The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (194 page)

He was in
Papillon
(73, Franklin Schaffner), but as
Lenny
(74, Bob Fosse) he could not compete with films and records of the real Lenny Bruce. What may have seemed to him his most important film proved a tame, redundant work in which Hoffman was overawed by the mixture of showoff, paranoid, poet, and self-destructive in Bruce. It is his most sentimental performance. As Carl Bernstein in
All the President’s Men
(76, Alan J. Pakula), he was a model of detail, precision, and deadpan humor; but, again, actual events absolved the actor from serious involvement and left Hoffman’s skill overshadowed by Redford’s dull but forceful presence.
Marathon Man
(76, Schlesinger) was a bad picture for all concerned, and something Hoffman should have been able to decline. He also appeared in
Agatha
(78, Michael Apted).

Straight Time
(78) was originally a picture for Hoffman to direct as well as to star in. For the first thirty minutes, it is strikingly raw and unusual, and it allows Hoffman to be middle-aged and wearily resentful of a stupid, legalistic society. But overwork forced Hoffman to assign the direction to Ulu Grosbard, and the broken back of the movie was the result of their quarrel as it progressed. Hoffman sued the distributor, alleging interference, but it seems more likely that the abrupt change of tone and narrative after about thirty minutes was Hoffman’s choice and mistake.

In the eighties, Hoffman became recognized as one of America’s great actors. To these eyes, the films did not always support the claim. But Hoffman seemed convinced, and became a good deal harder to work with because of it. Thus, he has acquired the reputation of being a sometimes unmanageable actor, taking films out of a director’s control, and into his own narcissistic doubts. In recent years, especially, the results do not suggest the process is very fruitful.

He won the best actor Oscar for
Kramer vs Kramer
(79, Robert Benton), and then was nominated for the very clever work in
Tootsie
(82, Sydney Pollack). He played Willy Loman in
Death of a Salesman
(85, Volker Schlondorff), with a lot more self-pity and whining than I liked. (That production was observed in a fascinating 1985 documentary,
Private Conversation
, directed by Christian Blackwood, which shows how much attention had to be paid to the lead actor.)
Ishtar
(87, Elaine May) was a disaster for everyone, but Hoffman promptly recovered with another best actor Oscar in
Rain Man
(88, Barry Levinson) as Tom Cruise’s idiot savant brother (some think Cruise did a better and less obtrusive job). Hoffman had a cameo in
Dick Tracy
(90, Beatty), but he has also done four films that failed at the box office and left the actor looking puzzled or peeved:
Family Business
(89, Sidney Lumet);
Billy Bathgate
(91, Benton);
Hook
(91, Steven Spielberg); and
Hero
(92, Stephen Frears).

You can see doubt and indifference setting in already, but as the nineties went on it was sad to see the stagnation in a once dynamic actor:
Outbreak
(95, Wolfgang Petersen); as Teach in
American Buffalo
(96, Michael Corrente);
Sleepers
(96, Barry Levinson);
Mad City
(97, Costa-Gavras); very funny doing Robert Evans in
Wag the Dog
(97, Levinson), the liveliest he had been for years;
Sphere
(98, Levinson); and dotty as The Conscience in
Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc
(99, Luc Besson).

He gets life achievement awards these days, but all he delivers in return are
Moonlight Mile
(02, Brad Silberling); an asinine “genius” in the dreadful
Confidence
(03, James Foley);
The Runaway Jury
(03, Gary Fleder);
J. M. Barrie’s Neverland
(04, Marc Forster);
I Heart Huckabee’s
(04, David O. Russell).

No one seems more retired while still working:
Meet the Fockers
(04, Jay Roach);
Lemony Snickett’s A Series of Unfortunate Events
(04, Brad Silberling); the unaccountable
Racing Stripes
(05, Frederick Du Chau); quite decent as Meyer Lansky in
The Lost City
(05, Andy Garcia);
Perfume: The Story of a Murder
(06, Tom Tykwer);
Stranger Than Fiction
(06, Marc Forster);
The Holiday
(06, Nancy Meyers)—uncredited;
Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium
(07, Zach Helm)—beyond words;
Kung Fu Panda
(08, Mark Osborne and John Stevenson); a voice in
The Tale of Despereaux
(08, Sam Fell and Robert Stevenhagen); romancing Emma Thompson in
Last Chance Harvey
(08, Joel Hopkins).

