Anton Yelchin Chose ‘Like Crazy’ Over Real-Life Love: “You either commit to one thing or another, and I always pick movies”

It’s rare when an actor sits down for an interview and lets you into their personal world.  Usually keeping a safe distance, actor Anton Yelchin seems to have dropped his guard in a recent interview with Moviefone.  Could it be the the magic of Like Crazy from director Drake Doremus?

Discarding the traditional script, Doremus shepards Yelchin in his latest venture as an American boy living with the emotional ups and downs of a long distance relationship with his English girlfriend.  Something Yelchin is familiar with, refreshingly honest about, and truly sad over.

“You lose your life when you enter this world. It was like I forgot what my life was. At the time — my girlfriend and I are no longer together — she and I saw each other once during that whole month. It still makes me sad, but you either commit to one thing or another, and I always pick movies. It’s my life; I don’t know what that says about me, but movies are what I love. So I saw her once, and I remember going “Whoa…” It’s a weird f-cking thing when you think in your head “That’s who you are. You’re my girlfriend. I love you. You’re funny, smart, cool, and sexy.” I forgot all those things. I didn’t even remember what it was like to sleep with her because I was in this world the whole time. I was Jacob.”   Read more

Screenwriter Goes from $80 Million Box Office to Working Temp Sales Job… What Happened?

All aspiring screenwriters believe that if they could only sell one great script or even one potential treatment they’d be made for life.  After all, once you get your name on one blockbuster writing gigs won’t stop pouring in, right?

Think again.  Like any other career, being a screenwriter has its ups and downs.  If you don’t believe me, ask the anonymous screenwriter who spoke to Reuters about how his career has gone after his first movie made more than $80 million.  But after that success his career eventually went dry and he’s currently working a two-week sales temp job. 

How did that happen?  The screenwriter explains, “I was doing fine for a while, and then it seemed like after the writers strike, studios and production companies used that as an excuse to cut in-house deals and use that as an excuse not to pay writers for anything.”  Plus, with the economy being how it is, many otherwise greenlit projects are being put on hold.  That means there are more screenwriters competing for fewer gigs.  “A lot of the jobs I used to go up for, A-list, like super A-list writers are going for those jobs right now.  In the past, they wouldn’t have. There was enough of every level to go around.”  The first type of films to be cut are what the screenwriter calls “middle-ground movies that filled the marketplace,” as it seems most films are either micro-budget or major studio tentpole projects.   Read more

New York: One Day Intensive Workshop with Kari Margolis and Company Members

One Day Intensive Workshop with Kari Margolis and Company Members

November 19th – 10am to 4pm
Center for Performance Research, 361 Manhattan Ave., Brooklyn NY

Cost: $110 ($95 early registration before November 5th)

Includes cost of ticket to Sunday’s performance

Explore the Margolis Method and take a theatrical journey to your creative core.  Merge muscular and vocal expression and synthesize the skill-sets of actor, director and playwright.  Create on your feet!

Kari Margolis’ work has been recognized with six Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, a “Bessie” NY Performance Award, a Pew/TCG National Artist Fellowship and a Creative Capital National Artist Fellowship among many other prestigious awards.  Kari is Co-Artistic Director of the MB ADAPTORS Company and has created sixteen original productions that have toured nationally and to Barcelona, Berlin, London, Singapore and throughout Canada and Mexico.   Kari has been master teacher for the Kennedy Center’s American College Theatre Festival for twelve years, leads workshops and residencies worldwide, is a published author and Keynote Speaker and runs the Margolis Method Center International in Highland Lake NY.

Performance

Work-in-Progress of MB ADAPTORS newest production PULLING STRINGS!

November 20th – 2pm

Cost: $12.50 (if not attending workshop)

For more info. to Register or Tickets – contact us at margolismethod@mac.com

Also check out:

www.margolismethod.org and www.margolisbrownadaptors.org

Trailer: ‘We Need To Talk About Kevin’ starring Tilda Swinton, John C. Reilly

We Need To Talk About Kevin: A suspenseful and gripping psychological thriller, Lynne Ramsay’s WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN explores the factious relationship between a mother and her evil son. Tilda Swinton, in a bracing, tour-de-force performance, plays the mother, Eva, as she contends for 15 years with the increasing malevolence of her first-born child, Kevin (Ezra Miller). Based on the best-selling novel of the same name, WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN explores nature vs. nurture on a whole new level as Eva’s own culpability is measured against Kevin’s innate evilness. Ramsay’s masterful storytelling simultaneously combines a provocative moral ambiguity with a satisfying and compelling narrative, which builds to a chilling, unforgettable climax. courtesy of trailers.apple.com

Director: Lynne Ramsay
Cast: Tilda Swinton, John C. Reilly, Ezra Miller

In Theaters: December 9th, 2011  Read more

Books on the Business and Craft of Acting

I have a lot of actors asking me about which books I read when researching the business, as well as the craft of acting. So, I thought I would give a brief run down of the books that I currently have on my bookshelf (or have come highly recommended), along with links to buy those books if you find them interesting. This list is, by no means, complete — and I reserve the right to add to it as the days, weeks and months go on. But I think it is a great place to start.

I also want to say that I am not a book reviewer and don’t intend to give “yays” or “nays” to anything that list. I’ll leave it up to you to decide if the books are useful to you or not. The books have either been listed because a) the book came recommended, or b) I found the book at a time when I was searching for that specific topic, and I found it helpful. So, hopefully these books will give you the same support and inspiration that I was searching for. I have listed them in no particular order.

