This one's great. Really enjoyed it. Thanks DundaDunda wrote:Funny read about style icon Daniel Craig (4 pages)
Film star looks: Daniel Craig
http://boxwish.com/features/view/163-fi ... e_number=1
News tidbits
Moderator: Germangirl
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Commando???????
Wot I want to know ......when Daniel was talking to Edith he mentioned they wore underwear.........................that got me thinking does that mean he goes Commando all the other times.......... ( less to take off should we ever meet) something to keep in mind girls if you are going to be short of time with him just whip his trousers off and hey presto
Your life is not about the breadths you take
but the intake of breadths you experience.
but the intake of breadths you experience.
Even the cardi got a mention - great find. I get so excited to see Dan get the right kind of attention. He's making his mark in so many ways these days.Aragorn wrote:This one's great. Really enjoyed it. Thanks DundaDunda wrote:Funny read about style icon Daniel Craig (4 pages)
Film star looks: Daniel Craig
http://boxwish.com/features/view/163-fi ... e_number=1
Re: Commando???????
I think he was talking about special underwear like for skiing.joelle wrote:Wot I want to know ......when Daniel was talking to Edith he mentioned they wore underwear.........................that got me thinking does that mean he goes Commando all the other times.......... ( less to take off should we ever meet) something to keep in mind girls if you are going to be short of time with him just whip his trousers off and hey presto
And I remember some time ago he was aked about underwear...and admitted commando on holiday. Don't know exactly in which context it was.
And remembering the St. Bart pics on the beach, he has proven
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Germangirl
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Re: Commando???????
True to his word - as usualDunda wrote:I think he was talking about special underwear like for skiing.joelle wrote:Wot I want to know ......when Daniel was talking to Edith he mentioned they wore underwear.........................that got me thinking does that mean he goes Commando all the other times.......... ( less to take off should we ever meet) something to keep in mind girls if you are going to be short of time with him just whip his trousers off and hey presto
And I remember some time ago he was aked about underwear...and admitted commando on holiday. Don't know exactly in which context it was.
And remembering the St. Bart pics on the beach, he has proven
for our viewing pleasure. The top notch acting in the Weisz/Craig/Spall 'Betrayal' is emotionally true, often v funny and its beautifully staged with filmic qualities..
James Bond, Jimmy Stewart and the greatest voices of all time
Pierce Brosnan had the looks and the attitude, but as James Bond he always came up a bit lacking. The problem, I finally decided, was his soft, whispery voice. His “Bond, James Bond” came out like a caress, not a punch.
His successor, Daniel Craig, was initially derided for lacking some essential hunky or dashing qualities, yet when he hit the screen as Bond, he dominated. His musculature got much of the attention, and his steely blue eyes didn’t hurt, but the key, again, was the voice: low, clipped, blunt, commanding.
Craig was instantly hailed as the best Bond since Sean Connery, whose deep Scottish brogue, one of movie history’s most distinct voices, delivered zingers like daggers. It’s no coincidence that Connery and Craig are considered the toughest, most charismatic Bonds while Roger Moore and Brosnan, with their more genteel British deliveries, are known as the softies.
The voice is such a basic element of acting, yet it’s one we rarely discuss. It’s easier to reprint a photo of Humphrey Bogart or to describe his droopy-eyed glower than it is to capture that unique vocal quality that made him Bogart.
Yet if you played recordings of history’s greatest movie stars delivering a sentence, you should be able to identify just about all of them: Jimmy Stewart, Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, James Cagney, Bette Davis, Orson Welles, Bogart, Lauren Bacall, John Wayne, Marilyn Monroe, Marlon Brando, Jack Nicholson, Dustin Hoffman, Jane Fonda, Al Pacino, Jodie Foster, Robert De Niro ...
“It’s partly because we live in a world of media where the photographic close-up is so much easier to convey that we tend to think it’s just a visual medium, but in my opinion every star we remember, every star we love, the voice is vital,” says David Thomson, author of “‘Have You Seen ... ?’: A Personal Introduction to 1,000 Films.”
What makes a movie voice great isn’t easy to pinpoint. Welles may have a classically powerful baritone, but Nicholson’s sly, nasal rasp or John Malkovich’s insinuating purr is equally indelible. Some actors work hard on their voices’ tone; others accentuate different aspects.
“I have been told that it’s very difficult to imitate me, for mimics,” Hoffman says. “What’s really important is rhythm. If you can get the rhythm of the character or just get the rhythm of the film, it’s hugely important. Where our timbre may be different, each of us individually, what’s really different is our own rhythm, and I think that’s very revealing.”
Craig says he doesn’t consider voice to be “a conscious part of my performance,” but “I’ve been acting for long enough, and I’ve done enough stage work to be lowering my voice”—he demonstrates—“to make it sound deeper.”
His goal with Bond’s voice, he adds, is “trying to ground it as much as possible. In reality if we get freaked out, we squeak. It’s one of those things. There’s nothing shameful in squeaking. This is the kind of man that doesn’t squeak in a bad situation. All I want to do is make it as grounded as possible, a man who is in control.”
