The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (161 page)

He was by then a man of the world, somehow a fashion plate of meditation, with the Dalai Lama on one arm and Cindy Crawford on the other. He appeared in
Rhapsody in August
(90, Akira Kurosawa), and was then reunited with pulp romance and Kim Basinger in the loony
Final Analysis
(91, Phil Joanou). He was the man returned from war in
Sommersby
(93, Jon Amiel), even if he had no idea how to live in the nineteenth century. He had a small role that helped to launch
And the Band Played On
(93, Roger Spottiswoode), and he worked for Figgis again in
Mr. Jones
(93); he made
Intersection
(94, Mark Rydell).

Gere eased up somewhat in the nineties. His marriage to model Cindy Crawford ended, but he was a valiant defender of the Dalai Lama and other causes. He was Lancelot in
First Knight
(95, Jerry Zucker); in
Primal Fear
(96, Gregory Hoblit), where newcomer Edward Norton ran rings around him;
Red Corner
(97, Jon Avnet)—certainly not pro-Chinese; “Irish” in
The Jackal
(97, Michael Caton-Jones); reunited with Julia in
Runaway Bride
(99, Garry Marshall);
Autumn in New York
(00, Joan Chen), where he and Winona Ryder hardly connected; at his glossy worst in
Dr. T & the Women
(00, Robert Altman).

Then he bounced back with
The Mothman Prophecies
(02, Mark Pellington); as the husband to Diane Lane in
Unfaithful
(02, Adrian Lyne); the lawyer in
Chicago
(02, Rob Marshall);
Shall We Dance?
(04, Peter Chelsom);
Bee Season
(04, Scott McGehee and David Siegel).

Then, in another comeback, he was accurate and very funny as Clifford Irving in
The Hoax
(07, Lasse Hallstrom);
The Hunting Party
(07, Richard Shepard); “Billy the Kid” in
I’m Not There
(07, Todd Haynes);
The Flock
(07, Andrew Lau); with Diane Lane again in
Nights in Rodanthe
(08, George C. Wolfe); and as the husband in
Amelia
(09, Mira Nair).

Paul
(Edward Valentine)
Giamatti
, b. New Haven, Connecticut, 1967
From cantankerous everyman to earnest chump (with a president along the way), Paul Giamatti is e pluribus unum in person, an untidy bag full of parts, yet his own decent and troubled fellow, a model of free speech likely to disagree with you, yet ultimately on your side as a model. He seems to me an unusually political actor in that he can seem wrongheaded and right, while leaving no doubt about his right to speak up. It may well be that
John Adams
(08, Tom Hooper) proves his great work—simply because no one else has the wit or the ability to find another role so rounded or so likely to inspire fondness.

He is the son of A. Bartlett Giamatti, president of Yale and then of Major League Baseball (he was the man who banned Pete Rose). Paul was educated at Choate and Yale, and then at Yale Drama School. He worked a good deal in regional theatre and started doing movies just after the early death of his father in 1989:
Past Midnight
(91, Jan Eliasberg);
Singles
(92, Cameron Crowe);
Mighty Aphrodite
(95, Woody Allen);
Sabrina
(95, Sydney Pollack);
Breathing Room
(96, Jon Sherman);
Donnie Brasco
(97, Mike Newell);
Private Parts
(97, Betty Thomas);
My Best Friend’s Wedding
(97, P. J. Hogan);
Deconstructing Harry
(97, Allen);
A Further Gesture
(97, Robert Dornhelm); the control-room director in
The Truman Show
(98, Peter Weir);
Doctor Dolittle
(98, Thomas).

He was in
Saving Private Ryan
(98, Steven Spielberg);
The Negotiator
(98, F. Gary Gray);
Safe Men
(98, John Hamburg); on TV in
Winchell
(98, Paul Mazursky);
Cradle Will Rock
(99, Tim Robbins); very good as Bob Zmuda in
Man on the Moon
(99, Milos Forman);
Big Momma’s House
(00, Raja Gosnell)—nearly in a lead part;
Duets
(00, Bruce Paltrow);
Storytelling
(01, Todd Solondz);
Planet of the Apes
(01, Tim Burton);
Big Fat Liar
(02, Shawn Levy); and attracting a lot of attention as comic-book author Harvey Pekar in
American Splendor
(03, Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini).

