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ACTORS AND ACTRESSES, 4th EDITION

easily into the conventions and manner of the worthy but nally unexciting biopicthis is no fault of Washingtons: he carries the lm securely, and is largely responsible for its limited distinction. Washingtons two nest lms are, arguably, Philadelphia and Devil in a Blue Dress. The relative commercial failure of the latter is a great disappointment: it deserved large audiences, and the studio was apparently planning to follow it with a series of adaptations of the splendid Easy Rawlins novels of Walter Mosley, a series which now may never materialize. The lm is directed with great intelligence by Carl Franklin, and Washingtons performance as an unusually fallible and vulnerable involuntary private eye (we are worlds removed here from Philip Marlowe) is a marvel of integrity and insight. Tom Hanks got most of the attention (and the Best Actor Oscar) for Philadelphiaunderstandably, as his character, a gay man dying of AIDS, is the more showybut Washingtons performance equals his in intelligence and subtlety. Again, Washington traces with surety the characters emotional and psychological development. Initially hostile to the idea of taking on a gay client, a prey to a casual and unthinking homophobia, he comes to understand the parallels between racial prejudice and antigay prejudice, systematically casting off his homophobia intellectually (if never entirely on the emotional level). We see him, in fact, learning from the Tom Hanks character, whom he originally rejected: learning especially, in the famous Maria Callas scene, the value of the individual life, the essential human creativity expressed in the striving to live, not merely exist or survive. Since the collapse of the studio system, the situation and stability of the star have been notoriously precarious. Denzel Washington is the only black star so far to achieve so great a preeminence, and to sustain it over more than a decade. One can read his recent career in terms of strategies of security, a traversal of the currently fashionable generic cycles: the Devil movie (Fallen), the Angel movie (The Preachers Wife), the serial killer movie (The Bone Collector), the Plea for Justice movie (The Hurricane). Fallen is intriguing for its rst half, a considerable letdown when the issues become clear. The Preachers Wife, a remake of The Bishops Wife with Washington in the Cary Grant role, owes most of its ideas to Its a Wonderful Life and The Bells of St. Marys, whilst carefully avoiding the inner tensions that give those lms their continuing interest; it proves mainly that frivolous romantic comedy is not his forte. The Bone Collector (out of Seven, by Silence of the Lambs) is better than its derivative nature suggests, but mainly because of Angelina Jolie. The Hurricane gives Washington a role that displays his strengths, his intensity, his virtuosity, within the simplistic and self-righteous setting of a Norman Jewison social protest movie. None of these lms extends him signicantly. His return to collaboration with Spike Lee gives him his one chance to shine within a lm of real distinction, and he makes the most of it. He Got Game had a disappointing critical reception (everyone seems to expect Lee to remake Do the Right Thing every time he shoots a lm). Its insights into the importance of sport, as one of the few areas in which American blacks have been permitted to nd success, dignity, and self-respect, are cogently and movingly presented, with Washington (almost unrecognizable in beard and Afro) at his nest in an emotionally demanding role. The complex fatherson relationship is handled with great sensitivity and intelligence by director and star. Robin Wood

WATSON, Emily
Nationality: British. Born: London, 14 January 1967. Family: Married Jack Waters (an actor), 1995. Education: Studied literature at Bristol University; studied acting at Drama Studio London. Career: Member, Royal Shakespeare Company, 199293. Awards: New York Film Critics Circle Award, National Society of Film Critics Award, President Award, Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival, Felix Award, European Film Awards, all best actress, and New Generation Award, Los Angeles Film Critics Association, all for Breaking Waves, all 1996; Evening Standard British Film Award, Bodil Award, for Best Actress, Bodil Festival, Robert Award, Robert Festival, all for Breaking Waves, all 1997; British Independent Film Award, best actress in a motion picture-drama, for Hilary and Jackie, 1999; ALFS Award, for British Actress of the Year, London Critics Circle Awards, 2000. Agent: International Creative Management, 8942 Wilshire Boulevard, Beverly Hills, CA 90211, U.S.A.

Films as Actress: 1996 Breaking the Waves (von Trier) (as Bess McNeill) 1997 The Mill on the Floss (Theakston) (as Maggie Tulliver); The Boxer (Sheridan) (as Maggie); Metroland (Saville) (as Marion) 1998 Hilary and Jackie (Tucker) (as Jackie)

Emily Watson and Daniel Day-Lewis in The Boxer

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ACTORS AND ACTRESSES, 4th EDITION

WAYNE

Angelas Ashes (Parker) (as Angela); Cradle Will Rock (Robbins) (as Olive Stanton) 2000 Trixie (Rudolph) (as Trixie Zurbo); The Luzhin Defence (Gorris) (as Natalia) 1999