As a successful movie actor with theatrical roots, Craig is in good company. “All the actors whose work I ever admired came out of the theater,” says Jeffrey Wright, whose resonant, sandpapery voice has animated complex characters in “Angels in America” (on stage and screen), “W” and “Cadillac Records.” “That was just the way it was. Paul Newman. Brando. Adolph Caesar. It’s all theater training where the voice is more central to the communication of story than is the face. On film it’s the face, but at the same time, if you forsake the voice for the body, I think you lose out on an opportunity to shape a character.”
Since the talkies’ early days, many theatrical actors have made the transition to film, but other forces have been at work as well. “When sound came along, all of a sudden the movies needed very strong, articulate voices because the sound recording was not great in those films,” Thomson says. “Very pronounced, slightly exaggerated voices like Cagney’s excelled because you got them right away.”
Another major factor in the ’30s and ’40s was radio. Before his 1941 debut with “Citizen Kane,” Welles had become famous through his Mercury Theater on the Air, and performers such as Bob Hope and George Burns also were radio fixtures. The Lux Radio Theater, hosted by Cecil B. DeMille, adapted films as well as stage works for the airwaves, often with the original stars re-creating their roles.
“So the ability to speak clearly and to get identity across was tremendously important,” Thomson says, adding that actors were so strongly associated with their own voices that when the makers of “Gone With the Wind” tried to give Clark Gable a Southern dialect coach, the actor refused. “He said, ‘What the hell, I’m not going to deal with this. You want to hear Gable.’”
History has proved him right. Can you imagine “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn,” in a put-on twang?
Yet fast-forward to present day, and Tom Cruise, who has a distinct, authoritative voice, is getting grief for not trying on a German accent as the would-be Hitler killer of “Valkyrie.” Acting has become less about trademark voices, more about verisimilitude. Meryl Streep is one of the most gifted actresses around, but for years she was known for her uncanny way with an accent; she would lose herself in the voice rather than push that self to the forefront.
Streep’s dedication had a sort of fun-house mirror reflection in Peter Sellers, whose radio training on “The Goon Show” presaged a career in which he constantly disappeared into various voices and accents. As he told none other than Kermit the Frog on “The Muppet Show” in 1977, “There is no me; I do not exist. There used to be a me, but I had it surgically removed.”
The problem for many current actors, including an assortment of would-be next big things, is not that they’re such vocal virtuosos but that they don’t stand out. You can identify George Clooney, Morgan Freeman and Gene Hackman when they perform voice-overs, but could you describe how Josh Hartnett sounds? Would you recognize Lindsay Lohan’s voice without seeing her? Is Leonardo DiCaprio’s voice as immediately recognizable as Pacino’s?
Matthew Broderick, who voices the title mouse of the animated “The Tale of Despereaux,” admits to approaching his own voice with the self-consciousness of someone hearing himself on an answering machine for the first time. “Normally I wouldn’t be really thinking about my voice,” he says. “There have been some parts [where I have], like in ‘The Producers’ a little bit, but usually I try not to be too aware of the sound of my voice.”
“I spent my first certainly 10 years being so embarrassed and afraid of hearing my voice,” says Keri Russell, now co-starring in “Bedtime Stories.” “It’s sort of a giveaway a lot of times of people’s age, like the older they are, the more steady and deep their voices. I don’t know if it’s just part of aging, but it certainly is a part of finding the character.”
Sigourney Weaver, who narrates “Despereaux,” may have a pleasingly velvety, precise voice, but she nonetheless admits: “When I hear myself on the answering machine, I just go, ‘Who is that dreadful woman?’ I never really liked my voice. Katharine Hepburn’s voice makes me whinge, and sometimes my voice has that kind of slight—not accent but is it a quality, a nasal quality? I don’t know what it is, but anyway, I go, ‘Ecch.’”
Yet the 59-year-old theater veteran says she still is learning how to use this essential, often overlooked instrument. “I’m just beginning to understand how much the voice is the beginning,” Weaver says. “I’ve never paid much attention to it, and I really want to give it some stuff to do.”
So which actors, past and present, have the greatest voices?
Director Darren Aronofsky ("The Wrestler") has some suggestions: "Lauren Bacall, of course, and Humphrey Bogart. Jimmy Stewart is so unique that he’s instantly recognizable. Malkovich. And Sly [Stallone], in its own way. It’s distinct, you know?"
Now it’s your turn.
http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com ... -jimm.html
Pierce Brosnan had the looks and the attitude, but as James Bond he always came up a bit lacking. The problem, I finally decided, was his soft, whispery voice. His “Bond, James Bond” came out like a caress, not a punch.
His successor, Daniel Craig, was initially derided for lacking some essential hunky or dashing qualities, yet when he hit the screen as Bond, he dominated. His musculature got much of the attention, and his steely blue eyes didn’t hurt, but the key, again, was the voice: low, clipped, blunt, commanding.
Craig was instantly hailed as the best Bond since Sean Connery, whose deep Scottish brogue, one of movie history’s most distinct voices, delivered zingers like daggers. It’s no coincidence that Connery and Craig are considered the toughest, most charismatic Bonds while Roger Moore and Brosnan, with their more genteel British deliveries, are known as the softies.
The voice is such a basic element of acting, yet it’s one we rarely discuss. It’s easier to reprint a photo of Humphrey Bogart or to describe his droopy-eyed glower than it is to capture that unique vocal quality that made him Bogart.
