis rocket,’ ‘overcompensating,’ ‘dork,’ ‘space dork,’ ‘bald space dork,’ and ‘I want to have sex with Alexa.’” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Bits Worth WatchingOn Tuesday’s “Tonight Show,” Amanda Seyfried shared how she mastered Elizabeth Holmes’s falsified deep voice for “The Drop Out.”What We’re Excited About on Wednesday NightNicki Minaj will join James Corden for the return of “Carpool Karaoke” on Wednesday’s “Late Late Show.”Also, Check This OutTony Hawk, left, and Sam Jones as seen in Jones’s new documentary, “Tony Hawk: Until the Wheels Fall Off.”Sam Jones Pictures/HBO Documentary FilmsA new documentary about the professional skateboarder Tony Hawk explores his compulsion to continue skating at all costs. More

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      Ann Sarnoff, Warner Bros. Chief, Is Set to Leave

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      LOS ANGELES — Ann Sarnoff, the chief executive of the WarnerMedia Studios and Networks Group, will leave the company, with an announcement coming as soon as this week, three people briefed on the matter said.Ms. Sarnoff, who declined to comment, was chosen to lead Warner Bros. in 2019 despite limited Hollywood experience, becoming the first woman to hold the role. She is departing as WarnerMedia, a division of AT&T, is set to complete a merger with Discovery. Ms. Sarnoff’s boss, Jason Kilar, who has been chief executive of WarnerMedia since 2020, announced his exit on Tuesday.Like Mr. Kilar, Ms. Sarnoff found herself without a seat in the game of musical chairs that accompanies the merging of competing companies, said the people briefed on the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential information. The Warner Bros. Discovery management structure is still unknown, but David Zaslav, the chief executive of Discovery, who will run the new company, is expected to take over at least some of Ms. Sarnoff’s portfolio. She has had a dozen direct reports.Her job has involved oversight of HBO and HBO Max; the Warner Bros. movie and television studio; several cable channels, including TBS and TNT; and a large consumer products division. Breaking down the siloed nature of some of those units has been one of Ms. Sarnoff’s accomplishments.After news of her departure became public, Mr. Zaslav said in an email that Ms. Sarnoff had been “a passionate and committed steward,” leading “with integrity, focus and hard work in bringing WarnerMedia’s businesses, brands and work force closer together.” In an email of his own, Mr. Kilar called Ms. Sarnoff a “first-tier human being” and “the definition of a selfless leader.”Ms. Sarnoff’s job security has been the subject of Hollywood gossip for months, with agents and Warner-affiliated producers insisting that she was on her way out and some members of her team insisting the opposite. That kind of speculation can be deadly in show business, with whispers congealing into conventional wisdom, often resulting in an irrecoverable position of weakness in the view of Hollywood’s creative community.To be fair, Ms. Sarnoff, whip smart and affable, never got the opportunity to really do her job. The pandemic shut down the entertainment business roughly seven months after she started. AT&T, which hired her, decided to spin off WarnerMedia last May.Before joining WarnerMedia, Ms. Sarnoff held leadership roles at Nickelodeon, the Women’s National Basketball Association, Dow Jones and BBC America. More

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      June Brown, a Mainstay of Britain’s ‘EastEnders,’ Dies at 95

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      As the memorable Dot Cotton, she appeared in thousands of episodes of the hugely popular soap opera over 35 years.June Brown, who appeared in thousands of episodes of the British soap opera “EastEnders” across 35 years, portraying Dot Cotton, one of the more memorable residents of the fictional Albert Square, died on Sunday at her home in Surrey, near London. She was 95.Her death was announced on the show’s Twitter account. In one of many tributes shared by that account, Natalie Cassidy, another star of the show, called Ms. Brown “the best character actress ‘EastEnders’ has ever seen or will ever see.”Ms. Brown was classically trained at the Old Vic drama school and had a decent career in the theater until she and her second husband, Robert Arnold, whom she married in 1958, began having their six children.“Touring was difficult with children,” she told The Daily Telegraph of London in 1995, “so I did a great deal of television work. And, in 1985, ‘EastEnders’ and Dot came along.”Dot was the mother of the villainous Nick Cotton. Ms. Brown was originally contracted for three months.