The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (207 page)

Jeremy Irons
, b. Cowes, England, 1948
For several years, Irons was best known as Charles Ryder in the universally admired TV adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s
Brideshead Revisited
(81, Charles Sturridge and Michael Lindsay-Hogg). He seemed so well cast as the gaunt, slightly out-of-his-element, and increasingly melancholy observer of grandeur’s decline. His sad, subtle voice was made for the voice-over narrative. His soulful reticence was an unstressed sustenance to the larger sense of erratic but vivid aristocracy he beheld. His Charles Ryder was fit for Waugh, and for Graham Greene. If one looked ahead, it was to imagine Irons as, maybe, Richard II, Uncle Vanya, or any of Greene’s mortified witnesses to their own lack of quality.

He had been educated at Sherborne and the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, and he was one of those English actors who had seen and felt the upper reaches of the class system. Yet he seemed happier doing exotics than gents: he was Mikhail Fokine in
Nijinsky
(80, Herbert Ross) and a very credible Pole in
Moonlighting
(82, Jerzy Skolimowski). Whereas he seemed conventional and staid in
The French Lieutenant’s Woman
(81, Karel Reisz), in the D. H. Lawrence story,
The Captain’s Doll
(82, Claude Whatham), and in the Pinter wrong-way-rounder,
Betrayal
(83, David Jones).

That he was looking for something different was evident from
The Wild Duck
(83, Henri Safran), and the very unsatisfying
Swann in Love
(84, Volker Schlöndorff), to say nothing of the woefully pretentious
The Mission
(86, Roland Joffé). Having wearied a little of lofty cinema, Irons turned to lower depths: hence his magnificent double performance as the twins in
Dead Ringers
(88, David Cronenberg), one of the greatest performances of the eighties. Moreover, Irons’s capacity for gentleness and gallows humor surely enabled Cronenberg to enrich his own film. Thus, out of potentially exploitative material came a masterpiece, as well as the realization that Irons was adventurous, in love with disguise, play, and very bold strokes.

Whether that spirit can find the right parts remains in question. For the moment, Irons seemed attached to Englishness and small subjects—
A Chorus of Disapproval
(89, Michael Winner), from Alan Ayckbourn;
Danny the Champion of the World
(89, Gavin Millar); and
Waterland
(92, Stephen Gyllenhaal), a curious and misguided adaptation of Graham Swift that seeks to transfer the Fenland to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Still,
Waterland
did allow Irons to work with his wife, Sinead Cusack.

Meanwhile, Irons won his Oscar for a very skilled one-note impersonation as Claus von Bulow in
Reversal of Fortune
(90, Barbet Schroeder). The result is sketchy, and a fraction of
Dead Ringers
, but it does show that Irons’s English gentlemen need to be bogus, and out of the dafter reaches of imagination, if they want to hold the actor’s interest. He was wasted in
Kafka
(91, Steven Soderbergh) and he could not bring sympathy, belief, or the required monstrous, uncontrollable need to the M.P. in
Damage
(92, Louis Malle). He played one more aghast onlooker in
Tales from Hollywood
(92, Howard Davies) for TV. He was helplessly adrift in
M. Butterfly
(93, Cronenberg) and
The House of the Spirits
(93, Bille August), projects that began to suggest how easily Irons could become an outcast actor.

That 1994 prediction gets fair marks. Irons has wandered, he has done voices, and he has had some offbeat parts in films not widely seen: the voice of Scar in
The Lion King
(94, Roger Allers and Rob Minkoff); another awful villain in
Die Hard: With a Vengeance
(95, John McTiernan); taking a long, wordy time to expire in
Stealing Beauty
(96, Bernardo Bertolucci); the voice of Siegfried Sassoon on TV’s
The Great War
(96);
Chinese Box
(97, Wayne Wang); valiant as Humbert Humbert in
Lolita
(97, Adrian Lyne), but a touch too sinister compared with James Mason’s healthy intellectual superiority; Aramis in
The Man in the Iron Mask
(98, Randall Wallace); voices in animated films—
Poseidon’s Fury
(99) and
Faeries
(99);
Longitude
(00, Sturridge—his old discoverer); a voice on
Dungeons & Dragons
(00, Courtney Solomon);
Ohio Impromptu
(00, Sturridge);
The Fourth Angel
(01, John Irvin);
The Night of the Iguana
(01, Predrag Antonijevic);
Callas Forever
(02, Franco Zeffirelli);
The Time Machine
(02, Simon Wells); as F. Scott Fitzgerald in
Last Call
(02, Henry Bromell);
And Now … Ladies and Gentlemen
(02, Claude Lelouch);
Mathilde
(03, Nina Mimica);
Being Julia
(04, István Szabó); Antonio in
The Merchant of Venice
(04, Michael Radford);
Kingdom of Heaven
(05, Ridley Scott).

