#acting-style

#acting-style

Between the meltdown memes, dodgy hairdos and his more taxman-friendly choices of roles, he has frequently made himself a target for ridicule among the masses. Fresh off an Oscar win for Leaving Las Vegas, the actor's decision to follow up with three action films must have seemed baffling at the time. The gambit paid off, though. Consisting of The Rock, Con Air and Face/Off, this unofficial trilogy of blockbusters would showcase the fundamental unknowability of Nicolas Cage.

I also consider her the greatest movie actress from the thirties to the fifties, if only for a handful of performances-indeed, for a handful of scenes. She was in few great films and not even many good ones, but her acting, at its peak, is different in kind from that of her similarly celebrated peers. Displaying both the most extreme artifice in self-presentation and the most authentic emotion in performance, she exemplifies Hollywood's paradoxes in concentrated form.

I didn't realize he was 89, but even if he was, he had that air of immortality that attaches to all true movie stars. The double take seemed appropriate-Robert Redford, over his many decades on screen, had, among so many other things, managed to turn it into an art form. He was a kind of skittish actor, whose flashing, darting eyes often appeared almost frantic, whose movements skewed jerky, like there was a scrappy little boy constantly knocking against that old Hollywood exterior.