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Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. To keep up with our latest features, sign up for the Weekly Edit newsletter and follow us @mubinotebook on Twitter and Instagram.News Kaizen.Kaizen (2024), a documentary about an influencer’s quest to scale Mount Everest, has attracted the ire of other French distributors after mk2 violated the terms of its “exceptional visa,” booking almost double its legal allowance of screenings before releasing the film on YouTube the next day. One industry professional compared the company to “guys in hoodies with machine guns robbing a bank.”Total Film, the British monthly, has ceased print publication after 356 issues and 27 years.The United Kingdom has passed into law an Independent Film Tax Credit, part of a large investment in the culture industry by the new Labour government. FESTIVALSBeing John Smith.In an open letter, filmmakers and workers call on the New York...

Kandi Burruss is in the midst of another career renaissance. After rising to fame as one-fourth of the ‘90s R&b girl group Xscape, Burruss’ next turn in the spotlight came as a cast member of the longstanding Real Housewives of Atlanta reality series, on which she starred from 2009-2023.

In March, Burruss announced she was departing the Bravo franchise after a whopping 14 seasons, a decision she says was borne out of her desire to seriously pursue an acting career.

“I no longer wanted to just be able to be a guest star,” Burruss tells The Hollywood Reporter. “I wanted to be able to audition for a role that’s more substantial on whatever project it may be. So I decided that I was going to go ahead and step out on faith, because this was my contract year. It was my year that I could actually make the decision for myself.

Communist, fellow traveler, red, pinko, commie, useful idiot — the searing epithets of the Cold War have lost their sting but in their day they were lacerating. Depending on where the recipient was located on the left-of-center spectrum, a career might be stalled, derailed, or killed.

Paul Robeson was called all of the above, in addition to the more familiar slurs applied to a Black man who showed a little spunk in a Jim Crow culture. The preeminent artist-activist of mid-twentieth century America, Robeson was immersed in, or rather beat back against, the main currents of his times — the Jazz Age, the Great Depression, World War II , and the Cold War — with a promethean talent that found expression in virtually every medium of the popular arts — stage, records, concerts, radio, and film. On whatever platform, in whatever era, informing his participation, and the reaction to it, was his identity as a...

An icon of British film beloved by all who worked with her, Dame Maggie Smith sadly passed away last month. For generations, she was a force to be reckoned with playing an incredible array of roles over her long career on stage and screen. With two Academy Awards, five BAFTAs, four Emmys, three Golden Globes, a Tony, and countless nominations, she was loved by both audiences and critics around the world. Enter Our Heroine, Stage Right Maggie Smith was born in Essex to Margaret Hutton and Nathaniel Smith. As many do, Smith started on stage in 1952. At just 17, she made her debut with the Oxford University Dramatic Society playing Viola in a production of Shakespeare’s ‘Twelfth Night’ at the Oxford Playhouse. She played in many productions with Oxford University, including ‘Cinderella’ (1952), ‘Rookery Nook’ (1953), ‘Cakes and Ale’ (1953) and ‘The Government Inspector’ (1954). In 1956, she made her first appearance on Broadway at...

The entertainment industry and fans all across the world are mourning the sudden passing of Hollywood legend Maggie Smith, who had a phenomenal career spanning over seven decades and delivered beloved performances in celebrated film and television franchises, including Harry Potter and Downton Abbey, as well as acclaimed roles in hits like Othello, Death on the Nile, Hook, and Sister Act.

The recipient of numerous prestigious accolades such as two Academy Awards, three Golden Globes, and five BAFTA Awards, Smith was one of the silver screen and theater's most prolific performers and continued finding success and adoration up until her death at 89 on September 27, 2024. While many audiences may recognize the late seasoned star for her brilliant portrayals of both Professor Minerva McGonagall in the enchanting Harry Potter films and Violet Crawley in the acclaimed period drama Downton Abbey, some may be surprised to discover that Smith didn't find her most iconic roles satisfying.

Update: After “Homeland’s” David Harewood told The Guardian that actors should be able to “Black up” for roles, but warned “it’d better be fucking good,” the actor clarified in a statement to Variety, “I don’t support or condone Blackface. My own documentary on the subject can be found on the BBC website. It is a grotesque distortion of race and should always be condemned.”

Previously: Speaking to The Guardian, Harewood, who also serves as president of prestigious British drama school the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, said: “We’re at this strange point in the profession where people go: ‘Oh, you can’t play that role because you’re not disabled, or you can’t play that because you’re not really from there.’ The name of the game is acting.”