He looks ancient sometimes, but the voice stays young:
Casanova
(05, Lasse Hallström);
Inland Empire
(06, David Lynch);
Eragon
(06, Stefen Fangmeier); Leicester in
Elizabeth I
(06, Tom Hooper);
The Colour of Magic
(08, Vadim Jean);
Appaloosa
(08, Ed Harris);
The Pink Panther 2
(09, Harald Zwart); very lively as Stieglitz in
Georgia O’Keeffe
(09, Bob Balaban).

Amy Irving
, b. Palo Alto, California, 1953
From 1985–89, Amy Irving was Mrs. Steven Spielberg—and it wasn’t easy. Mutual friend Matthew Robbins is quoted as saying in Joseph McBride’s Spielberg biography, “It was no fun to go [to their home—or one of their four houses], because there was an electric tension in the air. It was competitive as to whose dining table this is, whose career we’re gonna talk about, or whether he even approved of what she was interested in—her friends and her actor life.… The child in Spielberg believed so thoroughly in the possibility of perfect marriage.… And Amy was sort of a glittering prize, smart as hell, gifted, and beautiful, but definitely edgy and provocative and competitive. She would not provide him any ease.”

Has it worked out better, even with the $100 million (more or less) in divorce settlement? Or is there always going to be something smart and aggrieved in Amy Irving? She is the daughter of theatre director Jules Irving and actress Priscilla Pointer—and she has been heard to say that she had that to get over first. Having been trained at ACT in San Francisco and RADA in London, she began early on as the witness in
Carrie
(76, Brian De Palma) and then the inane
The Fury
(78, De Palma), where she moved with exceptional grace.

But she was hard to cast—for she had a virginal look that did not exactly fit her mind: as a deaf woman in
Voices
(79, Robert Markovitz);
Honeysuckle Rose
(80, Jerry Schatzberg); as a pianist in
The Competition
(80, Joel Oliansky); nominated as supporting actress in
Yentl
(83, Barbra Streisand);
Micki + Maude
(84, Blake Edwards).

The most notable sign of Spielberg’s influence was that she sang for Jessica Rabbit in
Who Framed Roger Rabbit
(88, Robert Zemeckis). And she did a voice for
An American Tail: Fievel Goes West
(91, Phil Nibbelink). But she was lovely and touching in
Crossing Delancey
(88, Joan Micklin Silver), albeit in another underlined Jewish role. And she played the reporter in
A Show of Force
(90, Bruno Barreto).

She had a son with Spielberg and, after the divorce, she had a child with Barreto, whom she later married. Then, after
Benefit of the Doubt
(93, Jonathan Heape), she helped produce and acted in Barreto’s outstanding
Carried Away
(96)—she played the neglected fiancée, and has never been better. After that, she played in
I’m Not Rappaport
(96, Herb Gardner);
Bossa Nova
(99, Barreto);
Traffic
(00, Steven Soderbergh);
13 Conversations About One Thing
(01, Jill Sprecher);
Tuck Everlasting
(02, Jay Russell); a running part on TV in
Alias; Hide and Seek
(05, John Polson);
Adam
(09, Max Mayer).