He was clearly esteemed by now, but his humble looks were not easily cast in mainstream lead parts:
Confidence
(03, James Foley);
Paycheck
(03, John Woo). And then along came the part of Miles in
Sideways
(04, Alexander Payne)—it was pretty damn cozy, but it was an indie that reached the jug-wine audience, and Giamatti was suddenly known as well as recognized. He was the devoted trainer in
Cinderella Man
(05, Ron Howard);
The Hawk Is Dying
(06, Julian Golberger); as the policeman in
The Illusionist
(06, Neil Burger);
Lady in the Water
(06, M. Night Shyamalan);
Shoot ’Em Up
(07, Michael Davis);
The Nanny Diaries
(07, Berman and Pulcini);
Fred Claus
(07, David Dobkin);
Pretty Bird
(08, Paul Schneider);
Cold Souls
(09, Sophie Barthes).

It’s an odd record: Giamatti is now nearly a household item—yet I suspect few of us can recall many of his films. He is clever, versatile, and very responsible (he seems to judge a film’s tone and needs with great accuracy), but still
John Adams
leaves most of his movies looking fatuous.

Mel
(not Melvin)
Gibson
, b. Peekskill, New York, 1956
1993:
The Man Without a Face
. 1995:
Braveheart
. 2004:
The Passion of the Christ
. 2006:
Apocalypto
.

One of eleven children, Gibson was the son of a railroad brakeman and an Australian opera singer. But on both sides of the family the roots were Irish Catholic (St. Mel was an Irish saint). The actor, however, has excelled as a roughhouser with an irreverent sense of humor. Gibson does look as if he came from the wrong side of the tracks, a quality that few American actors now hope to muster. They look like the product of health insurance, good diets, and tender loving care, no matter the stories of broken homes and hard times. There is a wildness in Gibson’s eyes—a feeling of dangerous farce. Maybe it is Peekskill, or the Australian upbringing, for Gibson’s family went to that country when he was twelve. Maybe it is just Mel. Whatever the answer, it would be pretty to think that some role could capture the demon better than a bagful of
Lethal Weapons
and
Hamlet
. Mel could end up rich and depressed. He’s better than cop capers, but he was woefully lost as the Dane. If only there were screwball comedies in anyone’s mind—imagine Gibson trying
It Happened One Night
or
The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek
.

In Sydney, he attended the National Institute of Dramatic Art and as a lad he even played Romeo to Judy Davis’s Juliet—imagine them together in
It Happened One Night!
He made his debut in
Summer City
(76, Christopher Fraser), as the shy one in a surfing gang. But George Miller cast him as the altogether rugged Max Rockatansky in the best material Gibson ever had:
Mad Max
(79),
The Road Warrior
(81), and
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome
(85). He did well as a retarded man in
Tim
(79, Michael Pate), and he was in
Attack Force Z
(81, Tim Burstall). But it was Peter Weir’s
Gallipoli
(81) that drew him to Hollywood’s attention as a romantic hero.

He worked for Weir again in
The Year of Living Dangerously
(83) and he brushed against the legend of Gable playing Fletcher Christian in the staid
The Bounty
(84, Roger Donaldson). His best work yet as an actor is in
Mrs. Soffel
(84, Gillian Armstrong), a role that used his recklessness and in which he wooed and warmed Diane Keaton beyond mannerism.
The River
(84, Mark Rydell) was dull and
Tequila Sunrise
(88, Robert Towne), a major disappointment.

By then, Gibson was into
Lethal Weapon
and its sequels (87, 89, 92) with Danny Glover and Richard Donner—the movie equivalent of college football on January 1. He did his
Hamlet
(90, Franco Zeffirelli), but otherwise he has wandered into such dingbat fare as Goldie Hawn’s male equivalent in
Bird on a Wire
(90, John Badham), an alleged pirate of disenchantment in the very corny
Air America
(90, Roger Spottiswoode), and
Forever Young
(92, Steve Miner). It might have been better if Goldie had done Ophelia (with Judy Davis as Gertrude) in a
Hamlet
directed by John Cleese.

In 1993, he acted in and directed
The Man Without a Face
, a respectable, diligent weepie about kids and parents. He also played
Maverick
(94, Donner).

But he was preparing for a grand venture, and it turned out to be
Braveheart
(95, Gibson), the tale of Scots rebel, William Wallace. The film won more Oscars than was decent (including best picture and best director—a sign that the definition of directing had shifted ground towards producing). It didn’t deserve Oscars, but it is a rousing old-fashioned adventure film with a lovely princess and a wicked king (Sophie Marceau and Patrick McGoohan) and a great deal of blood and lost limbs. It is also a pretty accurate portrait of Gibson’s ultra-naïve politics.