He added, “Yes, we’ve got to be representative, but I do think we have to be careful.

Dominic West has spoken out in support of his former co-star’s criticisms of The Affair.

British actor West, who got his big TV break as maverick policeman McNulty in The Wire and most recently starred as Prince Charles in the final two series of The Crown, filmed five seasons of the hit drama on Showtime, but his co-star Ruth Wilson was written out of the series after four.

In 2020, Wilson – who it is speculated signed an NDA on her departure – recalled that “things didn’t feel right” on the show, she didn’t always “feel safe” and raised the particular concern that, during the filming of sex scenes, the cameras always focused on her “orgasm face,” not that of male actors’.

In an interview with The Times of London, West hesitated to contribute to the discussion, but he lent his support to Wilson, saying: “We talked a lot about...

To celebrate "The Godfather" turning 50 in 2022, The Hollywood Reporter sat down with actors James Caan, Robert Duvall, Talia Shire, and John Martino, who reflected on the creation and enduring legacy of director Francis Ford Coppola's cinematic masterpiece. Shire expressed her admiration for Marlon Brando's "breathtaking" transformation into the formidable Don Corleone.

"When he came to the set the first time, he was this handsome male," she recalled, but he utilized various makeup and acting techniques to transform himself into a weathered and wise mafioso, making him almost unrecognizable. The use of dental prosthetics gave Brando protruding jowls that made him resemble a bulldog, somehow lending Don Corleone a more dignified power.

Shire said that Brando also employed another unique performance method called "active listening" during filming. "It's not always when you say your lines that you pay attention; it is the listening to all the others around you.

National Amusements fires up ‘BlackBerry’; MetFilm has ‘Golda’ starring Helen Mirren and ‘The Burial’.

Universal’s franchise horror The Exorcist: Believer and Warner Bros’ UK drama The Great Escaper will be targeting different audiences at this weekend’s UK-Ireland box office, with both films opening wide.

Starting in 616 cinemas, The Great Escaper stars Michael Caine and Glenda Jackson, in her final film role before her death in June aged 87. Shot along the south coast of the UK including at Dover, Camber Sands and Hastings, the film follows a pensioner who escapes from his care home to attend the 70th anniversary...

Keith Jefferson, the actor who worked for Quentin Tarantino on Django Unchained, The Hateful Eight and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, has died. He was 53.

Jefferson died Thursday, his rep Nicole St. John told The Hollywood Reporter. He announced in August that he had been diagnosed with cancer.

“Every now and then God will give you a challenge and leave it up to you to fix it,” he wrote then. “When I was first diagnosed with cancer I had to stop, pause, and didn’t want to share with anyone. Not my family nor extended family. Today I’m finally at a place to share because my faith is getting stronger.”

Born on April 7, 1970, in Houston, Jefferson received a Bfa in musical theater from U.S. International in San Diego and and an Mfa in acting from the University of Arizona. He landed his first onscreen role in Boys on the Side...

This The Simpsons review contains spoilers.

The Simpsons Season 34 Episode 22

For their 750th episode, The Simpsons pulls out all the stops, and adds a dangerous curve, but never quite gets in full gear. “Homer’s Adventures Through the Windshield Glass” is ambitious, cramming 750 characters into the opening sequence, jamming with Lizzo to the beat of a slap-happy Homer in the end, and spending the creamy middle somewhere between heaven and hell. It is a very creative episode, teasing a glimpse of paradise which turns into the purgatory of a lukewarm season finale which was cooked on all burners.

While couch gags can foretell mediocre episodes, the full opening sequence, complete with a chalkboard gag, is always a welcome sight. The cramming of all the Springfield residents, characters, and celebrity guests, is expertly layered. Even Homer’s crash through the garage reveals greater wonders as Fat Tony and Mr. T can be seen through the splinters.

If the Screen Actors Guild’s film ensemble award was handed out today, three of Gold Derby’s editors would be predicting three different casts. Chris Beachum thinks “Belfast” will win the top trophy, Marcus James Dixon chooses “The Power of the Dog” and Daniel Montgomery opts for “King Richard.” (Click each of their names to see their complete predix.) Who do You think is right? Above, watch our editors’ SAG Awards film predictions slugfest video and then be sure to make your own picks.