“Then I was asked if I wanted to be a permanent character,” she told The Express of Britain in 2020, the year her character was finally written out of the series. “I had no idea it was going to be for 30-odd years.”Ms. Brown, left, in an episode of “EastEnders” with, from left, Wendy Richard, Ian Lavender, James Alexandro and Natalie Cassidy. AFP/Getty ImagesIt turned out that audiences found Dot, a chain-smoking bundle of prejudices, oddly endearing. The Daily Telegraph, in the 1995 article, called her “the holy-rolling hypochondriac, one-woman moral majority of Albert Square.”Ms. Brown enjoyed creating a flawed character — so much so that in 1993, after playing Dot for eight years, she left the show when she felt the writers were dialing back some of Dot’s more objectionable characteristics.“In the early days Dot was a terrible racist,” Ms. Brown explained in the 1995 interview. “But she gradually became more and more politically correct, which was disastrous for the character and the program. It’s no good having a program that is supposed to reflect society but covers it all up and pretends that everything in the garden is lovely.”She returned in 1997. As the years rolled by, Dot continued to change, becoming less gossipy and more like the fictional world’s matriarch, and Ms. Brown was given some meaty story lines — a request from a friend for Dot’s help with euthanasia, for instance, and Nick’s death from a heroin overdose.A much-praised episode in 2008 was devoted solely to Ms. Brown, as Dot made a 30-minute tape recording for her comatose husband. The Observer called it “an absolutely brilliant 30 minutes of prime time — beautifully written, economically directed and faultlessly, movingly performed by June Brown.”Ms. Brown recently dealt with macular degeneration in real life, something that was incorporated into scripts. The character disappeared in 2020 without much fanfare — Dot moved to Ireland. The show’s producers said a return was always possible, but Ms. Brown wasn’t interested. “I’ve sent her off to Ireland and that’s where she’ll stay,” she said of Dot.In 2001, Ms. Brown and her fellow cast member Barbara Windsor were visited on the set of “EastEnders” by Queen Elizabeth II.Pool photo by Fiona Hanson“EastEnders” Twitter posts said she had appeared in 2,884 episodes.“There was nobody quite like June Brown,” Nadine Dorries, Britain’s culture minister, said on Twitter. “She captured the zeitgeist of British culture like no other in her many years on our screens.”June Muriel Brown was born on Feb. 16, 1927, in Suffolk, England, to Henry and Louisa (Butler) Brown. Her father owned an electrical engineering company, and her mother worked in a milliner’s shop.Ms. Brown’s childhood was marked by loss. A brother died in infancy. She was particularly close to an older sister, Marise, who died of an ear infection when June was 7, an event that affected her more deeply than her parents seemed to realize.“People weren’t concerned with psychology then,” Ms. Brown wrote in her autobiography, “Before the Year Dot” (2013). “Perhaps it was better because you learnt to survive without sympathy.”Ms. Brown grew up in Ipswich. A career in acting was not at all on her mind.“I once played the Virgin Mary at school,” she told The Daily Telegraph, “but only because my teacher thought I’d look lovely in blue.”During World War II she joined the Women’s Royal Naval Service — the Wrens — where one of her jobs was showing training films to airmen. She also performed in a touring revue that performed for troops.“We took it ’round the Southern Command area and I really enjoyed it,” she told The Independent in 2010. “I got laughs, and that was when the bug got me.”After the war she studied at the Old Vic and began appearing in plays. By the late 1950s she was turning up in roles on “ITV Television Playhouse” and similar TV programs. In the early 1970s she appeared in several episodes of “Coronation Street,” another long-running British soap.She credited Leslie Grantham, an original “EastEnders” cast member, with suggesting her for the role of Dot.“He’d seen me in an episode of ‘Minder,’” another British show, she told The Daily Mirror in 2003. “I’ll always be grateful to him.”A few dozen episodes into the series, Dot made her first appearance. At the 2005 British Soap Awards, Ms. Brown received a lifetime achievement honor for her work on the show. “EastEnders” has also been seen on various outlets in the United States for years.In 1950 Ms. Brown married John Garley, a fellow actor, who died in 1957. Her second husband, Mr. Arnold, also an actor, died in 2003. Her survivors include five children, Chloe, Naomi, Sophie, Louise and William. More

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      Louis C.K.’s Grammy Victory Leads to Backlash

