- Julianne Moore loves playing mommy to dead / imaginary / missing / abandoned children. (Boogie Nights, World Traveller, The Hours, The Forgotten, Freedomland, The Children of Men)
- Sarah Michelle Gellar is remaking J Horror films (The Return, The Grudge)
- Jodie Foster keeps finding thrills in confined spaces (Panic Room, Flight Plan, Inside Man)
- Nicole Kidman has an affinity for doomed creative-types (Moulin Rouge!, The Hours, Fur) and she's also bad bad news for the men in her (onscreen) life. Ever noticed how many dead or doomed husbands/lovers she's piling up in that filmography? (My Life, To Die For, The Others, Dogville, Cold Mountain, Birth, etcetera.)
Can you think of any other actors beating a peculiar and particular dead horse? Bitch about it in the comments.
Posts
27 comments:
Matthew McConaughey. Has taken to playing "Aw shucks" over-likeable buffoons in middle-of-the-road rom coms with alarming regularity (The Wedding Planner, Failure To Launch, How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days, EdTV)... A far cry from the actor who showed so much promise in Dazed & Confused and A Time To Kill. There are sporadic attempts to break into other territory (Tiptoes, 13 Conversations, Frailty), but nobody seems to give a hang when he tries, so his agent sends him back to Square One.
Rob
Charlize is on her way to being the woman who gets given a hard time by men, always ending in a trial.
Annette Bening seems stuck playing the same time of grande dames repeatedly.
How about Bryce Dallas Howard as the engenue used as prop by self-obsessed auteur. (The Village, Manderlay, The Lady In The Water) but now she has Rosaland in AS YOU LIKE IT coming soon, so that makes it a little easier.
and of course Hillary Swank: I think Steven Colbert said it best when he said "I guess this Oscar goes to show you, nobody gets the shit beaten out of them better than Hillary Swank."
Glen Close seems to be stuck playing the same crazed obsessive mother character a lot lately (Safety Of Objects, Chumscrubber, Nine Lives, and to a certain extent Lion In Winter) but then she has The Shield to balance that out.
Gwyneth Paltrol and her constant depression. I love that woman, but I'd like to see her happy for once on the screen.
And I love Sarah Michelle, but I wonder when will she stop doing silly japs horror flicks, it's getting boring already!
Well, there is of course Kate Winslet and her free spirits... but at least the free spirits have taken many different forms.
I think a lot of the problem for some of these actresses are that once they play a role that fits them well, the offers keep trickling in.
Still, as much as I love Moore - I can agree with you wanting her to get out of the 'mommy' rut. But there are times I wonder -- what other roles are available to actresses of her age?
I also think Nicole Kidman is just obsessed with death in general... it's hard to find a film of hers in which she or her significant other doesn't die. And the death is usually a major theme in the story.
I really want Sarah Michelle Gellar to give a truly Oscar nomination worthy performance soon.
Even though she does do these roles a lot, Julianne Moore is awesome in her "mommy" roles. But, we to have Children of Men to look forward to, where she is a mommy....but somehow..not really
moses -agreed that part of the problem is her age in terms of widening the role period. But even if you just limit it to mother roles, why do the kids have to be dead/imaginary/missing?
it's one thing to work a character trait (kate winslet's bohemians) it's quite another to work a plotpoint in every film.
strange.
Bening, always a bitch I want to tell to shut the fuck up.
- cal roth
Denzel Washington, criminal investigator.
Jude Law as a rich womanizing man, who is actually deeply vulnerable inside.
Tim Allen, stop making shitty Christmas films!
Probably the kids have to be dead/imaginary/missing because that makes for more interesting stories than if she just had normal happy kids. Plus I think Julianne likes to face her deepest fears (OMG, my KIDS!) through her work.
But the films are usually bad anyways, so I think it's time to move on. Though Savage Grace will put a sweet new spin on it (the kid is gay! and crazy! and matricidal!)
Kate Winslet really needs to stop making fabulous, interesting diverse films. I mean, really: it gets sooooo tiresome to watch her be so amazing.
If Kidman doesn't kill her on screen lovers she ends up killing herself and they have a hand in that killing to (Moulin Rouge, The Hours, Fur)
Indeed, Nicole Kidman is obsessed with death.
Rather like Julianne working out her fears over the welfare of her kids, I think Kidman works out her fear of death through killing her onscreen self or her onscreen lovers, or just dying onscreen. Seriously.
And Winslet, for the record, has gone on record with her own former body image issues and feelings of being trapped and stifled by fame. Hence the frequent shameless nudity and characters with bohemian revelations. It's all about workin' out the issues...
Well, Kidman is well short of those roles for awhile with Golden Compass, the Noah Baumbach movie, The Invasion and Happy Feet.
I like those Nicole Kidman roles and I really don't think they are blunting her creativity. There is no way I will mistake one of her characters for another (Anna and Grace, Virginia and Arbus, Ada and Anna), they are just too different. Nobody hassles directors for going after the same themes in their movies so why should performers have the same problem.
Death is always a terrific idea to work on.
Every actor has a type that they play, it just depends on how they play them! The problem is if they can't work outside of those zones.
BTW, SMG's The Return isn't a J Horror remake. It's, for lack of a better word, "original"
samuel l. jackson: badass.
Well at least Kidman, Winslet and, for the most part, Moore have those continuing traits that work for them. They are seldomly bad. So if these traits is what keeps them in my good graces more power to them, lol.
Now people like Michelle Geller(who I LOVED on Buffy) on the other hand...
Jennifer Connelly. House of Sand and Fog, Requiem for a Dream, and to a lesser degree A Beautiful Mind and Dark Water. She plays depressed people.
To go with the Denzel mention above:
For awhile, I was incredibly irritated with him because every role he plaed was an indignent black man (John Q, Remember the Titans, The Hurricane). When he won the Oscar for Training Day, I remarked "Well, they have to do something to gewt him to switch it up!"
With Sarah Michelle, I think it's just hard for her to get roles. It's one of the reasons I'm excited about Southland Tales and that movie she's doing with Alec Baldwin. Oh, and if she is the star of Alice, I expect great things.
Jennifer Jason Leigh has played an unwashed, sexually reckless/endangered druggie at least twice.
;)
Michelle Rodriguez - scowling, badass young woman (often in law enforcement) with a secret vulnerability.
The rut extends to her TV work as well ;)
Post a Comment