In Contention

Tag: Ian McKellen

  • INTERVIEW: ‘Disgrace’ star Jessica Haines

    Jessica HainesWhen I begin my phone conversation with Jessica Haines by telling her how insistently I prodded her publicist to set up our interview – the reverse is so often the case – she responds with a bashful laugh. “I can believe that,” she says, in a warm South African drawl. “Not many journalists have bothered tracking me down to Tunis!”

    Haines sounds endearingly surprised that anyone might be interested in her away from the cinema screen, where she made such a startling arrival this year in Steve Jacobs’s “Disgrace” – which opens in the UK today, on the heels of an all-too-brief Stateside run in the fall.

    This speaks both to the 30 year-old newcomer’s natural humility – if she is aware of just how good she is, she certainly hides it well – and her relative unfamiliarity with the ropes of the industry.

    As if to literalize the point of just how far removed Haines is from Hollywood, I learn that she is in Tunisia not, as I had assumed, on some remote location shoot, but for a decidedly simpler reason: it’s where she lives, thanks to her husband’s banking career.

    “I don’t really know where to call home at the moment,” she says. “My family’s in Natal [the East Coast of South Africa], but I studied in Cape Town and do a lot of work in Johannesburg. My husband’s job is taking us from Tunisia to Kenya soon. I’m just flying in and out all the time.”

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  • The Great Performances: 1998

    Edward Norton in American History XFor all my bitching about Roberto Benigni winning Best Actor in 1998 for his incessant mugging in “Life is Beautiful,” I was also thrilled the Academy watched enough films and paid enough attention to realize that Edward Norton was deserving for his magnetic turn as a neo-Nazi who sees the light in “American History X.” Norton was electrifying as Derek, the charismatic leader of a group of skinheads, handpicked by the older gentleman, played with menace and sleaze by Stacey Keach, who believes in what Hitler taught and seeks to spread the word to the youth of California.

    Norton gave the best performance by an actor I saw in 1998, but the Academy got caught up in the groundswell of support of Benigni’s movie, a fable set in a death camp. I’m not a fan, either of his overwrought, over the top performance, or the film itself. No rant, you all know what I think there.

    That said, there was a bounty of great male performances in 1998, many of which went unnoticed by the Academy. They did their best to get it right, though.  Joining Norton and Benigni for nominations were Nick Nolte in “Affliction,” Ian McKellen, superb in “Gods and Monsters,” and Tom Hanks as the weary soldier in Steven Spielberg’s magnificent “Saving Private Ryan.”

    Not even nominated, however, were Warren Beatty for his brilliant turn as the truth-talking senator in “Bulworth,” Joseph Fiennes in Best Picture winner “Shakespeare in Love,” Jim Carrey in “The Truman Show,” George Clooney in “Out of Sight,” Brendan Gleason in “The General” and John Travolta in “Primary Colors” or “A Civil Action,” take your pick.  And perhaps the most deserving of all: Jeff Bridges as The Dude in “The Big Lebowski,” the actor’s finest work, in my opinion.

    Each of the aforemenetioned men gave stronger performances than the eventual Oscar winner, yet failed to nab a nomination.  Jeez!

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