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      Some comedians are questioning how the Recording Academy saw fit to bestow an award to someone who had admitted to sexual misconduct.“How was your last couple years?” the comedian Louis C.K. says to the audience on the first track to his album “Sincerely Louis CK.” “How was 2018 and 2019 for you guys? Anybody else get in global amounts of trouble?”Louis C.K. did, after he admitted, in 2017, to masturbating in front of women. Several said in interviews that he had done so without their consent; in a statement acknowledging the incidents, he claimed he had always asked first, but later realized that was insufficient since there were power differentials at play. For a short time he disappeared from public view, as a movie he directed and starred in was shelved and other deals dissolved in the early days of the #MeToo movement.But Louis C.K. returned to stand-up, first at comedy clubs and then at bigger venues, which often sold out. And on Sunday night he received a sign of support from the entertainment industry: “Sincerely Louis CK” — his first album since the scandal — won the Grammy for best comedy album.The album opens with the chants and wild applause of an audience.The response to his Grammy was less joyous. As his name trended on Twitter, many comedians, comedy fans and others wondered how the Recording Academy saw fit to bestow an award to someone with an admitted history of sexual misconduct.“Every woman who has been harassed and abused in the comedy business, I hear you and see you and I am so, so angry,” the podcast host Jesse Thorn, who interviews comedians, wrote, followed by several expletives.Female comics shared their own responses. Jen Kirkman posted a segment from her latest album, “OK, Gen-X,” in which she recounts her own encounter with Louis C.K. She had avoided talking about in detail previously, she explained in the bit, because of negative and threatening blowback. “I’ll forward you the rape threats I get after this,” she said.On Sunday, Kirkman reposted some messages from supporters of Louis C.K. who responded to her, often hatefully and in terms that diminished the experiences of assault survivors.The Australian performer Felicity Ward offered a lengthy list of mostly female comics “who’ve never sexually assaulted anyone. Follow, see, buy their stuff.”And the comedian Mona Shaikh wrote in The Hollywood Reporter that the award sent a troubling message. “The comedy establishment sends a dog whistle to sexual predators, forgiving their abusive actions as long as they offer a superficial apology (often drafted by their publicists) and go underground for a year or so,” she wrote. “After that, they can emerge and revive their careers.”Last fall, after the nomination of Louis C.K. and others like Marilyn Manson — who is facing an investigation over multiple sexual assault allegations — drew public ire, Harvey Mason Jr., the chief executive of the Recording Academy, defended the right to nominate anybody as long as they met the organization’s eligibility rules.“We won’t look back at people’s history, we won’t look at their criminal record, we won’t look at anything other than the legality within our rules of, is this recording for this work eligible based on date and other criteria,” he told the trade publication The Wrap. (Marilyn Manson was later removed from the nominations list as a songwriter on Kanye West’s track “Jail,” but remained eligible as one of West’s collaborators on “Donda,” which was up for album of the year.)Rather than weighing in on who could be nominated, Mason said the Grammys would instead draw a line around who was invited to the ceremony, held this year in Las Vegas. The comedy award was one of dozens presented in a ceremony that was held before the prime-time broadcast and was shown online only. Louis C.K. did not attend. Representatives for the Recording Academy did not return requests for comment.On the album, amid bits about religion, aging and sex, Louis C.K. addresses his misconduct a few times, mostly jokingly. “Man, I was in a lot of trouble,” he says in the opening. “Wait till they see those pictures of me in blackface. That’s going to make it a lot worse. Because there’s a lot of those, there’s thousands of pictures of me in blackface. I can’t stop doing it. I just — I like it. I like how it feels.”This trophy is the third Grammy for Louis C.K. in the comedy album category.The Recording Academy does not release details of how its more than 11,000 eligible members vote. Members are limited in the number of categories they may cast a vote in, as the academy tries to encourage them to vote in their various areas of expertise. The nominations process was tweaked for this year’s awards after complaints of secret agendas and uneven playing fields, and boycotts by major artists like the Weeknd.In recent years, the Recording Academy has also been roiled by accusations that it did not include or acknowledge enough women or people of color, and the organization has pledged to do better. But a report last month from the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative at the University of Southern California found that the number of women credited on pop songs has remained largely unchanged for a decade, and that a Grammy-led effort to hire more female producers and engineers did almost nothing.The comedy category has changed names and focus somewhat over the years as recorded comedy shifted from musical numbers to spoken word. Bill Cosby won the prize a record seven times; in 2012, one of his albums was also named to a Grammys Hall of Fame. In the 64-year history of the Grammys, women have been nominated more than 40 times for comedy but only five have won awards outright: Elaine May (as part of a duo with Mike Nichols); Lily Tomlin; Whoopi Goldberg; Kathy Griffin; and, in 2021, Tiffany Haddish. More