He was the voice of John Smith in
Pocahontas
(95, Mike Gabriel and Eric Goldberg);
Ransom
(96, Ron Howard); rather bad in
Conspiracy Theory
(97, Donner);
Lethal Weapon 4
(98, Donner); trying to do Lee Marvin in
Payback
(99, Brian Helgeland); very odd in
The Million Dollar Hotel
(00, Wim Wenders); a voice in
Chicken Run
(00, Peter Lord and Nick Park); taking on the English as enemy again in
The Patriot
(00, Roland Emmerich): funny, if too self-congratulatory in
What Women Want
(00, Nancy Meyers); and very pro–U.S. army in
We Were Soldiers
(02, Randall Wallace);
Signs
(02, M. Night Shyamalan).

He produced and acted in
The Singing Detective
(03, Keith Gordon). Add that to
We Were Soldiers, Signs
and
The Patriot
and a high right-winger comes into view, a DeMille with real faith. And then, in 2004, on Ash Wednesday, with prophecy and warning enough to be a campaign, Gibson opened
The Passion of the Christ
, the best demonstration yet by the movies on how to run an effective flogging and crucifixion. The picture grossed over $20 million a day for five days; it did not seem to swell the numbers of Christian converts; no miracles were reported in the theatres where it played. It was, simply—and predictably, given Gibson’s record—one more assured step in the high-minded cruelty of the movies. But made with his own money, it promised to bring Gibson half a billion.

He continues to be a very controversial figure—almost hysterically himself.
Apocalypto
was a film no one else could have made—except perhaps Terrence Malick. It was very violent, yet it felt authentic, strange, and beautiful—at times you thought of early Herzog. I don’t like Gibson films much, but I think he deserves examination more than most American directors of his age. Some think Mel is mad; some say crazy like a fox. Settle on one thing: he is himself.

Sir John Gielgud
(1904–2000), b. London
For decades, Gielgud regarded the movies with airy, tolerant amusement. He was not interested, or reached: pictures could not compete with theatre in catering to his divinely permitted talent. In a film, he was like a bishop at the seaside, rolling up his trousers and giggling but certain that the whole thing was frivolous. He made movies if asked, perplexed at the art’s fragmentation, the peculiar way of working, and the vulgarity of the money. There were often years between his movies:
Who Is the Man?
(24, Walter Summers);
The Clue of the New Pin
(29, Arthur Maude);
Insult
(32, Harry Lachman); very good as Inigo Jollifant in
The Good Companions
(33, Victor Saville); intriguingly matched with Peter Lorre in
The Secret Agent
(36, Alfred Hitchcock); Disraeli in
The Prime Minister
(42, Thorold Dickinson).

Then nothing for over ten years until his seething, lean, and hungry Cassius in
Julius Caesar
(53, Joseph L. Mankiewicz)—on which he mailed in speech tracks for looping that exactly fitted his camera performance; Clarence in
Richard III
(55, Laurence Olivier); a choleric Barrett in
The Barretts of Wimpole Street
(57, Sidney Franklin)—but with Jennifer Jones as his daughter?

By 1960, therefore, Gielgud had just this mixed bag of slightly absentminded performances. Whereas, his contemporaries had been
in
films, immersed, finding themselves: Olivier had his Shakespeares and
Rebecca;
Richardson had done
The Fallen Idol
and
The Heiress;
Redgrave could claim
Dead of Night
and
The Browning Version;
Alec Guinness was a shy genius in movies.

So Gielgud carried on regardless: he was properly cold and urbane as Warwick in
Saint Joan
(57, Otto Preminger);
Becket
(64, Peter Glenville);
The Loved One
(65, Tony Richardson); a lonely Henry IV in
Chimes at Midnight
(66, Orson Welles); the Head of Intelligence in
Sebastian
(67, David Greene); Lord Raglan in
The Charge of the Light Brigade
(68, Richardson);
Assignment to Kill
(68, Sheldon Reynolds); as the Pope who dies in
The Shoes of the Fisherman
(68, Michael Anderson); as Count Berchtold in
Oh! What a Lovely War
(69, Richard Attenborough); as
Julius Caesar
himself (70, Stuart Burge); the mandarin in
Lost Horizon
(72, Charles Jarrott);
Galileo
(74, Joseph Losey);
Aces High
(76, Jack Gold); the preacher in
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
(77, Joseph Strick).