SEEWhy ‘Squid Game’ will win at SAG Awards: It’s like ‘Stranger Things’ and ‘Parasite’ rolled into one

As Chris explains, “Belfast” has “done the best overall across festivals” in the lead-up to awards season. The adult cast members are all going supporting while the central boy (Jude Hill) is campaigning in lead. Chris also notes how it “doesn’t hurt” that “Belfast” is “directed by an actor,...

Corporate CEOs hate political noise. Comedians thrive on it.

Did Netflix’s co-CEOs sense that they would be stirring both noise and protest rallies when they signed onto Dave Chappelle? Or when they then defied CEO precedent by publicly defending him –then, in a blur of counter-transphobic rhetoric, suggested that they had “screwed up” their defense.

Walt Disney used to boast that no journalist (or activist) ever coaxed a political opinion from him (I once tried). The CEOs of the moment, on the other hand, are increasingly being lured into political combat on issues like abortion (Texas), voting rights (Georgia) or vaccine mandates (the major airline CEOs).

Stars, too, are joining the fray: Matthew McConaughey, having written a goofy bestselling memoir, may now run for governor of Texas. More and more stars and producers are expressing strong views on the “cancel culture.” It’s as though Warren Beatty and Gary Hart had retaken center stage.

Author: Stefan Pape

Here at HeyUGuys we are fortunate enough to spend time with many of our heroes from the silver screen – but this week presented a quite unforgettable opportunity, as we sat down with two of the greatest living actors, Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine.

In London to promote their latest picture, the heist comedy Going in Style, we discussed with the pair the role of the elderly in modern society, and exactly what it is that keeps luring them back to work. They speak about nerves, pensions, hobbies and movie choices – as we just sit down and listen as the pair reminisce on two quite remarkable careers. Plus, Caine reveals who he believes does the very best impression of him – and there’s a been a fair few.

Also be sure to catch our video interview below:

Morgan Freeman & Michael Caine Video Interview

Can you see the correlation between a heist and acting?...

Happy Birthday, Laurence Olivier Born in 1907, Olivier remains one of the most revered actors of the 20th century. He was the first artistic director of the National Theatre of Great Britain and its main stage is named in his honour. Olivier's career as a stage and film actor spanned more than six decades and included a wide variety of roles, from the title role in Shakespeare's Othello and Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night to the sadistic Nazi dentist Christian Szell in Marathon Man and the kindly but determined Nazi-hunter in The Boys from Brazil. Olivier played more than 120 stage roles Richard III, Macbeth, Romeo, Hamlet, Othello, Uncle Vanya, and Archie Rice in The Entertainer. He appeared in nearly sixty films, including William Wyler's Wuthering Heights, Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca, Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus, Otto Preminger's Bunny Lake Is Missing, Richard Attenborough's Oh What a Lovely War,...

Daniel Clowes, whose comic book "Ghost World" inspired Terry Zwigoff's outstanding 2001 film adaptation, landed a potent dig at the Academy Monday when The New Yorker unveiled his February 29 cover illustration, "Privileged Characters." Depicting statuettes of a darker hue roped off from the red carpet, it's a one-glance indictment of the lack of diversity in the Oscar nominations, and all the more devastating for arriving at a moment in which one thing has become abundantly clear: the furor most frequently labeled #OscarsSoWhite is not going away.   On his HBO series "Last Week Tonight" Sunday, John Oliver got in on the game too, memorably (and hilariously) thrashing Hollywood for its history of casting white actors in roles that would logically be played by people of color, from John Wayne as Genghis Khan to Laurence Olivier's notorious "Othello" blackface. His announcer opened the occasional segment, "Why Is This Still a...

In the mid-60s, thanks to the Inner London Education Authority’s policy of subsidised matinees for schools, I was privileged to see the National Theatre’s production of Othello with Laurence Olivier and Frank Finlay (obituary, 2 February). Olivier’s performance I found artificial and overstated (my ignorance, not his fault) but Finlay’s Iago seized my attention and imagination.

I still recall with a frisson the moment when his Iago revealed his true, infernal nature. In the final scene Othello attempts to kill Iago, uttering the words “If that thou be’st a devil I cannot kill thee.” Finlay’s Iago doubled over, then slowly straightened up and extended the blood-stained hand he had taken from the wound and delivered the line “I bleed, sir, but not killed.” I went on to a career in theatre.

Continue reading...

