James Franco: “Don’t do a movie you wouldn’t see or don’t believe in, because movies can be hell to make”

James Franco is an interesting nut to crack.  He’s alternately wonderful (127 Hours) and infuriating (his stint as Oscars host, Your Highness, allegedly not really earning all the college degrees he seems to get every other month) to observe, and it’s hard to decide whether I respect him as an artist or shrug off his efforts to become a pretentious renaissance man.

Still, one thing Franco is that’s refreshing is honest.  He’s also known to sometimes say negative things about projects he’s involved with, which is no more evident than in article he penned for Newsweek in which he points to deciding to star in his 2006 film, Tristan & Isolde, as a mistake. 

Franco recalls that he wasn’t passionate about the project to begin with, explaining, “I was an overzealous young actor and wanted to make great movies. I read the script and wasn’t sure about it, but my acting teacher said it was a role that a young Brando or Olivier would do.” Read more

Willem Dafoe on his Prolific Film Career: “I didn’t follow a prescribed path”

There are some actors like Daniel Day-Lewis who take years-long breaks between roles.  Then there are actors like Willem Dafoe, who starred in three films released in only four weeks: John Carter (released March 9), 4:44 Last Day on Earth (March 23), and the upcoming The Hunter (April 6). In an interview with the New York Daily News, Dafoe talks about his success and his 2012 roles.

Dafoe admits that he can’t believe the success he’s enjoyed over the last two decades.  He says, “[I think about it] all the time, all the time, all the time.  I’m not supposed to be here, certain forces happened, certain luck happened, certain willful things on my part and certain conditions, because if I did what most people did I’m in the wrong place. It wasn’t written on the wall, I didn’t follow a prescribed path.”  After all, sometimes those roles come from unintended encounters: Dafoe ended up starring in The Hunter after the director, Daniel Nettheim, approached Dafoe in a restaurant in New York City. Read more

Interview: Gillian Jacobs Talks ‘Community’ and the Mystery of Britta

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 8:59 — 6.2MB)

Gillian Jacobs stars as Britta in NBC’s hit (yes, hit!) comedy, Community.

After a brief hiatus and scare that the show wouldn’t return, it came back with great ratings and hopefully, the show is here to stay.

Gillian graduated from Julliard and immediately started working off Broadway. She appeared at the Public Theater, in Philip Seymour Hoffman‘s The Little Flower of East Orange, opposite Ellen Burstyn and Michael Shannon, the Playwrights Theater’s A Feminine Ending and in Adam Rapp‘s Cagelove at the Rattlestick Theater.

She was also in the great indie, Helena from the Wedding (check out the cast interview here), opposite Melanie Lynskey, where she sports a dead-on British accent. I swear, I thought she was English for months. She also appeared in The Box and Choke (opposite Sam Rockwell).

I talked to Gillian at WonderCon about the intricacies of filming the show, how parts of Britta is still a mystery to her and if she thinks there will be a fourth season.

Follow Gillian on Twitter!

Community airs on Thursdays at 8/7c on NBC Read more

Biography: Ewan McGregor

Ewan McGregor is known for successfully portraying an array of diverse characters. From his breakthrough role as the heroin-addicted Mark Renton in Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting, to the legendary Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars Episode 1, to starring as “Christian” opposite Nicole Kidman in the Academy Award® and BAFTA award winning musical Moulin Rouge directed by Baz Luhrmann, McGregor has proven himself as a true actor time and again.

McGregor was recently seen as the reputable author hired to write the memoirs of controversial former British Prime Minister Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan) in Roman Polanski’s The Ghost Writer.  He also starred as the title character in the comedy I Love You Philip Morris with Jim Carrey. In 2011, he was seen opposite Christopher Plummer in Beginners. And in January 2012, he starred in the Steven Soderburgh film Haywire.

He recently wrapped Jack the Giant Killer, a modern take on the well-known fable, “Jack and the Beanstalk.” McGregor also filmed The Impossible with Naomi Watts, a drama based around a true story set during and after the Indian Ocean Tsunami in 2004.

McGregor starred in the BAFTA award winning Shallow Grave as Alex Law. Shallow Grave was named Best Film at the 1994 Dinard Film Festival and the film won the 1994 BAFTA Alexander Korda Award for Outstanding British Film of the Year and the BAFTA Scotland Award for Best Feature Film.  McGregor’s portrayal of Alex Law earned him the Hitchcock D’Argent Best Actor Award and a nomination for Best Actor at the BAFTA Scotland Awards, as well as laying the roots for a highly successful partnership with the director, Danny Boyle.  McGregor then went on to portray the shifty London drug-dealer Dean Raymond opposite an up-and-coming Catherine Zeta-Jones, followed by his first solo male lead in Peter Greenaway’s erotic art-house film The Pillow Book. Read more

Paul Giamatti Will Star in ‘Hamlet’ During the 2012-2013 Season of the Yale Repertory Theater

Although we’re used to seeing Hamlet being portrayed by actors under forty — all the better to capture the Prince of Denmark’s youthful indecisiveness — Paul Giamatti will make his debut in the role during the 2012-2013 season of the Yale Repertory Theater.  Giamatti will be forty-five by the time the play begins its March 2013 run. 

