From The Archives: Hugh Grant
by Jack Tewksbury
For forty years the HFPA has recorded interviews with famous and celebrated actors, actresses and filmmakers. The world’s largest collection of its kind — over 10,000 interviews — is now in the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences Library. The audios are fascinating. Below is an excerpt: Hugh Grant, in 1992, talking about the perils of kissing the director’s wife on the set of Roman Polanski‘s Bitter Moon, and describing his relationship with then-girlfriend Elizabeth Hurley.
“Roman Polanski’s marriage to actress Emmanuelle Seigner is like a ship with two mates and no captain. I think they’re having a marvelous time. Roman’s temperamental in the old fashioned tradition of the maestro director. It was fun to watch him lose his temper, particularly with Emmanuelle. There was a lot of that.
He would storm off the set saying, “No, I’m not shooting anything today. No, no, forget it.” And she’d say, “Oh no, come back, come back. I’ll try harder this time.”
It was very interesting, but she’s very naughty as well. I remember doing a standard film kiss, which is really quite chaste, and she kept breaking away and saying, “What are you doing? You put your tongue in my mouth! Don’t do that!”
Which, I promise you, I wasn’t doing. She was just trying to create trouble with Roman.
Elizabeth (Hurley) came up to me like a teenage fan. We met seven years ago in Spain on a film in which I was playing Lord Byron, and Elizabeth played the woman who was in love with him all her life. Clare Claremont. In fact I have a theory that she only really likes me as Lord Byron.
We lived together in England for a long time, but after a few years we discovered she was getting more work in the U.S, and I was getting more work in England, so we ended up living on separate continents. Strangely, I think we’ve been getting on better ever since then. It’s fresher, and we fight less.
What makes her so attractive? It’s very difficult to describe what one finds attractive, but she’s it. And I suppose I’m always rather endeared to people who fancy me, and she did. I remember she had a good line. She came up to me one day on the set and just said, “Hugh, I think I’ve got a crush on you.” And I loved that. I thought that was excellent, and we’ve been going out together ever since.
Read More »From the archives: James Woods
by Jack Tewksbury
For forty years the HFPA has recorded interviews with famous and celebrated actors, actresses and filmmakers. The world’s largest collection of its kind — over 10,000 interviews — is now in the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences Library. The audios are fascinating. Below is an excerpt: a memoir of a very intense and rather colorful collaboration between James Woods and director Oliver Stone on the set of Salvador, in 1985.
“We fought like cats and dogs. I mean, we really were brutally at odds through most of the film, although I like Oliver Stone very much, and I think he’s a great screenwriter. Anyway, the movie worked, I think we both agreed.
We have each gone on record as saying it was an unbelievably difficult time but a very valuable time although we didn’t talk once for three whole days. If he said , “Action,” I wouldn’t do anything. I’d say, “Tell the first assistant director.” Once he called me a rat and a weasel and he told me, “I hate you.” So in the very next scene I shout, “Okay, I’m a f*** weasel.”
I just threw it in and he said, “You had to say it, didn’t you?” And he added, “I’m not going to print it,” and I said, “Yeah, you’ll print it, cause it’s good.” And there it is on the screen.”
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From the archives: Brad Pitt
by Jack Tewksbury
For forty years the HFPA has recorded interviews with famous and celebrated actors, actresses and filmmakers. The world’s largest collection of its kind — over 10,000 interviews — is now in the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences Library. The audios are fascinating. Below is an excerpt: way back in the early 1990, when an unknown Brad Pitt was starting out in Thelma and Louise, Kalifornia and A River Runs Through It, this is how he described his background, his vocation and his first forays into Hollywood.
“Where I’m from is a million miles away. I call it the Ozarks. A little bit of Huckleberry Finn, with rivers and lakes, trees and places to go get lost. I come from a very stable Christian family. I have a younger brother and younger sister, both married. Dad’s into the outdoors, and had a business. I’m crazy about all of them.
I just went home and spent three weeks there. There’s so much going on in Hollywood, it was good to get home for a while. It’s funny when you’re sitting home in Missouri, you see fame, you see money, you see all these things. They’re definitely an attraction, but when you come out here it turns into something else.
If you’re going to last, you’ve got to love what you’re doing. I’m not saying I despise money, but my dream was not about the fame or the money. It was about those movies I watched sitting by myself in the dark. Seeing films offered me a different way of looking at things. They gave me reasons why people do the things they do. They helped me realize that I could leave Missouri if I wanted to.