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      Noah Reid Preps for Parenthood With Plants and Nina Simone

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      The “Schitt’s Creek” star makes his Broadway debut this month in Tracy Letts’s new comedy “The Minutes.”Noah Reid will be on the video call in a minute, his publicist tells me. The 34-year old “Schitt’s Creek” star, who played Dan Levy’s lover, Patrick Brewer, across four seasons of the Canadian comedy, just got home from a rehearsal for “The Minutes,” the new Tracy Letts comedy he’s starring in on Broadway. Then … Bam!He looks like he’s calling from the inside of a greenhouse.“These are my landlord, Marie’s,” Reid, his brown curls tucked in a black beanie, says of the half-dozen plants — there are more out of the frame — crawling up the door and stretching toward the early evening sunlight in pots on a table of his Ridgewood apartment in Queens. “I can’t tell if I’m more nervous for my Broadway debut or to keep these plants going.”“The Minutes,” a dark comedy about a small-town city council meeting that was originally slated for March 2020 at the Cort Theater, opens at Studio 54 on April 17. Reid, who plays the clean-scrubbed outsider Mr. Peel, replaced Armie Hammer, who left the production last spring amid accusations of rape and sexual assault, which he has denied.“It’s probably been four years since I’ve done a play,” said Reid, who has been a frequent presence on Canadian stages. “I’d completely forgotten how much physical, mental and emotional energy it takes.”He has a busy spring on the horizon, taking on the role of Billy Tillerson in the new Amazon Western mystery thriller series “Outer Range,” which he spent seven months filming in New Mexico. (The series premieres April 15.) He also has a sophomore album out, “Gemini,” which touches on his acting experiences and is reminiscent of the stream-of-consciousness style of 1970s singer-songwriters.Over the course of 45 minutes, he shared how Charlie Chaplin’s film “The Great Dictator” relates to events in Ukraine, the show he would play any part in and why his favorite piece of art is hanging on his refrigerator. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1. Nina Simone’s Live Recordings Her voice feels like it comes out of the center of the earth; it’s like a direct passage to the soul. As a pianist, she can navigate so many different genres: classical, jazz and blues. She plays with such confidence. And that’s what makes her live recordings so incredible, her ability to just, stream-of-consciousness, drop into her complete truth.2. David Shrigley’s “The Book of Shrigley” David Shrigley is somewhere between stand-up comedy and cave paintings. He does these brilliant esoteric, simple drawings — you might even say bad drawings. Part of it is that you feel like you could do the drawing, but you haven’t done the drawing — you haven’t found that moment of truth. There’s something incredible about the simplicity of it.3. Leonard Cohen’s Book of Poems “Stranger Music” When I first heard his music as a kid — this guy with this weird dark voice and these synthesizers — I didn’t understand why anyone would want to listen to this. And then, when I was in high school, I started reading his poems, and I was able to see the humanity, the spirit, the sense of humor. It became clear that music was a way for him to put his poetry into the world in a more easily consumed way.4. Sol e Pesca Restaurant in Lisbon It’s in an old tackle shop about the size of a shoe box on this little road in Lisbon. It feels very tucked away. You go in and sit on this tiny stool, they bring you a basket of bread and you order a few tinned fish items. They put them in a bowl so you’re not just eating out of the tin, and they have Vinho Verde on tap. It’s the simplest, most beautiful meal I’ve ever had.5. The Detroit Industry Murals by Diego Rivera My sister did her master’s in Detroit, and we went to the Detroit Institute of Art and saw these fresco paintings by Diego Rivera. There are 27 murals that are all 360, with a big skylight above you. It’s a tribute to Detroit’s manufacturing industry, and you have people pushing and pulling on machines, the fire and the uniforms. It’s so character driven, and the detail of each individual person — I was dumbstruck. I didn’t want to leave.6. Charlie Chaplin’s “The Great Dictator” Charlie Chaplin said later that he wouldn’t have made the film if he had known what was going on in Nazi Germany at the time, but I’m glad he did. It was an entry point for me to understand how the arts can both start conversations about meaningful things — and make fun of them. It takes a turn for the serious and he gives this impassioned speech, this kind of plea for humanity at the end that people have been rediscovering and posting on Instagram. It’s one of the great speeches of all time. And it still has so much relevance, especially when we see what’s going on in Ukraine. There’s a line that’s like, ‘You are not machine men.’ It’s a plea to the army to put down your weapons.7. Canyon de Chelly I used to take part in the gold rush of pilot season, when all the Canadian actors would flock down to Los Angeles to try to scare up some work. I would drive down and take a different route each time because I thought it would be interesting to see a little bit of America. I did this walk down into this canyon, in the Navajo Nation in Arizona — it’s about an hour to the bottom — and it’s red soil and trees and there are buildings built into the cliffs from probably 1,000 years ago. I was just standing there and having this tangible realization that this country is ancient.8. “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” by Eugene O’Neill When I was in 11th grade, I saw the Bob Falls Broadway production with Brian Dennehy, Vanessa Redgrave, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Robert Sean Leonard. I bought the play shortly after and was completely obsessed with it. It’s certainly not my family history, but there are things in every family that it feels that you can’t talk about or, or things that are difficult to talk about or behavioral patterns that drive you crazy. I fantasize about getting to play any part in that play some time in my life.9. Spiral Arc on Lake Huron My parents bought this vacant piece of land overlooking Lake Huron in southwestern Ontario the year I was born, and it became our family cottage. That was in 1987, and over the next two decades, they spent countless hours designing and building the strangest building in Huron County. The neighbors call it the spaceship — it’s shaped like half a heart, and it’s clad in metal and it’s mostly windows and the sun sets over this uninterrupted view of Lake Huron. It’s my favorite place in the world.10. The Ultrasound This is my favorite piece of media at this moment. It’s an ultrasonic photograph of my son in his mother’s womb, and it’s occupying the gallery on my fridge right now. I’m completely obsessed. He’s about four months out from being born. I have a name in mind, but I might have to do some work with my wife to get it over the finish line, so I don’t want to say what it is yet! More

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      Jimmy Kimmel Mocks Donald Trump’s Endorsement of Sarah Palin

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      “Trump endorsing Palin is like paste eating endorsing glue sniffing,” Kimmel joked.Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.Consider the SourceSarah Palin announced on Friday that she would run for Congress, and she already has the support of former President Donald Trump, who released a statement saying, “Sarah Palin is tough and smart and will never back down.’”“Even from Trump, it’s pretty impressive to fit three lies into an 11-word sentence,” Jimmy Kimmel joked of Trump’s “bigly endorsement.”“I guess the ‘Masked Singer’ money dried up and Sarah is running for office.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Trump endorsing Palin is like paste eating endorsing glue sniffing. It’s ridiculous.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“I saw that Sarah Palin has announced that she is running for Congress in Alaska, which is good news for Republicans and great news for Democrats.” — JIMMY FALLON“You know, for someone who could see Russia from her house, she should have known years ago what Putin was up to, don’t you think?” — JIMMY FALLONThe Punchiest Punchlines (Special Message Edition)“Last night was the 64th annual Grammy Awards. And I think — I think it was a good night overall because nobody’s watching the uncensored Japanese version on Twitter, and that’s a good thing.” — JIMMY FALLON“Doja Cat nearly missed her acceptance speech, because she was using the bathroom. See? This is why they need litter boxes under the seats — I’ve said it a million times.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“It was a fun night, hours and hours of musicians performing for free, or as that’s also known, Spotify.” — JIMMY FALLON“Ukrainian President Zelensky made an appearance on the Grammys. He gave a heartfelt address to the Grammys audience. He said, ‘The silence of ruined cities and killed people. What is more opposite to music?’ Which is very profound: What is more opposite to music? I thought he was going say Nickelback, which would have been a sick burn. But this was better — keep it focused.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“And I got to say as a 48-year-old man, I was just happy to see someone at the Grammys whose name I knew.” — SETH MEYERSThe Bits Worth WatchingJames Corden lamented the lack of great comedies like “Romy & Michele’s High School Reunion,” which starred Monday night’s “Late Late Show” guests, Mira Sorvino and Lisa Kudrow.What We’re Excited About on Tuesday NightOscar Isaac will appear on Tuesday’s “Late Show.”Also, Check This OutThe Polaroid wall in Jennifer Venditti’s office, covered with images of models and personalities and local eccentrics. Ryan Lowry for The New York TimesA new book about Jennifer Venditti, a casting director, goes behind the scenes of her work on projects like “Euphoria” and “Uncut Gems.” More

