Though Christopher Walken spent a majority of his early career in mostly serious roles, in the last two decades he has surprisingly emerged as a reliable source of a few dozen laughs in comedies.
Kellan Lutz goes all out for his auditions, including the one he did half-naked for Tarzan.
It’s almost impossible to believe that Harrison Ford is now seventy and is now a regular in “older men” roles. But the seemingly ageless Ford has put Indiana Jones behind him (well, most hope) in order to appear in more dramatic roles, such as the Jackie Robinson biopic 42. Ford stars as Branch Rickey, the general manager who initially signed Robinson to a minor league contract and later called him to the major leagues, making Robinson the first professional African-American baseball player in the modern era.
Nobody would fault you if upon hearing the name Matthew Lillard your first thoughts were of a talking dog and the Mystery Machine. Even IMDb’s #1 “Known for” for Lillard is 2002’s live-action Scooby-Doo, in which Lillard somehow managed to pull off the perfect Shaggy. Considering that Lillard has since stared in a live-action sequel to Scooby-Doo and has also been doing the voice for the animated Shaggy for the last several years he isn’t shying away from what some actors might consider a pigeonholing role.
Talk about a late bloomer: Ed Lauter has appeared in dozens of television series and movies in his long career, but at seventy-three the character actor seems to finally have become more than just a vaguely recognizable face after appearing as a butler in last year’s The Artist. This fall he appears in two films, Trouble with the Curve and Ed Burns’ The Fitzgerald Family Christmas
I can’t help it — even though it was over twenty years ago now since the release of Terminator 2: Judgment Day, whenever I see Robert Patrick on screen I end up thinking of him as the T-1000. Though I don’t think he minds that one bit, Patrick has had a lot of great roles since then, and he is his usual stoic self as the General Manager for the Atlanta Braves in Trouble with the Curve, which stars Clint Eastwood.
Jake Gyllenhaal took his role as a police officer in End of Watch extremely seriously, getting hands-on training and experience for his part.
Gyllenhaal shot his own scenes with a handheld camera every day for the first person point-of-view for the film. “We went on ride-alongs for five months, two to three times a week with the LAPD and sheriff’s department and Inglewood PD,” the actor told Moviefone.
There have been numerous actors who have turned to directing (such as recent convert Ben Affleck), but none of them have quite as impressive of a resume as Clint Eastwood, who for decades has been praised for both his acting and his directing and is one of the very few in the industry who can be undoubtedly labeled “iconic.”
Here is the extended first look of Les Misérables, will now hit theaters on Christmas Day. It features behind the scenes looks and interviews with the cast Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Anne Hathaway, Amanda Seyfried and Eddie Redmayne and Director Tom Hooper.
In her career, Amy Adams takes on completely varied roles, jumping between comedy (Julie and Julia) and drama easily. Her newest role in Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master required Adams to color in her own back story as the wife of a Scientology-like religious leader.
Anthony Mackie will soon join the growing pantheon of actors who have played superheroes. The actor, best known for his roles in The Hurt Locker and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter will appear as Falcon in the upcoming Captain America: The Winter Soldier. The person most excited for Mackie to portray Marvel’s first black superhero? His brother.
Michael Pena thinks Hollywood is finally starting to diversify. The Latino actor was cast alongside Jake Gyllenhaal in the cop drama End of Watch.
Bill Murray isn’t likely to be the first actor that pops into your head when you think of someone to play beloved President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. But the comedian is already earning Oscar talk about his portrayal in Hyde Park on the Hudson.
Colin Farrell has teamed up with director Martin McDonagh for another film, Seven Psychopaths, after the success of their first project together, In Bruges. The film is a dark comedy, but is much different from his role in Horrible Bosses.
Joaquin Phoenix is known for going Method-deep into his roles even going so far as to appear as “himself” on Late Show with David Letterman a few years ago. Now, he’s taken on another seriously dark part in Paul Thomas Anderson’s take on a Scientology-like religion in The Master.
Philip Seymour Hoffman will direct Ezekiel Moss, a depression era ghost story about a young, imaginative boy living in a small dead end town who befriends a mysterious drifter who may or may not have the supernatural ability to communicate with the dead.
Most teenagers have a pretty similar experience—dating, high school, prom. But most teenagers didn’t grow up spending their time on one of the most successful movie sets of all time. Emma Watson started playing Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter series when she was just 9-years-old, thus eliminating the possibility of a normal high school experience. So the British actress jumped at the chance to portray a typical teenager in The Perks of Being a Wallflower.
It wasn’t too long ago that I looked at new Ben Affleck movies like trips to the dentist, especially the parts involving the dentist painfully picking at my gums. After excellent roles in films like Dazed and Confused, Chasing Amy, and, of course, Good Will Hunting (which he co-wrote) in the 1990s, the new millennium brought with it a string of films starring Affleck that ranged from inoffensively mediocre to reaching new levels of awfulness. But Affleck successfully taped into his Good Will Hunting creative energy to direct Gone Baby Gone, The Town, and Argo, three films that have received strong critical praise (he also co-wrote the first two).
The economic instability that hit most of the world in 2008-2009 and still lingers didn’t just hit the lower classes — A-list stars who used to command paychecks hovering upwards of $20 million per film are far less common than they were before the recession. For a major star like Brad Pitt, who earned a reportedly $20 million salary for Mr. & Mrs. Smith in 2005, hasn’t gotten paychecks close to that in recent years.