Philip Seymour Hoffman
, b. Fairport, New York, 1967
Where do we begin, where will he end? Philip Seymour Hoffman does not—he must have been told this often enough—seem like a movie star. He’s boyish but untidy, a little overweight, hopelessly immature. He’s all of those things as Freddie, the prep-school thug in
The Talented Mr. Ripley
(99, Anthony Minghella). Yet I’m not sure there’s been a better performance in recent years—so nasty yet so vulnerable, such a cross of Mussolini and Billy Bunter.

Freddie is on screen not much more than twenty minutes, and it’s easy to foresee Hoffman as a brilliant supporting actor. But in the year after
Ripley
, he alternated lead roles in Sam Shepard’s
True West
with John C. Reilly on Broadway; and he played the flamboyant drag queen in
Flawless
(00, Joel Schumacher), a film that had little purpose but to showcase a great actor.

That’s further proof, if anyone still needs it, of the gap between working for a Minghella and a Schumacher. Hoffman could be turned into an institution—but never properly tested. He is so good that only the best material is going to help build our sense of him. Meanwhile, search him out, as you might Kevin Spacey. There is the same very dangerous talent at work—astounding, yet so pronounced it could help make its own prison.

He made his debut in
Triple Bogey on a Par Five Hole
(91, Amos Poe);
Scent of a Woman
(92, Martin Brest);
My New Gun
(92, Stacy Cochran);
Leap of Faith
(92, Richard Pearce);
My Boyfriend’s Back
(93, Bob Balaban);
Nobody’s Fool
(94, Robert Benton);
The Getaway
(94, Roger Donaldson); on TV in
The Yearling
(94, Rod Hardy);
When a Man Loves a Woman
(Luis Mandoki);
Hard Eight
(96, Paul Thomas Anderson);
Twister
(96, Jan de Bont);
Boogie Nights
(97, Anderson);
Happiness
(98, Todd Solondz);
The Big Lebowski
(98, Joel Coen);
Patch Adams
(98, Tom Shadyac);
Magnolia
(99, Anderson);
State and Main
(00, David Mamet); Lester Bangs in
Almost Famous
(00, Cameron Crowe).

He shows every sign of being determined to uncover the kinds of American seldom seen in Hollywood movies:
Forest Hills Bob
(01, Robert Downey Sr);
Love Liza
(02, Todd Louiso);
Punch-Drunk Love
(02, Anderson);
Red Dragon
(02, Brett Ratner);
25th Hour
(02, Spike Lee); magnificent as the depressed gambler (Canadian) in
Owning Mahowny
(03, Richard Kwietniowski);
Cold Mountain
(03, Minghella);
Along Came Polly
(04, John Hamburg). He will be in
Empire Falls
(04, Fred Schepisi) and winning an Oscar as
Capote
(04, Bennett Miller).

The world seemed spread out before him, so why not try a villain for the fun of it
—Mission: Impossible III
(06, J. J. Abrams)? The film explained why not. But
The Savages
(07, Tamara Jenkins) was tepid domestic naturalism, and although
Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead
(07, Sidney Lumet) threatened to break out in something interesting it never quite made it. He was amusing in
Charlie Wilson’s War
(07, Mike Nichols), but terminally depressed in
Synecdoche, New York
(08, Charlie Kaufman) and very uneasy in
Doubt
(08, John Patrick Shanley). Why do
Pirate Radio
(09, Richard Curtis)? The chance to work with Bill Nighy? He is set to appear in
Jack Goes Boating
(10), which he has also directed.

William Holden
(William Franklin Beedle Jr.) (1918–81), b. O’Fallon, Illinois
When Holden died, he was sixty-three—Clint Eastwood’s age in
In the Line of Fire
. That’s a way of illustrating the variable effects of age on a face. For Holden, at the end, could look like the most “used” person in Hollywood. Alcohol must take a lot of the credit, for Holden had been so serious a victim of drink that he had killed a bystander in a car accident in Europe. He had had his day: in the late fifties, he was so powerful at the box office nearly every script went through his agent. But the suffering in his face found no solace in power. The look of pain sustained two fine films—
The Wild Bunch
and
Network
—so that we rubbed our eyes to recall the fresh-faced enthusiast from
Golden Boy
. You could pick a dozen or so maturing close-ups of Holden and the series would tell the horrible story of movies as a marinade called early embalming.