After high school I went to college but I got bad grades, and I got it into my head it was time to go, so I left two credits short. Acting wasn’t available there on any level that you could respect, but once I figured out in my head that I could leave, I left two weeks later. Since then, however, they’ve called and asked me to come back.
When I first arrived in L.A. I had a million jobs. I slept the first couple of nights in my car, and I lived six different places the first eight months. I met people where I could kind of crash.
The first week I started doing work as an extra but I also I delivered chickens and refrigerators. I rented a room where I told the landlady, “It’s so small you couldn’t swing a cat.” She replied, “No problem. I don’t allow animals.”
And then, about nine months later, I got my first part in Dallas. Then, episodic television and Movies of the Week until I got Thelma and Louise.
I was in this acting class, and a woman in the class had an audition with an agent. She needed a partner to do a scene. It was one of those classic stories I did the scene with her and ended up with the agent.”
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From the archives: John Huston
by Jack Tewksbury
For forty years the HFPA has recorded interviews with famous and celebrated actors, actresses and filmmakers. The world’s largest collection of its kind — over 10,000 interviews — is now in the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences Library. The audios are fascinating. Below is an excerpt: in this anthology of quotes from the late 1980′s, master filmmaker John Huston reflects on his life and the craft of directing.
“I was born in Nevada, Missouri. My grandfather won the town in a poker game.
Walter Huston, my father, was an actor who traveled the West with a theatre troupe. For a brief period, he did a vaudeville act with a chicken that danced on one leg. Times got hard. Other vaudevillians said Walter ate the chicken. He said that was a bold lie! He ate only the leg the chicken didn’t dance on.
My mother and I traveled the West with him. I got a taste for colorful people. Making a movie, I like casting best. No question , my films are successful because of my casting. I choose charismatic actors with the ability to play a certain role.
I directed Marilyn Monroe in her first movie, Asphalt Jungle, and last, The Misfits. She was the embodiment of the characters she played. I give artists as much freedom and encouragement as I can to be themselves.
Very often, as in Prizzi’s Honor, I get the actors together and say, “Look, work this scene out between yourselves.” I’d send the crew away and tell the actors, “Send for me when you’re ready.” Half or three quarters of an hour later they would have put a scene together. Usually it was ideal, and I wouldn’t have to do any directing at all. That is what being a director is knowing when not to direct. Someone asked me a question about having conflicts on the set. You don’t have conflicts with an actor. You get as much out of him as you can through encouragement.You give him heart and boldness and freedom to exercise his artistry.
Jack Nicolson has the greatest virtuosity of any actor in the business. He is not necessarily the greatest. De Niro is. There was never a better actor than De Niro. I’m often asked, “Why haven’t we got actors like Bogart and Cooper today?” Well, Bogart and Cooper weren’t like anyone who preceded them. But the very nature of a star is that he isn’t like any other star. We have extraordinary actors today.
The Nineteen-Thirties and Forties male stars were unique because each was a defined personality, supported over and over again by screenplays written specifically for them. Their voices personified them. Each one not only sounded different from the other, but no one else on the planet had their accents and manner of speech. Even some of the women, particularly Hepburn and Davis.
Again, we have extraordinary actors today, but not personalities. Well, Nicholson.”
Read More »From the archives: Nicolas Cage
For forty years the HFPA has recorded interviews with famous and celebrated actors, actresses and filmmakers. The world’s largest collection of its kind — over 10,000 interviews — is now in the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences Library. The audios are fascinating. Below is an excerpt: in 1992, on the set of Honeymoon in Vegas, two fiery individuals — Nicolas Cage and James Caan – met each other’s match. Cage told us what happened and reflected on the mixed blessings of being a member of the Coppola clan.
“Acting with Jimmy is formidable. He’s very unpredictable, and has a totally different approach than I have. He likes to be intentionally unprepared, so that things happen accidentally. I like to have an idea of where I’m going and mix it up with a little spontaneity. He would constantly try to get some sort of shock out of me.
In one scene, for example, a poker game, out of camera range he surprised me by pulling a switchblade. Now, if I were nineteen and hadn’t been doing this for eleven years, it might have been helpful, but I didn’t need that. I can get there on my own, in my own time. It’s what I get paid for. So I said, “Jimmy, that’s great. Thanks, but you know, it’s all right. You don’t need to pull a switchblade out on me. Our approaches are different, that’s all.” After I’d say my lines, he’d a stop and say, “Nicolas, if you ever come unprepared again, we’re all going to go home and forget about work.” But when I look at the movie, I’d have to say the balance is pretty good.