Yet if you played recordings of history’s greatest movie stars delivering a sentence, you should be able to identify just about all of them: Jimmy Stewart, Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, James Cagney, Bette Davis, Orson Welles, Bogart, Lauren Bacall, John Wayne, Marilyn Monroe, Marlon Brando, Jack Nicholson, Dustin Hoffman, Jane Fonda, Al Pacino, Jodie Foster, Robert De Niro ...
“It’s partly because we live in a world of media where the photographic close-up is so much easier to convey that we tend to think it’s just a visual medium, but in my opinion every star we remember, every star we love, the voice is vital,” says David Thomson, author of “‘Have You Seen ... ?’: A Personal Introduction to 1,000 Films.”
What makes a movie voice great isn’t easy to pinpoint. Welles may have a classically powerful baritone, but Nicholson’s sly, nasal rasp or John Malkovich’s insinuating purr is equally indelible. Some actors work hard on their voices’ tone; others accentuate different aspects.
“I have been told that it’s very difficult to imitate me, for mimics,” Hoffman says. “What’s really important is rhythm. If you can get the rhythm of the character or just get the rhythm of the film, it’s hugely important. Where our timbre may be different, each of us individually, what’s really different is our own rhythm, and I think that’s very revealing.”
Craig says he doesn’t consider voice to be “a conscious part of my performance,” but “I’ve been acting for long enough, and I’ve done enough stage work to be lowering my voice”—he demonstrates—“to make it sound deeper.”
His goal with Bond’s voice, he adds, is “trying to ground it as much as possible. In reality if we get freaked out, we squeak. It’s one of those things. There’s nothing shameful in squeaking. This is the kind of man that doesn’t squeak in a bad situation. All I want to do is make it as grounded as possible, a man who is in control.”
As a successful movie actor with theatrical roots, Craig is in good company. “All the actors whose work I ever admired came out of the theater,” says Jeffrey Wright, whose resonant, sandpapery voice has animated complex characters in “Angels in America” (on stage and screen), “W” and “Cadillac Records.” “That was just the way it was. Paul Newman. Brando. Adolph Caesar. It’s all theater training where the voice is more central to the communication of story than is the face. On film it’s the face, but at the same time, if you forsake the voice for the body, I think you lose out on an opportunity to shape a character.”
Since the talkies’ early days, many theatrical actors have made the transition to film, but other forces have been at work as well. “When sound came along, all of a sudden the movies needed very strong, articulate voices because the sound recording was not great in those films,” Thomson says. “Very pronounced, slightly exaggerated voices like Cagney’s excelled because you got them right away.”
Another major factor in the ’30s and ’40s was radio. Before his 1941 debut with “Citizen Kane,” Welles had become famous through his Mercury Theater on the Air, and performers such as Bob Hope and George Burns also were radio fixtures. The Lux Radio Theater, hosted by Cecil B. DeMille, adapted films as well as stage works for the airwaves, often with the original stars re-creating their roles.
“So the ability to speak clearly and to get identity across was tremendously important,” Thomson says, adding that actors were so strongly associated with their own voices that when the makers of “Gone With the Wind” tried to give Clark Gable a Southern dialect coach, the actor refused. “He said, ‘What the hell, I’m not going to deal with this. You want to hear Gable.’”
History has proved him right. Can you imagine “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn,” in a put-on twang?
Yet fast-forward to present day, and Tom Cruise, who has a distinct, authoritative voice, is getting grief for not trying on a German accent as the would-be Hitler killer of “Valkyrie.” Acting has become less about trademark voices, more about verisimilitude. Meryl Streep is one of the most gifted actresses around, but for years she was known for her uncanny way with an accent; she would lose herself in the voice rather than push that self to the forefront.
Streep’s dedication had a sort of fun-house mirror reflection in Peter Sellers, whose radio training on “The Goon Show” presaged a career in which he constantly disappeared into various voices and accents. As he told none other than Kermit the Frog on “The Muppet Show” in 1977, “There is no me; I do not exist. There used to be a me, but I had it surgically removed.”
The problem for many current actors, including an assortment of would-be next big things, is not that they’re such vocal virtuosos but that they don’t stand out. You can identify George Clooney, Morgan Freeman and Gene Hackman when they perform voice-overs, but could you describe how Josh Hartnett sounds? Would you recognize Lindsay Lohan’s voice without seeing her? Is Leonardo DiCaprio’s voice as immediately recognizable as Pacino’s?
Matthew Broderick, who voices the title mouse of the animated “The Tale of Despereaux,” admits to approaching his own voice with the self-consciousness of someone hearing himself on an answering machine for the first time. “Normally I wouldn’t be really thinking about my voice,” he says. “There have been some parts [where I have], like in ‘The Producers’ a little bit, but usually I try not to be too aware of the sound of my voice.”
“I spent my first certainly 10 years being so embarrassed and afraid of hearing my voice,” says Keri Russell, now co-starring in “Bedtime Stories.” “It’s sort of a giveaway a lot of times of people’s age, like the older they are, the more steady and deep their voices. I don’t know if it’s just part of aging, but it certainly is a part of finding the character.”