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      Cole Sprouse on Finding a Healthy Balance in Hollywood

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      The former child actor wanted to leave showbiz. Now, the “Moonshot” and “Riverdale” star is finding he can act and tend his photography career as well.“I hope you don’t mind, I’m going to be scarfing down this chicken wrap at the same time we talk,” Cole Sprouse politely informs me as he sits in the kitchen wearing a fuzzy, baby blue sweater. The wrap in question is already halfway to his mouth.Sprouse is used to multitasking.He and his twin brother, Dylan, began their professional acting careers when they were infants and worked steadily throughout their childhoods, sharing prominent roles on “Grace Under Fire” and in the Adam Sandler film “Big Daddy.” Cole went on to play Ross’s son on “Friends” before reteaming with Dylan in the Disney Channel sitcom “The Suite Life of Zack and Cody” (Cole played the brainy Cody). The tween hit led to a spinoff series, TV movie — and mega kid stardom for the twins. By age 18, they’d effectively burned out.But after graduating from New York University with a degree in archaeology, Cole Sprouse fulfilled a promise he’d made to his manager to give one more round of TV auditions a go before quitting the industry for good. He booked the role of the brooding outcast Jughead Jones on the CW drama “Riverdale” and was sucked in again.“I started acting when I was so young that I hadn’t actually attempted, as an adult, to think about if I really enjoyed performance,” Sprouse said in a recent video call from Vancouver, British Columbia, where he’s currently filming the seventh season of “Riverdale.” He continued, “When I returned, I reminded myself that I do very much love the art of acting. But I still have a very complicated relationship to celebrity culture.”He’s learned to guard his private life. Rare public comments about his relationships past (namely, with his “Riverdale” co-star Lili Reinhart) and present (the model Ari Fournier) are scrutinized by fans and widely recounted by entertainment outlets. He started a secondary Instagram account devoted solely to sharing the photos he takes of strangers while they’re trying to sneakily snap photos of him. “It was an attempt to go, ‘Hey, I actually have agency in the situation, too,’” he explained. “It helped me a lot.”Sprouse with Lili Reinhart and KJ Apa in “Riverdale.”Michael Courtney/The CWHis latest role is the lead in the HBO Max rom-com “Moonshot” — not to be confused with the unrelated 2022 releases “Moon Knight” and “Moonfall.” In the near future, where robots run coffee shops and Mars is being colonized, Sprouse plays Walt, a hapless college student who hitches a ride on a Mars-bound rocket alongside Sophie (Lana Condor) in an attempt to reach another girl on Mars he thinks could be the One.Intermittently puffing on a vape pen after finishing the chicken wrap, Sprouse spoke about billionaires, the effects of childhood fame and turning 30.These are edited excerpts from our conversation.“Moonshot” is a futuristic take on a conventional romantic comedy. Are you a rom–com fan?I have my favorites, and they’re all over the map. I’m a huge “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” fan, for example. And though there’s a heavy romantic element throughout it, most people would just call that a comedy — and yet, by all genre boundaries, it is a rom-com.I think for so long romantic comedies were put down as “chick flicks,” something lowbrow that only a female audience would care about. Male-centric entries like “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” made some people rethink that notion.The general trend with the arts always starts with a large female fan base really falling in love with something. In a lot of cases, we see the female audience braving the territory first, and then everyone follows. Ultimately, with “Moonshot,” we set out to make a movie that didn’t really take itself super seriously, that we had a lot of lighthearted fun on, and we were able to weave an old married couple dynamic into Lana and I’s relationship.Opposite Lana Condor in “Moonshot.”Warner Bros.The film also throws some solid punches at the billionaire space race: Zach Braff’s Elon Musk-esque character admits he could have used his fortune to solve world hunger dozens of times over, but went to Mars instead. How do you feel about the current space cowboy endeavors of people like Musk and Jeff