At age 53, Ms. Blanchett is closer to the 60-year-old mark that she noted in the above interview. But, with another Oscar nomination for Tar, she is indeed, as she vowed, “in it for the long haul.”
Just as remarkably in
youth-oriented Hollywood, she will not be the only 50-plus nominee in the Best
Actress category. She will be joined by Michelle Yeoh, age 60. It will be an
interesting race between the two.
Deborah Kerr was born 100 years ago today in Helensburgh,
Scotland. The “openly sexual” characters that Denby had in mind were
undoubtedly the compassionate (and neglected) football coach’s wife in Tea
and Sympathy and the bitter (and horribly hurt) officer’s wife in From
Here to Eternity.
Kerr’s versatility and range enabled her to elevate
even decidedly pedestrian material to something like a touch of class. With
stronger scripts, such as From Here to Eternity and the 1961 adaptation
of Henry James’ “The Turn of the Screw,” The Innocents, she played a central
part in the making of classics.
Long after her film heyday, I saw her in a 1980s TV remake
of Billy Wilder’s Witness for the Prosecution. I chuckled at the starchiness
she injected into the barrister’s nurse played in the original by Elsa
Lanchester. I kept hoping, in vain, to see more of her.
The next time I saw her was far sadder: in 1994, when
Hollywood finally got around to awarding her the Oscar she should have won
decades before (and even this time, it was a consolation prize—an honorary Lifetime Achievement Award). My heart sank at the sight of the nervous, aging
woman onstage far from the vibrant actress of my memory.
Fortunately, we have those films to remind us of her
subtlety, elegance—and a deeper, luminous quality present in the accompanying photo,
explained, not long before her death in 2007, by her second husband, writer Peter
Viertel:
“The camera goes right through the skin. The camera
brings out what you are, and in her case, there was always a kind of a humanity
that she had in all of the things that she played . . . I think she made movies
that have never worn off their splendor.”
“I am doomed to an eternity of compulsive work. No
set goal achieved satisfies. Success only breeds a new goal. The golden apple
devoured has seeds. It is endless.”—Two-time Oscar-winning actress Bette Davis
(1908-1989), The Lonely Life (1962)
“Annoyed, frustrated, pissed off, exasperated,
irritated, fed up, and other than that just swell.” —Actress Sally Field, on
being asked her current state of mind, quoted in “Proust Questionnaire: Sally Field,” Vanity Fair, March 2016
“As often as necessary and without hesitation.” —Actress
Sally Field, showing admirable honesty when asked on what occasion she lies,
quoted in “Sally Field Answers Vanity Fair’s Proust Questionnaire,” Vanity
Fair, March 2016
“I'm damaged in many ways. And yet a lot of what my
fight is about is pushing through that to live a meaningful, sane existence and
make a difference and play to my strengths. So I think damaged characters resonate
with me. It might be the one area where I get to reveal those aspects of myself
because the rest of the time I'm caught up in being this responsible mother of
three children and the activist and the author and the blaaaah. All that stuff.
And so it’s like the little hole at the top of the brown-rice pot that lets the
steam through.”—Actress Gillian Anderson (The
X-Files and, more recently onstage, A
Streetcar Named Desire) quoted in Sophia Hollander, “Reviving Blanche DuBois in Brooklyn,” The Wall Street Journal, Apr. 30-May 1, 2016
