Jessica Chastain has just earned her second Oscar nomination for her role in the terrorist drama, Zero Dark Thirty. The actress, previously nominated for her role in last year’s The Help, became fully immersed in her role as a CIA agent in the film.
Gangster Squad won’t rise to the top of anyone’s favorite gangster movie list, but it’s definitely an enjoyable film. A lot of that has to do with Josh Brolin, who plays Sgt. John O’Mara, the leader of the titular squad who strikes back against Los Angeles gangster Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn).
A biopic has been in the works on flamboyant entertainer Liberace has been in the works for some time, with Michael Douglas attached to play the lead. The biopic, titled Behind the Candelabra and based on the book by Liberace’s lover Scott Thorson, is finally set to air on HBO in the spring.
Once an actor has starred in a television series for a number of years it gets a bit difficult to see the actor in other roles — not just for audiences, but also for those who handle casting. Case in point, I saw John Krasinski in a movie this year in which he was essentially playing his Jim Halpert character from The Office with a different name. That’s not exactly the type of role that helps an actor grow.
It’s rare for a show biz legend like Shirley MacLaine to admit that they’ve never really known much about acting. But after a career that began in the ‘50s, five Oscar nominations and one win, MacLaine is still professing that she’s not really sure why she’s been so successful.
The 22 year old actress not only starred in The Hunger Games, one of the year’s biggest blockbusters (which has already made her the highest-grossing action heroine), but also in one of the most critically acclaimed films of the year, Silver Linings Playbook.
Walton Goggins is best known for playing bad guys, like Justified’s Boyd Crowder and The Shield’s Shane Vendrell, but the actor doesn’t want everyone to think he’s some sort of criminal.
Rosemarie DeWitt has popped up everywhere recently, from the indie Your Sister’s Sister to the comedy The Watch. Now, with her role in Gus Van Sant’s Promised Land, DeWitt is showing other actors how to take on a variety of projects.
Samuel L. Jackson continues his long association with director Quentin Tarantino with a major role in Django Unchained. Jackson plays Stephen, the head slave on the plantation known as Candieland. A Tarantino film on its own is often a source of controversy, but the controversy surrounding Django Unchained is heightened because it deals with slavery.
The SAG Life Achievement Award is given for “outstanding achievement in fostering the finest ideals of the acting profession” and I can’t think of a better choice to receive this years award than Dick Van Dyke.
Scarlett Johansson has made her return to Broadway — her first time since her 2010 debut in Arthur Miller’s A View From the Bridge — as Maggie in Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
With the long-awaited film adaptation Les Misérables a big hit at the box office as the year wraps up, the stars of the film have been opening up about how difficult the process of shooting the film was. One of those stars is Eddie Redmayne, who plays Marius in the film, who spoke to The Hollywood Reporter about the daunting audition process and the challenge of singing live on set.
There are many memorable songs in Les Misérables, but perhaps none are as beloved as “I Dreamed a Dream,” which is sung by Fantine. Over the last few decades it has been recorded by everyone from Neil Diamond to Aretha Franklin, and turned middle-aged Scottish singer Susan Boyle into a household name with a single television performance.
It’s now well-known that the filmmakers and actors had a unique approach to recording the music in Les Misérables. Unlike most movie musicals in which the songs are recorded before the shoot and the cast mimes to the music, Les Misérables features the cast recorded as they were singing live.
It’s not easy to get Babs to agree to make a new film. Despite her appearances in the Meet the Parents series, Barbra Streisand chooses her projects carefully. And she’s the first one to admit that she might have made some diva-like requests before she agreed to star in the new film, The Guilt Trip.
Lizzy Caplan is such a good actress that you might actually believe she’s just like the roles she plays—a somewhat nerdy lawyer on New Girl, a druggie in the film Bachelorette. But the comedienne is just adept at “finding some similarities between myself and the characters, even if it’s the tiniest thing.”
The cast of Game of Thrones has the right idea of how to bond with coworkers. Kit Harington, who plays Jon Snow on the HBO series, admits they do “a bit of drinking to get to know each other.”
Chuck and Dexter actress Yvonne Strahovski is making her Broadway debut in Golden Boy, a seventy-fifth anniversary revival of the boxing Clifford Odets drama.
The incredible Christoph Waltz is a great example of how there are incredibly talented international actors that just need a single high-profile performance to break through to English-speaking audiences.
Despite being a huge Bill Murray fan and a history buff, I knew Hyde Park on Hudson was going to be the type of movie that wasn’t for everyone once I saw it at the New York Film Festival.