Bezos?Oh, I think it’s tremendously masturbatory. It’s a ridiculous thing. When I was studying archaeology, we used to have this conversation about the resurrection of the mammoth. The conversation would always devolve into two camps: the camp that really wanted to see the mammoth walk the earth again. And the camp that was going, “Hey, we have active species that are currently going extinct. If we put the resources you are talking about putting into the already extinct mammoth and shift that focus to the present, we could do way more good.” I feel like this conversation about space cowboys is very similar. I’m in the camp where I go, let’s focus on the present. We have an active space that we are living in that is currently decaying. We need to shift focus and resources to here.So, no chance you’re booking a commercial ticket on a rocket any time soon.No, I’m already such a paranoid freak when it comes to flying. I couldn’t imagine what my control-freak nature would do when we started taking off. I would be a nervous wreck.People like to talk about former child stars in this dichotomy of either they spiral out of control or, somehow, “come out OK.” Do you think it’s possible for anyone to actually come through that experience unscathed?My brother and I used to get quite a bit of, “Oh, you made it out! Oh, you’re unscathed!” No. The young women on the channel we were on [Disney Channel] were so heavily sexualized from such an earlier age than my brother and I that there’s absolutely no way that we could compare our experiences. And every single person going through that trauma has a unique experience. When we talk about child stars going nuts, what we’re not actually talking about is how fame is a trauma. So I’m violently defensive against people who mock some of the young women who were on the channel when I was younger because I don’t feel like it adequately comprehends the humanity of that experience and what it takes to recover. And, to be quite honest, as I have now gone through a second big round of this fame game as an adult, I’ve noticed the same psychological effects that fame yields upon a group of young adults as I did when I was a child. I just think people have an easier time hiding it when they’re older.The Sprouse twins on “The Suite Life of Zack and Cody.”Joel Warren/Disney ChannelAfter it was announced that “Riverdale” had been renewed for a seventh season, a lot of memes popped up imagining your reaction when you heard the news. The general internet consensus seemed to be that you were completely distraught to have to do another season. Is that accurate?[Laughs] It’s not completely accurate. One, because I’ve just assumed we’re going to see the finality of our [seven-season] contracts. Two, I think the internet assumes — because of how insane our show is — that we’re probably doing a bit worse than we actually are. It’s easy to forget that people love the show. And I do think it’s going to be much more appreciated in 10 years than it is right now. It would be pretty pompous of me to say that another season of financial stability is not something that would be appealing. Though I’m not going to lie. The memes do make me laugh.You’ve built a side career as a professional photographer, mainly in fashion. What is it about that medium that made you want to pursue it?When I was in school, I was traveling a lot for archaeology, so I always had my camera and I was taking almost anthropological-type photos of the people I was meeting, the culture I was surrounded by. And then, just by being in New York City, I got wrapped up in fashion work and built a portfolio. That was my main source of revenue until “Riverdale” Season 2.You’re turning 30 in August. Does this decade feel like the start of a new chapter?Definitely. ​​I feel like my ducks are in a row better than they’ve ever been. We’re also seeing the conclusion of a program I’ve spent the majority of my 20s on, so there is this world of possibilities that lies before me at the end of this production that I find incredibly appealing and intoxicating. And, I hate to break it to everybody, but I’m not the only 30 year old playing a teen on television.You made it to college in “Moonshot.” You’re starting to age up.Just stringing them along, slowly but surely. In an ideal world, when “Riverdale” finishes, I would love to be doing one to two movies a year and photography the rest of the time. And the logical intersection of those two worlds will eventually be directing.We’re living in a time of extreme nostalgia for the ’90s and 2000s. Is there any chance you’d go full circle and do a “Suite Life” reboot?I don’t think I’ll ever return to that. Not that I have a problem with other people doing the reboots thing. I’m just a big believer that if something is beautiful in the past, you should let it stay beautiful. To bring it into the future feels a bit like reheating a really good, fresh meal in the microwave. It would be hard to be in my 30s and go [in a deep growl], “Zack and Cody are back, man!” More