Educated at Pasadena Junior College, he was appearing at the Pasadena Playhouse in 1937 when Paramount put him under contract. But they offered him no films, and it was Columbia who gave him his start as the young man torn between boxing and the violin in Mamoulian’s
Golden Boy
(39). Holden’s easy charm was further exploited in
Invisible Stripes
(39, Lloyd Bacon); Sam Wood’s
Our Town
(40);
Arizona
(40, Wesley Ruggles);
I Wanted Wings
(41, Mitchell Leisen);
Texas
(41, George Marshall); and
The Remarkable Andrew
(42, Stuart Heisler), before he joined the air force. He returned in 1947 for John Farrow’s
Blaze of Noon; The Man from Colorado
(48, Henry Levin);
Apartment for Peggy
(48, George Seaton); and
Rachel and the Stranger
(48, Norman Foster). He was essentially nonassertive and could do no better than ordinary adventure stories and sketchy romantic leads:
The Dark Past
(49, Rudolph Maté);
Streets of Laredo
(48, Lesley Fenton);
Miss Grant Takes Richmond
(49, Bacon); and
Father Is a Bachelor
(50, Foster and Abby Berlin).

It was Billy Wilder who encouraged Holden’s breakthrough by showing us the sleazy reverse of charm: first by casting him as Joe Gillis, the weak-willed, would-be writer who narrates
Sunset Boulevard
(50), face down in Norma Desmond’s swimming pool; then by persuading him to play the stooge part for Judy Holliday in Cukor’s
Born Yesterday
(50), and as a reward, giving him the Oscar part of the cynical, racketeer sergeant in
Stalag 17
(53).

But Wilder’s bitterness hardly rubbed off on Holden. He still figured in adventures:
Union Station
(50, Maté); Curtiz’s
Force of Arms
(51);
Submarine Command
(51, Farrow); and
Escape from Fort Bravo
(53, John Sturges). And he remained an epitome of shallow handsomeness in Dieterle’s
The Turning Point
(52);
The Moon Is Blue
(53, Otto Preminger);
Forever Female
(53, Irving Rapper);
Sabrina
(54, Wilder);
The Country Girl
(54, Seaton) and
The Bridges at Toko-Ri
(55, Mark Robson), both opposite Grace Kelly; as the European lover in Henry King’s
Love is a Many Splendored Thing
(55). He was much more sympathetic as a has-been in Logan’s
Picnic
(56), but made rigid by the gravity of
The Bridge on the River Kwai
(57, David Lean) and Carol Reed’s
The Key
(58). He barely perked up for Ford’s
The Horse Soldiers
(59) or McCarey’s
Satan Never Sleeps
(62). Unadventurousness came close to inertia in
The World of Suzie Wong
(60) and
Paris When It Sizzles
(63), both for Richard Quine, and an atrophied solemnity set in for
Alvarez Kelly
(66, Edward Dmytryk).

All of a sudden, it disappeared and a real middle-aged anxiety colored the outlaw in Peckinpah’s
The Wild Bunch
(69)—as outstanding in Holden’s career as
Stalag 17
—but it gave way to relaxation in
The Christmas Tree
(69, Terence Young); Blake Edwards’s muted
Wild Rovers
(71); the man caught up with
Breezy
(73, Clint Eastwood); the slack builder of
The Towering Inferno
(74, John Guillermin); a sentimental anchorman, the Marlboro man at menopause, beaten upon by Faye Dunaway’s fitful waves in
Network
(76, Sidney Lumet);
21 Hours at Munich
(76, William A. Graham); fearing, and getting, the very worst in
Damien—Omen II
(78, Don Taylor); as another worried movie man in
Fedora
(78, Wilder);
Ashanti
(79, Richard Fleischer);
When Time Ran Out
(80, James Goldstone); and, finally, in one more aghast Hollywood story,
S.O.B
. (81, Blake Edwards).

Agnieszka Holland
, b. Warsaw, Poland, 1948
1977:
Zdjecia Probne/Screen Tests
. 1979:
Aktorzy Prowincjonalni/Provincial Actors
. 1980:
Goraczka
. 1981:
Kobieta Samotna/A Woman Alone
. 1985:
Bittere Ernte/Angry Harvest
. 1988:
Popielusko
. 1990:
Europa, Europa
. 1992:
Olivier Olivier
. 1993:
The Secret Garden; Fallen Angels
(TV). 1995:
Total Eclipse
. 1997:
Washington Square
. 1999:
The Third Miracle
. 2001:
Shot in the Heart
(TV);
Julie Walking Home; Golden Dreams
(s). 2003: “Hubris,” episode of
Cold Case
(TV). 2004: three episodes from
The Wire
(TV). 2006:
Copying Beethoven
. 2007:
Ekipa
. 2009:
The True Story of Janosik and Uhorcik
(codirected with Kasia Adamik). 2010:
Treme
(the pilot).