Sigourney Weaver, who narrates “Despereaux,” may have a pleasingly velvety, precise voice, but she nonetheless admits: “When I hear myself on the answering machine, I just go, ‘Who is that dreadful woman?’ I never really liked my voice. Katharine Hepburn’s voice makes me whinge, and sometimes my voice has that kind of slight—not accent but is it a quality, a nasal quality? I don’t know what it is, but anyway, I go, ‘Ecch.’”
Yet the 59-year-old theater veteran says she still is learning how to use this essential, often overlooked instrument. “I’m just beginning to understand how much the voice is the beginning,” Weaver says. “I’ve never paid much attention to it, and I really want to give it some stuff to do.”
So which actors, past and present, have the greatest voices?
Director Darren Aronofsky ("The Wrestler") has some suggestions: "Lauren Bacall, of course, and Humphrey Bogart. Jimmy Stewart is so unique that he’s instantly recognizable. Malkovich. And Sly [Stallone], in its own way. It’s distinct, you know?"
Now it’s your turn.
http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com ... -jimm.html
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Can you guess where Daniel Craig's secret tattoo is? Hint: You won't see it on the beach
It's a secret worthy of James Bond himself - a hidden tattoo which only those closest to him could identify.
Daniel Craig has revealed he has one hidden away - and it is beneath his swimming trunk area.
The actor has two often photographed tattoos - one on his shoulder and one on the inside of his right leg.
But on a U.S. chatshow last night he revealed that a third is visible only to those who know him 'intimately'.
Craig did not reveal the image depicted by the hidden tattoo, but speculation on internet chatrooms is that it is the letter H, perhaps in reference to an ex-girlfriend.
Craig made the revelation to U.S. chatshow host Jay Leno on Friday. 'There's one where you wouldn't see it,' he said. 'It's hidden away.'
Leno replied: 'Is it one of those ones where it says OK and then it says Oklahoma?'
And Craig laughed: 'Yeah, [it says] "Welcome to Oklahoma".'
He added: 'I had them done when I was 16 or 17. It was a rebellion thing.
'Make-up artists have a nightmare with them though because they continually have to cover them up. I don't regret them, you can't. It's a personal thing.'
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/ar ... beach.html
It's a secret worthy of James Bond himself - a hidden tattoo which only those closest to him could identify.
Daniel Craig has revealed he has one hidden away - and it is beneath his swimming trunk area.
The actor has two often photographed tattoos - one on his shoulder and one on the inside of his right leg.
But on a U.S. chatshow last night he revealed that a third is visible only to those who know him 'intimately'.
Craig did not reveal the image depicted by the hidden tattoo, but speculation on internet chatrooms is that it is the letter H, perhaps in reference to an ex-girlfriend.
Craig made the revelation to U.S. chatshow host Jay Leno on Friday. 'There's one where you wouldn't see it,' he said. 'It's hidden away.'
Leno replied: 'Is it one of those ones where it says OK and then it says Oklahoma?'
And Craig laughed: 'Yeah, [it says] "Welcome to Oklahoma".'
He added: 'I had them done when I was 16 or 17. It was a rebellion thing.
'Make-up artists have a nightmare with them though because they continually have to cover them up. I don't regret them, you can't. It's a personal thing.'
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/ar ... beach.html
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Daskedusken
- Posts: 14137
- Joined: Thu May 31, 2007 8:14 pm
- Location: Always heading somewhere
I like this interview - hope it's not a repeat...
Daniel Craig - Enduring Love
Interviewed by Alana Lee
“ Finding someone in your garden at three o'clock in the morning with a meat cleaver and a hard-on can't be much fun ”
Since his TV debut in Our Friends In The North in 1996, British actor Daniel Craig has made a name for himself in smouldering yet cerebral roles on the big screen. After an ill-advised romp with Angelina Jolie in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, he hit form with Road To Perdition and bagged leading roles in Sylvia and Layer Cake as a result. Now he's reunited with Roger Michell - whom he worked with on last year's The Mother - to play an academic who is stalked by an obsessive Rhys Ifans, in a sharp adaptation of Ian McEwan's novel Enduring Love.
Roger Michell also directed you in The Mother. Do you enjoy the challenge that his films offer?
Well, there are two things. There's Roger and the appeal of working with him is that it's terribly rewarding. He employs you because he trusts in your talent. He knows that you have ability and what he does is he manipulates it and sort of empowers you. The other thing is they are challenging roles. Also, we wouldn't start working unless the script was right. That's the most important thing with Roger. And the script was absolutely bang on. I don't know, I can't say enough about him. If we could start a film tomorrow, I would love it. Actually, we're going to do a third one. That's the plan.
The phenomenon of stalking is something that comes up quite frequently in your profession. Is it something that you have had experience of?
No it's not. I don't think so anyway. They're very good if they are there. But I do know people that have stalkers and it's not nice.
How do they deal with it?
Court injunctions, bodyguards, the lot - depending on the stalker. Some stalkers are quite benign, but finding someone in your garden at three o'clock in the morning with a meat cleaver and a hard-on can't be much fun.
What was it like kissing Rhys Ifans?
We took the piss out of each other all the way through filming. We were going, "Three days to go. Two days to go..." Rhys was wearing these cracked plastic teeth so it was bizarre when we did it. But it was fine. We filmed it at the end and by the time we got there we were into the groove of things. But it was just a kiss, nothing more. Honest!