Publications By WATSON: articles Stranger on the Shore, interview with Elaine Paterson, in Time Out (London), no. 1364, 9 October 1996. On WATSON: articles Interview, December 1996. Ansen, David, God, Sex and Sacrice, in Newsweek, 9 December 1996. People Weekly, 9 December 1996. People Weekly, 31 March 1997. Lim, D., Main Event, in Village Voice (New York), 6 January 1998. Frielman, V. V., Bare Naked Lady, in Esquire, December 1998. Fuller, G., The Throbability Factor, in Interview, February 1998. Kuczynski, Alex, An Actress Who Seems Fragile Only if Shes Acting, in New York Times, 14 November 1999. * * *

Emily Watson has distinguished herself in a series of low-key, critically-acclaimed performances, displaying an emotional vulnerability rare among todays leading actresses. As Alex Kuczynski wrote, Watson is someone small whose intellectual and spiritual presence eventually dominates the room. On screen, her face seems as fragile as a blossom; her eyes serene, confused little puddles of clear blue; her cheeks as cartoonishly full as those of a kewpie doll. She splashed into the consciousness of English and American audiences in the arthouse hit Breaking the Waves as Bess, a religious Scottish housewife whose husband Jan is paralyzed in an oil-rig accident. Her faith in God already strained, she is astonished when the impotent Jan encourages her to have sex with other men and tell him about her lovemaking. The lm could have gone the route of Indecent Proposal and exploited its plot of illicit sex, but the lm was held together by thoughtful direction and Watsons sensitive onscreen religious devotion, another subject most Hollywood movies handle ham-handedly; her halting prayers to God were heartfelt without coming across as cloying or sentimental. Richard Corliss compared her Oscar-nominated performance here to Lillian Gish and the other white roses of the silents. . . . She acts volcanically, as any heart does when it pumps with love. She is pure emotion, naked, shameless, unmediated by discretion. Watson won her second Academy Award nomination for her role as Jacqueline de Pre, a classical violinist stricken by mutliple sclerosis, in the docudrama Hilary and Jackie. Watson and co-star Rachel Grifth turned what could have been a schmaltzy, highbrow version of Brians Song into a meditation on how feelings are expressed through art. Internet critic James Bernardelli wrote that Watson, gives a stunning performance . . . capturing every nuance of a character trapped between genius and madness, whose playing denes her

existence. . . . When she plays the cello, her ngers are in the right place, and she effectively mimics her characters unconventional body movements. Even more remarkable, however, is her ability to produce this depth of emotion without ever straying over the top. Her breakthrough role in an American movie was as out-of-work actress Olive Thomas in Cradle Will Rock, whose stage performance in Mark Blitzsteins radical 1938 musical leads to personal and romantic growth. Robbins lm was frequently obvious as an agitprop tract, loose in its historical detail and occasionally cheap in its characterizations of the rich and artistic. But the most resonant part of the movie was Watsons performance. A scene on an unemployment line, as she desperately asks WPA bureaucrat Joan Cusack for a job, sums up the hardship of Depression New York. Watson is also at the center of the movies climax; the opening night of The Cradle Will Rock abruptly moved to another theater, she rises from a seat in the SRO house and sings her introduction (Molls Song), defying the government censors as well as her actors union. Her costars join her one by one to perform the musical without sets or costumes. Her quiet, subtle performance (she did her own singing, as well) captured the power of theater and art to cause personal change, more persuasively than the whole lms attempt to show arts political effect. Watsons next lm role was in the highly-anticipated Angelas Ashes, the movie version of Frank McCourts 1996 best-selling autobiography about his Irish-American childhood. Again in a saltof-the-earth role, Watson effectively personies the title character, whom millions of readers had already pictured in their minds. Eschewing excessive emotion, she is truly effective in one traumatic scene when her adolescent son Frank slaps her in the face. Again, her performance anchors a lm directed by a Hollywood name out of his element. With two Oscar nominations under her belt before reaching age 35, Watson is trying to shake her wobegone screen image in the 2000 lm Trixie, playing an American private eye. Perhaps as with her countrywomen Emma Thompson and Helena Bonham Carter, she will achieve wider popularity doing more openly enviable characters. Andrew Milner

WAYNE, John
Nationality: American. Born: Marion Michael Morrison in Winterset, Iowa, 26 May 1907. Education: Attended Glendale High School, California; University of Southern California, Los Angeles, 192527. Family: Married 1) Josephine Saenz, 1933 (divorced 1945), sons: the producer Michael Wayne and the actor Patrick Wayne, two daughters; 2) Esperanza Bauer, 1946 (divorced 1954); 3) Pilar Palette, 1954, son: the actor John Ethan, daughters: Aissa, Marisa. Career: 1926prop man for Fox studio: lm debut as extra in Brown of Harvard; in early lms billed as Duke Morrison; 1930role in Men without Women directed by John Ford, who directed many of Waynes later lms; later worked for Columbia and other studios; 1939role in Fords Stagecoach made Wayne a leading man; 194243in radio series Three Sheets to the Wind; 1944co-founder, Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals; 1947lm producer: formed Wayne-Fellows Productions and Batjac production

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