An acclaimed actor like Giamatti — who has been nominated for an Oscar and was awarded an Emmy for his starring role in the John Adams mini-series — doesn’t have extensive Shakespearean experience, but the actor is, in a sense, returning to his roots. 

After all, Giamatti has a long association with Yale: not only is he an alumnus of Yale’s drama school, but his father, A. Bartlett Giamatti, was president of the university. Read more

Biography: Sigourney Weaver

Academy Award nominated and Golden Globe winning actress Sigourney Weaver has created a host of memorable characters, both dramatic and comic, in films ranging from Ripley in Alien to Dian Fossey in Gorillas in Mist.  Over the years, she has captivated audiences and won acclaim as one of the most esteemed actresses on both stage and screen.

Born and educated in New York City, Weaver graduated from Stanford University and went on to receive a Masters degree from the Yale School of Drama. Her first professional job was as an understudy in Sir John Gielgud’s production of The Constant Wife, starring Ingrid Bergman.

Sigourney Weaver made her motion picture debut in Ridley Scott’s blockbuster Alien.  She later reprised the role of Warrant Officer Ripley in James Cameron’s Aliens, which earned her Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations for Best Actress.  She again brought Ripley back to life in David Fincher’s Aliens 3, which she also co-produced and Alien Resurrection for director Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Read more

‘Carrie’ Star Molly Ranson Explains why the 2012 Off-Broadway Revival is More Successful Than the 1988 Broadway Original

The current off-Broadway revival of the infamous Carrie — based on the Stephen King novel and subsequent classic film –has already ran longer than the sixteen previews and five performances that the 1988 Broadway production ran, so the new production at the Lucille Lortel Theatre can already take that success into account. 

Though the show is currently set to last its entire limited engagement (which ends April 22), it took several years for the show to actually make it back to the stage, beginning with a reading in November 2009. 

Starring as Carrie since that 2009 reading is Molly Ranson, who spoke to Playbill about the show’s long return to the stage and why she believes it works better twenty-four years later. Read more

Filmography: Lili Taylor

Lili Taylor next stars opposite James Franco in Stephen Elliott’s Cherry; and with Mickey Rourke and Jeffrey Dean Morgan in Hany Abu-Assad’s The Courier.

Her many other features include Andrew Wagner’s Starting Out in the Evening, opposite Frank Langella; Michael Mann’s Public Enemies; two Robert Altman films, Prêt-à-Porter (Ready to Wear) and Short Cuts, sharing a Golden Globe Award as well as a Venice International Film Festival honor with the ensemble cast of the latter; John Sayles’ Casa de los Babys; Emir Kusturica’s Arizona Dream, opposite Johnny Depp; Stephen Frears’ High Fidelity; John Waters’ Pecker; Oliver Stone’s Born on the Fourth of July; Cameron Crowe’s Say Anything…; Abel Ferrara’s The Addiction; Jan de Bont’s The Haunting; Ron Howard’s Ransom, for which she won a Blockbuster Award for Best Supporting Actress; David Anspaugh’s Rudy; Alan Rudolph’s Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle; Mary Harron’s The Notorious Bettie Page and I Shot Andy Warhol, for which she was accorded a Special Recognition prize at the Sundance Film Festival; Stanley Tucci’s The Impostors; Toni Kalem’s A Slipping-Down Life; Bent Hamer’s Factotum, for which she was named Best Actress at the Copenhagen Film Festival; and Donald Petrie’s Mystic Pizza, in which she made her indelible film debut. Read more

Get a Sneak Peek and Go Behind the Scenes of MCC Theater’s Re-Worked Musical ‘Carrie’

I’m incredibly curious to see how this is going to turn out.

MCC Theater  just premiered a fully re-worked production of the the famous flop, Carrie.

Based on Stephen King‘s bestselling novel, the musical of Carrie hasn’t been seen since its legendary 1988 Broadway production.

Now, the show’s original authors have joined with director Stafford Arima (Altar Boyz) and MCC Theater for a newly reworked and fully re-imagined vision of this gripping tale. Set today, in the small town of Chamberlain, Maine, Carrie features a book by Lawrence D. Cohen (screenwriter of the classic film), music by Academy Award winner Michael Gore (Fame, Terms of Endearment), and lyrics by Academy Award winner Dean Pitchford (Fame, Footloose). The cast will feature Tony Award nominee Marin Mazzie (Next to Normal, Kiss Me Kate) as Carrie’s evangelical mother, Margaret White, and Molly Ranson (Jerusalem, August: Osage County) as the lonely, vengeful, yet fragile girl at the center of it all.

The show is currently in previews and will open March 1st at The Lucille Lortel Theatre (121 Christopher Street).

Broadway World went to the first preview (which was sold out) and talked to the cast and production team about the show and even has some snippets of the show.  Read more

18th Annual Screen Actors Guild Award Nominations

The nominations for the 18th Annual SAG Awards were announced this morning while I was patiently sitting in an airport waiting to board my flight to JFK.

Congrats to all the nominees!

But, I just have one WTF as I go through the list: Glee was nominated as in the Ensemble category? The cast is fine with Jane Lynch, Heather Morris and Matthew Morrison being the standouts but nominating the cast for best ensemble? Seriously?

Check out the nominations below!
Read more

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