Do you know what's happening to Vengeance, Spielberg's film about the 1972 Munich massacre, in which you have been cast?
It's happening next year; at least so the man himself tells me.
Are you excited?
It's terrifying really. The subject matter is very tricky. It's about the Munich massacre and what Mossad did afterwards with the assassination squads. I think it's a turning point in history, especially for the Palestinians. The conversations I've had about it - because I was very wary about it - make me think it's really worth making.
Whose side will you be on?
There's no real side to be on because I think it was a mess. Certainly some of Mossad's actions were deplorable and the exploration is not to find blame but to actually explain and understand the situation and the idea of revenge, which is just continuous. Revenge doesn't stop.
Spielberg is going to have to be very careful, given his links to the Holocaust Foundation.
He's incredibly aware of that and that's why he wants to get it right. He certainly doesn't want it to be superficial.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/films/2004/11/25/d ... view.shtml
Daniel Craig - Enduring Love
Interviewed by Alana Lee
“ Finding someone in your garden at three o'clock in the morning with a meat cleaver and a hard-on can't be much fun ”
Since his TV debut in Our Friends In The North in 1996, British actor Daniel Craig has made a name for himself in smouldering yet cerebral roles on the big screen. After an ill-advised romp with Angelina Jolie in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, he hit form with Road To Perdition and bagged leading roles in Sylvia and Layer Cake as a result. Now he's reunited with Roger Michell - whom he worked with on last year's The Mother - to play an academic who is stalked by an obsessive Rhys Ifans, in a sharp adaptation of Ian McEwan's novel Enduring Love.
Roger Michell also directed you in The Mother. Do you enjoy the challenge that his films offer?
Well, there are two things. There's Roger and the appeal of working with him is that it's terribly rewarding. He employs you because he trusts in your talent. He knows that you have ability and what he does is he manipulates it and sort of empowers you. The other thing is they are challenging roles. Also, we wouldn't start working unless the script was right. That's the most important thing with Roger. And the script was absolutely bang on. I don't know, I can't say enough about him. If we could start a film tomorrow, I would love it. Actually, we're going to do a third one. That's the plan.
The phenomenon of stalking is something that comes up quite frequently in your profession. Is it something that you have had experience of?
No it's not. I don't think so anyway. They're very good if they are there. But I do know people that have stalkers and it's not nice.
How do they deal with it?
Court injunctions, bodyguards, the lot - depending on the stalker. Some stalkers are quite benign, but finding someone in your garden at three o'clock in the morning with a meat cleaver and a hard-on can't be much fun.
What was it like kissing Rhys Ifans?
We took the piss out of each other all the way through filming. We were going, "Three days to go. Two days to go..." Rhys was wearing these cracked plastic teeth so it was bizarre when we did it. But it was fine. We filmed it at the end and by the time we got there we were into the groove of things. But it was just a kiss, nothing more. Honest!
Do you know what's happening to Vengeance, Spielberg's film about the 1972 Munich massacre, in which you have been cast?
It's happening next year; at least so the man himself tells me.
Are you excited?
It's terrifying really. The subject matter is very tricky. It's about the Munich massacre and what Mossad did afterwards with the assassination squads. I think it's a turning point in history, especially for the Palestinians. The conversations I've had about it - because I was very wary about it - make me think it's really worth making.
Whose side will you be on?
There's no real side to be on because I think it was a mess. Certainly some of Mossad's actions were deplorable and the exploration is not to find blame but to actually explain and understand the situation and the idea of revenge, which is just continuous. Revenge doesn't stop.
Spielberg is going to have to be very careful, given his links to the Holocaust Foundation.
He's incredibly aware of that and that's why he wants to get it right. He certainly doesn't want it to be superficial.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/films/2004/11/25/d ... view.shtml
"Love anyway. Live anyway. Choose to part of this anyway”
Very very interesting challange think in voices. Of course, Daniel have a great voice.advicky wrote:James Bond, Jimmy Stewart and the greatest voices of all time
Pierce Brosnan had the looks and the attitude, but as James Bond he always came up a bit lacking. The problem, I finally decided, was his soft, whispery voice. His “Bond, James Bond” came out like a caress, not a punch.
His successor, Daniel Craig, was initially derided for lacking some essential hunky or dashing qualities, yet when he hit the screen as Bond, he dominated. His musculature got much of the attention, and his steely blue eyes didn’t hurt, but the key, again, was the voice: low, clipped, blunt, commanding.
Craig was instantly hailed as the best Bond since Sean Connery, whose deep Scottish brogue, one of movie history’s most distinct voices, delivered zingers like daggers. It’s no coincidence that Connery and Craig are considered the toughest, most charismatic Bonds while Roger Moore and Brosnan, with their more genteel British deliveries, are known as the softies.
The voice is such a basic element of acting, yet it’s one we rarely discuss. It’s easier to reprint a photo of Humphrey Bogart or to describe his droopy-eyed glower than it is to capture that unique vocal quality that made him Bogart.
Yet if you played recordings of history’s greatest movie stars delivering a sentence, you should be able to identify just about all of them: Jimmy Stewart, Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, James Cagney, Bette Davis, Orson Welles, Bogart, Lauren Bacall, John Wayne, Marilyn Monroe, Marlon Brando, Jack Nicholson, Dustin Hoffman, Jane Fonda, Al Pacino, Jodie Foster, Robert De Niro ...