I have been acting since I was sixteen. At that age people can say things that aren’t very nice. I just decided I didn’t need the pressure so I changed my name from Coppola to Cage. Other young actors, I suppose, felt that I couldn’t act because I was related to such a powerful director. I had a lot of proving to do. I had to feel I was my own man, but I was very young. I would walk into casting offices, and they wanted to know what Francis was doing. I was prepared for my audition, but all they wanted to do was talk about my uncle.
After I changed my name, the first movie I auditioned for was Valley Girl, and I got the part. And I didn’t have to talk about him. At the time I really needed to do things apart from family, to prove I was an entity unto myself and not just part of the Coppola dynasty.”
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From the archives: Michael Douglas
by Jack Tewksbury
For forty years the HFPA has recorded interviews with famous and celebrated actors, actresses and filmmakers. The world’s largest collection of its kind — over 10,000 interviews — is now in the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences Library. The audios are fascinating. Below is an excerpt: in 1989, promoting the Danny De Vito-directed War of the Roses, Michael Douglas reflected on the never ending conflict between women and men.
“I think it’s very appropriate that this movie War Of The Roses ends the 1980′s. The decade has been about yuppie hard work and material values. If you spend that much time working, and very little time on a relationship, what do you expect? That is why we have so many divorces.
Marriage is wonderful, when it works, but too many people were sold a bill of goods about its dreamlike qualities. I totally support the feminist Movement, but I think women created a monster. I’ve seen working women spread themselves very thin, and when they’re not happy they blame their husbands. Now in the 1990′s we begin to come full circle. There’s got to be a balance, a rekindling of love.
A friend of mine told me recently, “They’re smarter than we are, and they don’t play fair.” After twenty years of the Feminist Movement, I hope we’ll end up kinder to each other. I hope women will be nicer to guys and their husbands.
We tend to be more polite to strangers than we are to the person closest to us. One of the best lines in the film is, “A civilized divorce is a contradiction in terms.”"
Read More »From The Archives: Al Pacino
by Jack Tewksbury
For forty years the HFPA has recorded interviews with famous and celebrated actors, actresses and filmmakers. The world’s largest collection of its kind — over 10,000 interviews — is now in the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences Library. The audios are fascinating. Below is an excerpt: in the late 1990s, with several films coming out (Donnie Brasco, The Devil’s Advocate, The Insider) and a very successful run as Richard II on Brodway, Al Pacino looks back into the foundation of his work as an actor– how a character is born.
“Years ago, as an unemployed actor, I went for a Santa Claus job at Macys on 34 th. Street in New York City. I told them I had worked as Santa two Christmases in a row at the largest department store in Brooklyn. The Santa interviewer said, “That’s fine for an off-Broadway store, but we want Broadway experience.”
When I was younger, I was more or less in character all the time, but you learn as you grow older. You still stay in a general state throughout the day, although at certain moments it’s not quite as intense. This doesn’t necessarily mean that if the scene calls for you to be cranky, you’re cranky all day. Sometimes you go in the opposite way, but still in character. You develop a way of getting in and out of a role.
You need an escape so you learn to keep yourself and the part you’re playing separate. I once played a lawyer in And Justice For All. Since that time I’ve been involved with courts, going over contracts. I can remember someone talking about a problem, and I asked them to hand me the contract, just out of reflex, but I don’t think that happens much. Even after Richard III closed, around eight o’clock I’d find myself walking with a limp.
The first day of Dog Day Afternoon I wasn’t happy. I told the producer we might have to do those scenes again. I don’t feel I had the character down, I stayed up all night with the script and in the morning I had it from that day on.
With a real character, you take the actual person and mimic them subliminally, sometimes consciously. But then your imagination takes over. It’s like a painter. You don’t actually paint what’s there but how it affects you. Invariably it becomes your own.
With fictional characters I don’t want to sound like I’m some authority on the subject, but you gather all these things up, they stay in the back of your head, and then come out. But ultimately I approach every part as though I don’t know anything about acting.
I try to maintain that it’s all new. Hopefully the experience of thirty years comes into play. The rigors of the stage, doing things job after job, night after night enable you to develop a way of coping with different roles.”
