I Agree With Matt

[poliphilo]

Matt Damon was asked the other day about Hollywood stars who are in or out of the closet and he said he thought it was better for audiences if they knew nothing about the private lives of actors.

This got him into terrible trouble with the hosts of people who scour the media in the hope of being offended-  and they jumped in to say it was alright for him as a straight white man and blah, blah, blah.... But- putting all that aside- I like the point I think he was trying to make. Actors are in the business of pretending to be people they're not- and the more we know about them as everyday people the harder it is for them to pull the wool over over eyes.   There's a reason why the ancient Greek actors- who started the ball rolling- wore masks.

Apparently Matt Damon is married with kids. I didn't know that. And now I do know it I could wish I didn't. If I'm watching him in a film I want to believe he's serial killer X or heroic astronaut Y. Knowing that- as soon as the camera stops rolling- he reverts to being a loving husband and father doesn't help the game of lets pretend. In fact it rather detracts from it.

Some actors- and Matt isn't one of them- have such enormously public private lives that it becomes very hard to see them as anyone but their off-screen selves. In the past there were Burton and Taylor. Who could watch them together- even in their better films like Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf- and forget how very married to one another they were? Today there's Tom Cruise. I like Tom as an actor- I even think he's under-rated- but his attempts to convince me he's a super-dooper secret agent  or somebody's straight-arrow, blue-collar dad are undermined by everything I know about the Scientology and the wives and the jumping about on furniture.

I was reading an interview with Anne-Marie Duff this morning. Actually it wasn't so much an interview as a stitch-up. Duff was resenting having to make polite conversation about herself- and let it show- and the interviewer was trying to win our sympathy and get us to gang up against her.  But really why should Duff have to submit graciously to all this impertinence? They say it's part of the job these days-  but it shouldn't be. Actors strip themselves bare in their performances- and that's enough. Let them retain a certain anonymity off stage. Duff was a brilliant St Joan- that's all I need to know. Who cares where she went to school or who her husband is!

Comments

[artkouros.livejournal.com]

I miss the old days when Hollywood controlled the images you saw of actors, on screen and off.

[negothick.livejournal.com]

Not to be teaching the collectivity here how to suck eggs, but there is a difference between an actor and a movie star. The latter are assumed to be playing themselves, regardless of the name of their role. That's why we still refer to "John Wayne Westerns" rather than "The Searchers" or whatever. When John Wayne played a non-cowboy, he was praised for being a great actor! Tom Cruise may be the last of the old-time movie stars, which is why his private life is of so much interest. Actors playing heroes were supposed to BE heroes--which is why Hollywood didn't want audiences to know that Rock Hudson was not the devastating lady's man he played on the screen. And it went both ways. Ronald Reagan believed he WAS the roles he played--as shown when he referred to fighting in World War II, which he did only onscreen.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I think Wayne was a pretty good actor, actually- and capable of considerable range. There's a world of difference between the fatherly cavalry officer of She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and the psychopathic outsider of The Searchers. He was a lazy actor- happy to play the John Wayne persona in a whole lot of forgettable movies- but if you pushed him- as John Ford usually did- he could really deliver.

[artkouros.livejournal.com]

This is why I admire Meryl Streep so much. I've never seen an actor become a character the way she can.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

They don't make stars like they used to.