GROSS OBIT - Gene Hackman: actor in movies
What do we know about acting? About acting in films in particular?
We know that every actor is different, so it matters which one you pick for a role. This is common sense; everyone accepts this.
But we know also that every actor is the same, from role to role, no matter what you ask of them. This is maybe more controversial - and seems kind of dismissive.
There are some orthodoxies to take on: there’s the one about an actor’s ability to ‘play anyone’, to ‘get inside the skin’ of a role, to somehow ‘become’ the character they’re playing and to leave their own identity behind in the dressing room.
And it can’t be denied that some actors are immensely, fearlessly versatile and some have tackled a huge number of very different roles - sometimes in one movie; more often across a career.
But then there’s the counter-evidence, which seems - if you don’t mind my saying so - overwhelming: the evidence of the brilliant, persuasive, popular actor who never even tries to be different; who is always exactly, comfortably the same and, as a result, always perfect, always filling the role completely, convincingly and with no gaps.
Gene Hackman, for instance.
David Thomson understands Hackman, of course. In his Guardian obit he says that Hackman’s consistency, role to role, was that he “…was firm enough to have no faith in being likable.”
I’ll admit that it took me decades of enjoying and angsting over the movies to actually get this; to understand that I could stop worrying about the myth of ‘versatility’ and of actors ‘inhabiting’ roles, altering some aspect of their being to meet the requirements of the script.
I feel like I learn something from Ben Stiller’s piece about Hackman - something about how actors get on behind the camera, especially when one is junior to the other.