“It’s partly because we live in a world of media where the photographic close-up is so much easier to convey that we tend to think it’s just a visual medium, but in my opinion every star we remember, every star we love, the voice is vital,” says David Thomson, author of “‘Have You Seen ... ?’: A Personal Introduction to 1,000 Films.”
What makes a movie voice great isn’t easy to pinpoint. Welles may have a classically powerful baritone, but Nicholson’s sly, nasal rasp or John Malkovich’s insinuating purr is equally indelible. Some actors work hard on their voices’ tone; others accentuate different aspects.
“I have been told that it’s very difficult to imitate me, for mimics,” Hoffman says. “What’s really important is rhythm. If you can get the rhythm of the character or just get the rhythm of the film, it’s hugely important. Where our timbre may be different, each of us individually, what’s really different is our own rhythm, and I think that’s very revealing.”
Craig says he doesn’t consider voice to be “a conscious part of my performance,” but “I’ve been acting for long enough, and I’ve done enough stage work to be lowering my voice”—he demonstrates—“to make it sound deeper.”
His goal with Bond’s voice, he adds, is “trying to ground it as much as possible. In reality if we get freaked out, we squeak. It’s one of those things. There’s nothing shameful in squeaking. This is the kind of man that doesn’t squeak in a bad situation. All I want to do is make it as grounded as possible, a man who is in control.”
As a successful movie actor with theatrical roots, Craig is in good company. “All the actors whose work I ever admired came out of the theater,” says Jeffrey Wright, whose resonant, sandpapery voice has animated complex characters in “Angels in America” (on stage and screen), “W” and “Cadillac Records.” “That was just the way it was. Paul Newman. Brando. Adolph Caesar. It’s all theater training where the voice is more central to the communication of story than is the face. On film it’s the face, but at the same time, if you forsake the voice for the body, I think you lose out on an opportunity to shape a character.”
Since the talkies’ early days, many theatrical actors have made the transition to film, but other forces have been at work as well. “When sound came along, all of a sudden the movies needed very strong, articulate voices because the sound recording was not great in those films,” Thomson says. “Very pronounced, slightly exaggerated voices like Cagney’s excelled because you got them right away.”
Another major factor in the ’30s and ’40s was radio. Before his 1941 debut with “Citizen Kane,” Welles had become famous through his Mercury Theater on the Air, and performers such as Bob Hope and George Burns also were radio fixtures. The Lux Radio Theater, hosted by Cecil B. DeMille, adapted films as well as stage works for the airwaves, often with the original stars re-creating their roles.
“So the ability to speak clearly and to get identity across was tremendously important,” Thomson says, adding that actors were so strongly associated with their own voices that when the makers of “Gone With the Wind” tried to give Clark Gable a Southern dialect coach, the actor refused. “He said, ‘What the hell, I’m not going to deal with this. You want to hear Gable.’”
History has proved him right. Can you imagine “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn,” in a put-on twang?
Yet fast-forward to present day, and Tom Cruise, who has a distinct, authoritative voice, is getting grief for not trying on a German accent as the would-be Hitler killer of “Valkyrie.” Acting has become less about trademark voices, more about verisimilitude. Meryl Streep is one of the most gifted actresses around, but for years she was known for her uncanny way with an accent; she would lose herself in the voice rather than push that self to the forefront.
Streep’s dedication had a sort of fun-house mirror reflection in Peter Sellers, whose radio training on “The Goon Show” presaged a career in which he constantly disappeared into various voices and accents. As he told none other than Kermit the Frog on “The Muppet Show” in 1977, “There is no me; I do not exist. There used to be a me, but I had it surgically removed.”
The problem for many current actors, including an assortment of would-be next big things, is not that they’re such vocal virtuosos but that they don’t stand out. You can identify George Clooney, Morgan Freeman and Gene Hackman when they perform voice-overs, but could you describe how Josh Hartnett sounds? Would you recognize Lindsay Lohan’s voice without seeing her? Is Leonardo DiCaprio’s voice as immediately recognizable as Pacino’s?
Matthew Broderick, who voices the title mouse of the animated “The Tale of Despereaux,” admits to approaching his own voice with the self-consciousness of someone hearing himself on an answering machine for the first time. “Normally I wouldn’t be really thinking about my voice,” he says. “There have been some parts [where I have], like in ‘The Producers’ a little bit, but usually I try not to be too aware of the sound of my voice.”
“I spent my first certainly 10 years being so embarrassed and afraid of hearing my voice,” says Keri Russell, now co-starring in “Bedtime Stories.” “It’s sort of a giveaway a lot of times of people’s age, like the older they are, the more steady and deep their voices. I don’t know if it’s just part of aging, but it certainly is a part of finding the character.”
Sigourney Weaver, who narrates “Despereaux,” may have a pleasingly velvety, precise voice, but she nonetheless admits: “When I hear myself on the answering machine, I just go, ‘Who is that dreadful woman?’ I never really liked my voice. Katharine Hepburn’s voice makes me whinge, and sometimes my voice has that kind of slight—not accent but is it a quality, a nasal quality? I don’t know what it is, but anyway, I go, ‘Ecch.’”