Read more

’24 Hour Plays on Broadway’ Celebrates its Tenth Anniversary Raising Money for A Wonderful Cause

Could you write, direct, and produce a play that will hit Broadway in less than twenty-four hours?  Well I’m sure just about anybody could, but would it be any good?  That’s the concept behind 24 Hour Plays on Broadway, which celebrates its tenth annual production on Broadway next month.

While it’s a cliche to say that this year’s cast is bigger and better than ever, but in this case it’s absolutely true.  This year, six writers and directors — including Tony Award, Pulitzer Prize, and Emmy Award winners — join up with some huge acting names from film, television, and, of course, Broadway to put on this year’s event, which will raise money  for Urban Arts Partnership.  Some of those big names donating their time include Jesse Eisenberg, John Krasinski, Megan Fox, Tracy Morgan and Woody Harrelson.  

The entire whirlwind production is paid for by luxury pen and watch company Montblanc, as it has for the last five years. Montblanc North America CEO and President, Jan-Patrick Schmitz, explains his philosophy behind his company supporting such an event to the New York Post, explaining, “We have been supporting the arts since the beginning, writing instruments, literacy, it’s who we are, not what we do. Over the years, we have supported a lot of programs, but I became interested in 24 Hour Plays, because it is so unique in the sense that it brings in various aspects of the artistic process. The dynamics of various disciplines was very intriguing to me.”   Read more

Ralph Fiennes Laments The ‘Twitter Effect’ on the English Language

I’m English instructor in my day job (what, you think all I do is write for Daily Actor? I wish!), so I’m no stranger to the havoc that electronic communication has ravaged on the language.  My students regularly forget to capitalize the pronoun “i”, use “your” and “you’re” interchangeably, and don’t understand that smileys aren’t appropriate for a paper. 

While a majority of my students know better, it is a growing problem, and it turns out I’m not the only one who realizes it: Schindler’s List star and Harry Potter villain Ralph Fiennes has recently blamed Twitter and our soundbite-obsessed media for dumbing down the English language.

“We’re in a world of truncated  sentences, soundbites and Twitter,” he explains to UK’s The Daily Mail.  “[Language] is being eroded — it’s changing. Our expressiveness and our ease with some words is being diluted so that the sentence with more than one clause is a problem for us, and the word of more than two syllables is a problem for us.”   Read more

Happy Halloween! The Daughter of Boris Karloff Recalls Her Father’s Struggles Before ‘Frankenstein’

It’s Halloween, and I’m sure you’ve seen at least one image of Frankenstein as you’ve geared up for the holiday.  Chances are that the Frankenstein that you saw was based on the bolt neck, flat-headed lumbering portrayal of Frankenstein’s Monster made famous by Boris Karloff in the Universal Frankenstein film series.  Karloff played The Monster in the original 1931 film and the first two sequels, Bride of Frankenstein (1935) and Son of Frankenstein (1939), and also appeared as a mad scientist in 1944′s House of Frankenstein and as Baron Von Frankenstein in the non-Universal film Frankenstein 1970 (1958).  

Many would assume that an actor who portrayed one of the greatest monsters in film history so many times would have a dark side as well, but according to his only child, daughter Sara Karloff, “He was kind, he was gentle and wise, and a good listener.”  Sara Karloff appeared at New York City’s Museum of the Moving Image on October 30 for a screening of Frankenstein and her family home movies and also to talk about her father’s legendary career in depth.   Read more

Guinness Book of World Records Says Samuel L. Jackson is the Highest-Grossing Actor of All Time

At first it’s surprising that the highest grossing box office actor of all time isn’t someone like John Wayne or Arnold Schwarzenegger, but Samuel L. Jackson. 

After all, Jackson himself has never really carried many movies all on his own in the same way the Duke and the Terminator have.  But once you start to think about it, with the sheer amount of movies that Jackson has appeared in over his nearly forty-year career it’s almost a given that Jackson has been declared the highest-grossing actor of all time by the Guinness Book of World Records with his collective films grossing an astronomical $7.42 billion!

After all, some of the films Jackson has appeared in include the three Star Wars prequels, his recurring role as Nick Fury in the Marvel Universe films, cameos in Quentin Tarantino‘s films, and lending his voice to Pixar’s The Incredibles.  While many of those roles are cameos and would be difficult to attribute to Jackson alone — he’s actually hasn’t had two dozen lead roles — Jackson seems to be the magic ingredient to making a film a hit (except, of course, if that film is Snakes on a Plane).   Read more

Johnny Depp: “First and foremost, to bore your audience is like the worst thing you can do. Always try to keep them guessing”

While Johnny Depp is appearing as journalist Paul Kemp, in The Rum Diary, it’s clear that he’s actually playing his friend Hunter S. Thompson, whom Depp previously appeared as (by the name Raoul Duke) in the 1998 cult classic Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. 

As the title of the film implies, a large portion of the film consists of an intoxicated Kemp’s misadventures in Puerto Rico.  Depp sat down for an interview with the Arizona Republic about how he managed to act so drunk, what’s it like playing his close friend, and finally, how he ends up choosing his typically offbeat roles.

While most would assume that Depp was legitimately wasted throughout the filming of the movie, Depp claims he wasn’t or he still would be shooting the film.  Instead, he’s based his “drunk acting” on “observation.” 

He explains, “I’ve certainly been drunk in my life now and again. It’s just watching people and sponging that up, as much as you can. It’s not that difficult. You just sort of allow your spine to get a little bit looser. I think the main thing, when people get drunk they try to not be drunk, and that’s the sort of key. They start to blink more, they try to sit up.”  Huh, good observation, actually — last week I spent an entire night out with my drunk friend who was trying his damnedest to not act drunk… but that was certainly not Johnny Depp level acting.   Read more

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