Joris Ivens
(Georg Henri Anton Ivens) (1898–1989), b. Nijmegen, Holland All films are documentaries, except those marked (f): 1928:
De Brug; Etude de Mouvements; La Bar de Juffrouw Heyens; Branding
(codirected with Mannus Franken). 1929:
Regen
(codirected with Franken);
Schaatsenrijden; IK-Film
(codirected with Hans van Meerten). 1930:
Zuiderzee; Wij Bouwen
(in four parts);
Congtres der Vakvereenigingen; Timmerfabriek
. 1931:
Symphonie van den Arbeid; Creosoot
. 1932:
Komsomol
. 1933:
Borinage
(codirected with Henri Storck);
Hein
. 1934:
Nieuwe Gronden
. 1937:
Spanish Earth
. 1939:
The Four Hundred Million
. 1940:
Power and the Land
. 1941:
Our Russian Front
(codirected with Lewis Milestone);
New Frontiers
(uncompleted). 1942:
Action Stations; Alone
. 1945:
Know Your Enemy: Japan
(codirected with Frank Capra). 1946:
Indonesia Calling
. 1947:
Pierwsze Lata
. 1950:
Pokoj Zwyeciezy Swiata
(codirected with Jerzy Bossak). 1951:
My Za Mir
(codirected with Ivan Pyriev). 1952:
Wyscig Pokoju Warszawa-Berlina-Praga
. 1954:
Das Lied der Ströme
. 1956:
Die Vind Rose
(supervised with Alberto Cavalcanti) (f);
Les Aventures de Till L’Espiègle
(codirected with Gérard Philipe) (f). 1957:
La Seine a Recontré Paris; Lettres de Chine
(in three parts). 1958:
Six Cents Million avec Vous
. 1959:
L’Italia non e’un Paese Povero
. 1960:
Demain à Nanguila
. 1961:
Carnet de Viaje; Pueblo en Armas
. 1962: …
A Valparaiso; El Circo mas Pequeno del Mundo
. 1964:
Le Train de la Victoire
. 1965:
Viet-Nam!
. 1966:
Le Mistral; Le Ciel, la Terre; Rotterdam-Europoort
. 1967:
Loin du Vietnam
(codirected with Jean-Luc Godard, William Klein, Alain Resnais, and Claude Lelouch). 1968:
Dix-septième Parallèle
(codirected with Marceline Loridan);
Le Peuple et Ses Fusils; La Guerre Populaire au Laos
(codirected);
Rencontre avec le Président Ho Chi Minh
(codirected with Loridan). 1976:
Comment Yukong Déplaces les Montagnes
(codirected with Loridan). 1988:
Une Histoire de Vent/A Story of the Wind
(codirected with Loridan).

Joris Ivens was like one of those long-serving suitcases held together by the labels of a lifetime’s travel. Having fought in the First World War and studied photography, he made scientific films for the University of Leyden, worked as a documentarist in Holland, and then went to Russia to make
Komsomol
. Thereafter, he pursued the violent troubles of the world. First, he coordinated the many indignant talents involved on
Spanish Earth;
he went to China for
The Four Hundred Million;
and made
Power and the Land
for the U.S. government. During the war, he lectured at UCLA and worked for the American and Canadian governments. In 1945, he went to the East in an official capacity for the Dutch government, only to resign when Holland refused to recognize the independence of Indonesia. For the next ten years he worked in Eastern Europe. In 1956, he collaborated with Cavalcanti on
Die Vind Rose
and also produced and codirected with Gérard Philipe,
Les Aventures de Till l’Espiègle
. Nearing sixty, he traveled again—through China, South America, and Africa. Those seemed more tranquil years, but he was steadied in the Far East and reinforced as a radical by the war in Vietnam. Ivens’s work gradually shed formality. As a young Dutch documentary-maker, he was firmly in the “symphonic” tradition. But
Spanish Earth
was a crucial film in that it admitted the existence of situations where one could only film what was possible, put it together, and let the terrible urgency be known to the rest of the world. Ivens is thus the original international cameraman, intent on showing the recesses of current events and the horrors, triumphs, and injustices that occur. He was vastly traveled, but not dejected. And although he made films for Western and Eastern interests, it is the world that has fluctuated. The same humanitarianism drove him throughout. He reminds us of an age when there were no TV units or photojournalists to crowd out disasters with description.

Burl Ives
(Burl Icle Ivanhoe), (1909–95), b. Hunt, Illinois
He had been a folk singer for most of his life and he had lived on the road in the 1930s when that was a radical calling. So it wasn’t until later that he named names (including Pete Seeger) to HUAC and lived on to become a kind of country Santa in a lot of children’s films where his high, sweet voice often graced the soundtrack. But for about ten years, starting with
East of Eden
, he was a fierce, physical actor who brought character and sometimes menace to overblown father figures.

He made his debut billed as the Singing Troubadour in
Smoky
(46, Louis King), followed by
Station West
(48, Sidney Lanfield),
So Dear to My Heart
(48, Harold Schuster), and
Sierra
(50, Alfred E. Green). Then, in 1955, he brought a great gust of atmosphere to
East of Eden
(Elia Kazan), playing the sheriff. Then, after
The Power and the Prize
(56, Henry Koster), he was the father in a TV version of
The Miracle Worker
(57, Arthur Penn), Ephraim in
Desire Under the Elms
(58, Delbert Mann); outstanding as Cottonmouth in
Wind Across the Everglades
(58, Nicholas Ray), where he suggested great affinity with the world of the jungle. Next, he was Big Daddy in
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
(58, Richard Brooks), a role he had played onstage. The studio wanted to nominate him for that, but he was nominated in the same year for his ranching patriarch in
The Big Country
(58, William Wyler), for which he won the supporting actor Oscar.