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First-rate acting versus first-rate make-up

Angus MacFadyen, Joe Mantegna, Ray Liotta, Don Cheadle and Bobby Slayton in The Rat Pack
  • Posted at 5:02pm
  • 23 January 2009
  • by AndrewCollins-RT
  • 3 comments

Where do you stand on Nicole Kidman's nose?

By which I mean, were you impressed with the latex proboscis they erected upon her porcelain features to help her impersonate Virginia Woolf in The Hours?

Or did you find the sight of it faintly comic and distracting? I'm afraid I'm in the latter camp.

When actors portray a recognisable non-fictional figure on screen, I really don't see the need for them to spend hours in the make-up chair having layers of latex glued to their face. (Unless it's John Hurt in The Elephant Man – fair enough.)

To paraphrase Laurence Olivier: have they tried acting?

In The Rat Pack (Wednesday 28 January ITV1), HBO's movie about the antics of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr and the other two, lead actors Ray Liotta, Joe Mantegna and Don Cheadle didn't swagger around with stuck-on noses and ears like Mr Potato Head.

Nor did David Strathairn as legendary broadcaster Ed Murrow in Good Night, and Good Luck. (Sunday 25 January BBC2) – not that many people outside America would have noticed either way.

On a more iconic level, in Oliver Stone's Nixon, Anthony Hopkins wore only a set of teeth and a hairpiece to "become" the disgraced US president. No latex jowls required, nor any Kidmanesque schnozz – Hopkins re-created Nixon by the way he stood, spoke, raised his eyebrows.

Frank Langella repeats the trick in Frost/Nixon (in cinemas this weekend), using only the face God gave him – and a deep understanding of his character.

His co-star Michael Sheen, who makes a living from playing public figures, has been David Frost, Tony Blair and Kenneth Williams without recourse to rubber and glue. (Actually, they painted on some enlarged nostrils for Williams, but that's it.)

No such subtlety for Jon Voight, who transformed himself into President Franklin D Roosevelt in Pearl Harbor by, well, wearing an FDR mask, just as he'd worn a Howard Cosell mask in Ali to pass as the famous commentator.

I caught the 1992 miniseries Stalin over Christmas – excellent, except for the decision to restrict Robert Duvall's performance as the Russian leader by wrapping him in prosthetics.

If I'm watching a fine actor working on screen, I want to see them acting.

This is the problem with Hollywood's obsession with filming the past: it's full of figures we recognise from stamps, statues and banknotes.

Even John Adams, the Golden Globe-garlanded miniseries about America's second president, sounds a wrong note: the humorous nose they've stuck on David Morse to make him look more like George Washington – I'm convinced they borrowed it from Nicole Kidman.

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Comments

  • Posted on 27 January 2009
  • at 12:26pm
  • by Phil

Andrew, Read your blog all the time - which is great!

  • Posted on 27 January 2009
  • at 12:13pm
  • by HelenHackworthy-RT

Thanks for your feedback, Doughboy. Owing to resource restrictions, we haven't been able to publish Andrew's blog as quickly as we would have liked, but we'll endeavour to get it online earlier from now on.

Best wishes,

Helen

  • Posted on 26 January 2009
  • at 4:24pm
  • by Doughboy

personally I have more problems with her teenytiny 'real' nose. which means that she looks like no normal human being in the world (outside of the Jackson family). Wigs, chins, even Angelina Jolie's *tan* in A Mighty Heart can work, but noses always look daft. The Hours is a great book and a good film as well despite that.

p.s. on a pedantic note - why does the RSS feed for this page never get delivered until after the weekend? if the post is about a film that's on before monday, that makes it quite frustrating.....

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