Yet the 59-year-old theater veteran says she still is learning how to use this essential, often overlooked instrument. “I’m just beginning to understand how much the voice is the beginning,” Weaver says. “I’ve never paid much attention to it, and I really want to give it some stuff to do.”
So which actors, past and present, have the greatest voices?
Director Darren Aronofsky ("The Wrestler") has some suggestions: "Lauren Bacall, of course, and Humphrey Bogart. Jimmy Stewart is so unique that he’s instantly recognizable. Malkovich. And Sly [Stallone], in its own way. It’s distinct, you know?"
Now it’s your turn.
http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com ... -jimm.html
Thanks Vicky, very good read
We convince ourselves that we know the other person well, but do we really know anything important about anyone.
6. Say what I’m thinking
6. Say what I’m thinking
Many thanks for this. I lost it and found it for me, Thanks!!!!Aragorn wrote:I like this interview - hope it's not a repeat...
Daniel Craig - Enduring Love
Interviewed by Alana Lee
“ Finding someone in your garden at three o'clock in the morning with a meat cleaver and a hard-on can't be much fun ”
Since his TV debut in Our Friends In The North in 1996, British actor Daniel Craig has made a name for himself in smouldering yet cerebral roles on the big screen. After an ill-advised romp with Angelina Jolie in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, he hit form with Road To Perdition and bagged leading roles in Sylvia and Layer Cake as a result. Now he's reunited with Roger Michell - whom he worked with on last year's The Mother - to play an academic who is stalked by an obsessive Rhys Ifans, in a sharp adaptation of Ian McEwan's novel Enduring Love.
Roger Michell also directed you in The Mother. Do you enjoy the challenge that his films offer?
Well, there are two things. There's Roger and the appeal of working with him is that it's terribly rewarding. He employs you because he trusts in your talent. He knows that you have ability and what he does is he manipulates it and sort of empowers you. The other thing is they are challenging roles. Also, we wouldn't start working unless the script was right. That's the most important thing with Roger. And the script was absolutely bang on. I don't know, I can't say enough about him. If we could start a film tomorrow, I would love it. Actually, we're going to do a third one. That's the plan.
The phenomenon of stalking is something that comes up quite frequently in your profession. Is it something that you have had experience of?
No it's not. I don't think so anyway. They're very good if they are there. But I do know people that have stalkers and it's not nice.
How do they deal with it?
Court injunctions, bodyguards, the lot - depending on the stalker. Some stalkers are quite benign, but finding someone in your garden at three o'clock in the morning with a meat cleaver and a hard-on can't be much fun.
What was it like kissing Rhys Ifans?
We took the piss out of each other all the way through filming. We were going, "Three days to go. Two days to go..." Rhys was wearing these cracked plastic teeth so it was bizarre when we did it. But it was fine. We filmed it at the end and by the time we got there we were into the groove of things. But it was just a kiss, nothing more. Honest!
Do you know what's happening to Vengeance, Spielberg's film about the 1972 Munich massacre, in which you have been cast?
It's happening next year; at least so the man himself tells me.
Are you excited?
It's terrifying really. The subject matter is very tricky. It's about the Munich massacre and what Mossad did afterwards with the assassination squads. I think it's a turning point in history, especially for the Palestinians. The conversations I've had about it - because I was very wary about it - make me think it's really worth making.
Whose side will you be on?
There's no real side to be on because I think it was a mess. Certainly some of Mossad's actions were deplorable and the exploration is not to find blame but to actually explain and understand the situation and the idea of revenge, which is just continuous. Revenge doesn't stop.
Spielberg is going to have to be very careful, given his links to the Holocaust Foundation.
He's incredibly aware of that and that's why he wants to get it right. He certainly doesn't want it to be superficial.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/films/2004/11/25/d ... view.shtml
We convince ourselves that we know the other person well, but do we really know anything important about anyone.
6. Say what I’m thinking
6. Say what I’m thinking
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My pleasureFaustine wrote:Many thanks for this. I lost it and found it for me, Thanks!!!!Aragorn wrote:I like this interview - hope it's not a repeat...
Daniel Craig - Enduring Love
Interviewed by Alana Lee
“ Finding someone in your garden at three o'clock in the morning with a meat cleaver and a hard-on can't be much fun ”
Since his TV debut in Our Friends In The North in 1996, British actor Daniel Craig has made a name for himself in smouldering yet cerebral roles on the big screen. After an ill-advised romp with Angelina Jolie in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, he hit form with Road To Perdition and bagged leading roles in Sylvia and Layer Cake as a result. Now he's reunited with Roger Michell - whom he worked with on last year's The Mother - to play an academic who is stalked by an obsessive Rhys Ifans, in a sharp adaptation of Ian McEwan's novel Enduring Love.
Roger Michell also directed you in The Mother. Do you enjoy the challenge that his films offer?
Well, there are two things. There's Roger and the appeal of working with him is that it's terribly rewarding. He employs you because he trusts in your talent. He knows that you have ability and what he does is he manipulates it and sort of empowers you. The other thing is they are challenging roles. Also, we wouldn't start working unless the script was right. That's the most important thing with Roger. And the script was absolutely bang on. I don't know, I can't say enough about him. If we could start a film tomorrow, I would love it. Actually, we're going to do a third one. That's the plan.