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From the Archives: Nicole Kidman
by Jack Tewksbury
For forty years the HFPA has recorded interviews with famous and celebrated actors, actresses and filmmakers. The world’s largest collection of its kind — over 10,000 interviews — is now in the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences Library. The audios are fascinating. Below is an excerpt: Nicole Kidman, some 20 years ago, married to Tom Cruise and taking her first steps into the Hollywood jungle, firmly establishes her individual power on both the personal and professional arenas.
“Nonsense – I didn’t get any movie part because of Tom (Cruise). There are a lot of stars around with girlfriends who are actresses. These women aren’t working. And many of these stars are also powerful.
I’m not blowing my own trumpet, but it irritates me. You do not get a part because of personal relationship. You may get into the audition, but unless you come up with the goods they’re not going to use you. The studios have millions of dollars riding on these movies. They’re not going to put Nicole in a movie just to please Tom!
I really don’t want to talk about Tom. I prefer to keep this about me, even though he’s a great guy, and the reason is that I’m very honest. If someone askes me a question, I usually answer it. I’m willing to talk about my past because I don’t have anything to hide.
My work also is an open book. But to protect our relationship, our love, Tom’s and mine, I’m not going to talk about all the little things we do together, what we do, when we go to bed, what we do when we go out. That’s our business, and nobody else’s.
I would never give up acting in favor of motherhood. That doesn’t mean I would deny my children anything, but there is a new generation of actors who are proving that you can have a family and still do what you want to do.
There are ten actresses at the moment who are pregnant, and no one’s using that as an excuse to give up her career. I think combining both helps one become a better person.
I used to have this thing about having to suffer as a person in order to be a good actor. You had to go through all that angst. But seeing people like Meryl Streep, Dustin Hoffman, Paul Newman, they’re all happily married, they all have children, they all have secure family lives and they all do brilliant work . “
Read More »From The Archives: Anjelica Huston
by Jack Tewksbury
For forty years the HFPA has recorded interviews with famous and celebrated actors, actresses and filmmakers. The world’s largest collection of its kind — over 10,000 interviews — is now in the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences Library. The audios are fascinating. Below is an excerpt: Anjelica Huston gives an emotional account of growing up under the formidable shadow of her father, director John Huston and the lonesome road to finding her path as an actor.
“John Huston, my father — a celebrated international movie director — loved Ireland. In the Fifties, we moved from Hollywood to a remote corner of Ireland, an hour away from the nearest town. There weren’t a lot of children around. My brother Tony and I had private tutors until we were ten or eleven, when it was thought we should mingle with other children.
It was a childhood without television, so we had to invent most of our pastimes — dressing up, performing plays or riding around on our ponies. At the age of seventeen my father cast me in a medieval romance, A Walk With Love And Death. The film was a disastrous failure and that discouraged me from acting for almost twelve years. It was a very difficult few years, and I had a rather hard time of it.
Because my father was famous and important, it created distance. On the other hand, because I had an unusual father, when I was in my teens the bourgeoisie seemed to be something I aspired to. I wanted everyone to be ordinary and equal. That was my moment of rebellion. But I was essentially brought up by my mother (prima ballerina Ricki Soma) , who was a fantastic woman – very funny, very beautiful, completely devoted to her children. She remained in Ireland with us while my father was working all over the world, and it was a lonely life for her.
Later she moved to London with me and Tony. If she had done so ten years earlier, it’s possible she could have made a career for herself, but it was very difficult for her to start over. So her life was one of frustration.
I remember her as having — along with her lunacy and funniness, — a very sad side, a melancholy, due to the fact that she had devoted her life to an errant husband. I think she was very talented, and I feel I carry the standard for her.
My mother was killed in a car crash. I was having problems communicating with my father. I left my home in London and started off on my own in New York. I was very sad at the time, and I think that can alter the way you see everything, but it was one of those things you have to get through .
When I visited my father, then living in Mexico, I told him, “I’m serious about wanting to become a film actress.” He replied, “Aren’t you a bit old, dear?” ”
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From the archives: Laura Dern
by Jack Tewksbury
For forty years the HFPA has recorded interviews with famous and celebrated actors, actresses and filmmakers. The world’s largest collection of its kind — over 10,000 interviews — is now in the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences Library. The audios are fascinating. Below is an excerpt: in 1993, promoting her turn among Steven Spielberg‘s genetically engineered dinosaurs of Jurassic Park, three-time Golden Globe winner and 1982 Miss Golden Globe Laura Dern talked about embracing her career over the objections of her mother (and co-star in the HBO series Enlightned) Diane Ladd, and finding love on the set.
Laura Dern and her Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Comedy Series, for Enlightened, 2012.