The phenomenon of stalking is something that comes up quite frequently in your profession. Is it something that you have had experience of?
No it's not. I don't think so anyway. They're very good if they are there. But I do know people that have stalkers and it's not nice.
How do they deal with it?
Court injunctions, bodyguards, the lot - depending on the stalker. Some stalkers are quite benign, but finding someone in your garden at three o'clock in the morning with a meat cleaver and a hard-on can't be much fun.
What was it like kissing Rhys Ifans?
We took the piss out of each other all the way through filming. We were going, "Three days to go. Two days to go..." Rhys was wearing these cracked plastic teeth so it was bizarre when we did it. But it was fine. We filmed it at the end and by the time we got there we were into the groove of things. But it was just a kiss, nothing more. Honest!
Do you know what's happening to Vengeance, Spielberg's film about the 1972 Munich massacre, in which you have been cast?
It's happening next year; at least so the man himself tells me.
Are you excited?
It's terrifying really. The subject matter is very tricky. It's about the Munich massacre and what Mossad did afterwards with the assassination squads. I think it's a turning point in history, especially for the Palestinians. The conversations I've had about it - because I was very wary about it - make me think it's really worth making.
Whose side will you be on?
There's no real side to be on because I think it was a mess. Certainly some of Mossad's actions were deplorable and the exploration is not to find blame but to actually explain and understand the situation and the idea of revenge, which is just continuous. Revenge doesn't stop.
Spielberg is going to have to be very careful, given his links to the Holocaust Foundation.
He's incredibly aware of that and that's why he wants to get it right. He certainly doesn't want it to be superficial.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/films/2004/11/25/d ... view.shtml
"Love anyway. Live anyway. Choose to part of this anyway”
Bell's been talking Bond
After appearing alongside Daniel Craig in Defiance, does Jamie Bell fancy taking his 007 status?
"I think the shoes fit him very well, but I think they're too big for me at this stage," the Billy Elliot star admitted.
"Bond is a fantastic character - he's a piece of literary history and Daniel does him, in my opinion, better than most people have ever done it.
"He's the Bond that I've connected with the most out of all of them.
"He's doing a fantastic job so I'm going to leave it to him for now."
Defiance is out now in UK cinemas.
Source and video : http://itn.co.uk/news/17b5360725c04d03b ... 2c277.html
After appearing alongside Daniel Craig in Defiance, does Jamie Bell fancy taking his 007 status?
"I think the shoes fit him very well, but I think they're too big for me at this stage," the Billy Elliot star admitted.
"Bond is a fantastic character - he's a piece of literary history and Daniel does him, in my opinion, better than most people have ever done it.
"He's the Bond that I've connected with the most out of all of them.
"He's doing a fantastic job so I'm going to leave it to him for now."
Defiance is out now in UK cinemas.
Source and video : http://itn.co.uk/news/17b5360725c04d03b ... 2c277.html
Can you guess where Daniel Craig's secret tattoo is? Hint: You won't see it on the beach
It's a secret worthy of James Bond himself - a hidden tattoo which only those closest to him could identify.
Daniel Craig has revealed he has one hidden away - and it is beneath his swimming trunk area.
The actor has two often photographed tattoos - one on his shoulder and one on the inside of his right leg.
But on a U.S. chatshow last night he revealed that a third is visible only to those who know him 'intimately'.
Craig did not reveal the image depicted by the hidden tattoo, but speculation on internet chatrooms is that it is the letter H, perhaps in reference to an ex-girlfriend.
Craig made the revelation to U.S. chatshow host Jay Leno on Friday. 'There's one where you wouldn't see it,' he said. 'It's hidden away.'
Leno replied: 'Is it one of those ones where it says OK and then it says Oklahoma?'
And Craig laughed: 'Yeah, [it says] "Welcome to Oklahoma".'
He added: 'I had them done when I was 16 or 17. It was a rebellion thing.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/ar ... beach.html
[/quote]
It's a secret worthy of James Bond himself - a hidden tattoo which only those closest to him could identify.
Daniel Craig has revealed he has one hidden away - and it is beneath his swimming trunk area.
The actor has two often photographed tattoos - one on his shoulder and one on the inside of his right leg.
But on a U.S. chatshow last night he revealed that a third is visible only to those who know him 'intimately'.
Craig did not reveal the image depicted by the hidden tattoo, but speculation on internet chatrooms is that it is the letter H, perhaps in reference to an ex-girlfriend.
Craig made the revelation to U.S. chatshow host Jay Leno on Friday. 'There's one where you wouldn't see it,' he said. 'It's hidden away.'
Leno replied: 'Is it one of those ones where it says OK and then it says Oklahoma?'
And Craig laughed: 'Yeah, [it says] "Welcome to Oklahoma".'
He added: 'I had them done when I was 16 or 17. It was a rebellion thing.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/ar ... beach.html
[/quote]
umm, does this mean we know him intimately because we know what the tatoo is? wholy crap i wish. and what does the joke between them mean--that his tatoo reads "welcome to oklahoma"...suggesting that his penis is as long as it reads welcome to okalhoma???? jay leno is not a good interviewer. i always squinch my eyes and wait for the next stupid questions...owell didnt watch. ~g