Frank Finlay, the British actor known for his performances on stage and screen, including his Oscar-nominated turn as Iago across from Laurence Olivier in 1965's Othello, passed away from heart failure this Saturday. His son, David, shared the news on Facebook. Finlay was 89.On film, Finlay starred in Richard Lester's adaptations of The Three Musketeers (1973) and Four Musketeers (1974), as well as Richard Eyre’s The Ploughman’s Lunch (1983), and Roman Polanski's The Pianist (2002). Finlay spent much of his career onstage, performing during the early days of the the English Stage Company at the Royal Court and Laurence Olivier's National Theatre Company. On television, he starred in the BBC's six-part series Casanova (1971), as well as several filmed theater productions on the network. Though Finlay received the Cbe (Commander Order of the British Empire) in 1984, he was never knighted. "Perhaps I haven't been high-profile enough," Finlay joked to the...

Frank Finlay, the British actor known for his Oscar-nominated work as Iago in Othello and 1975's The Three Musketeers, has died, according to his website. He was 89. "We are very saddened to announce that Frank died today 30th January 2016 at home surrounded by his family," the statement read. "He was a fine actor and will be very much missed by his friends and family." Finlay, who was preceded in death by his wife of 50 years, Doreen Shepherd, had over 100 credits to his name and last appeared in the U.K.'s television mini-series Four Seasons in 2009. Notable roles include Casanova...

Frank Finlay, the British actor known for his Oscar-nominated work as Iago in Othello and 1975's The Three Musketeers, has died, according to his website. He was 89. "We are very saddened to announce that Frank died today 30th January 2016 at home surrounded by his family," the statement read. "He was a fine actor and will be very much missed by his friends and family." Finlay, who was preceded in death by his wife of 50 years, Doreen Shepherd, had over 100 credits to his name and last appeared in the U.K.'s television mini-series Four Seasons in 2009. Notable roles include Casanova...

Happy Birthday, Laurence Olivier Born in 1907, Olivier remains one of the most revered actors of the 20th century. He was the first artistic director of the National Theatre of Great Britain and its main stage is named in his honour. Olivier's career as a stage and film actor spanned more than six decades and included a wide variety of roles, from the title role in Shakespeare's Othello and Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night to the sadistic Nazi dentist Christian Szell in Marathon Man and the kindly but determined Nazi-hunter in The Boys from Brazil. Olivier played more than 120 stage roles Richard III, Macbeth, Romeo, Hamlet, Othello, Uncle Vanya, and Archie Rice in The Entertainer. He appeared in nearly sixty films, including William Wyler's Wuthering Heights, Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca, Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus, Otto Preminger's Bunny Lake Is Missing, Richard Attenborough's Oh What a Lovely War,...

Movies have always been full of smoke and mirrors. It’s a fact: all films deceive their audience to some degree, whether it’s through filming a scene in Toronto and pretending it’s New York City or putting Gillian Anderson on a box so she can stand in the same shots as David Duchovny.

But some push that deception further than others, especially when it comes to actors in Hollywood movies. Though it’s not practiced much these days, there was a time in Tinseltown’s history when white actors would play any race they chose, from Mickey Rooney’s infamous Chinese neighbour in Breakfast at Tiffany’s to Laurence Olivier’s woefully misguided taking of the title role – darkened from head to toe – in his version of Othello.

Thankfully that’s not really regular practice these days, though there are still a few actors who play characters with...

Happy Birthday, Laurence Olivier Born in 1907, Olivier remains one of the most revered actors of the 20th century. He was the first artistic director of the National Theatre of Great Britain and its main stage is named in his honour. Olivier's career as a stage and film actor spanned more than six decades and included a wide variety of roles, from the title role in Shakespeare's Othello and Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night to the sadistic Nazi dentist Christian Szell in Marathon Man and the kindly but determined Nazi-hunter in The Boys from Brazil. Olivier played more than 120 stage roles Richard III, Macbeth, Romeo, Hamlet, Othello, Uncle Vanya, and Archie Rice in The Entertainer. He appeared in nearly sixty films, including William Wyler's Wuthering Heights, Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca, Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus, Otto Preminger's Bunny Lake Is Missing, Richard Attenborough's Oh What a Lovely War,...

Chicago – World War II will never be over, in a sense, as long as it continues to influence the culture or teach us lessons about our contemporary lives. The new film “Walking with the Enemy” is rooted in the Holocaust, but uses the twist of a Hungarian Jew who brashly impersonated a Nazi officer to relocate his counterparts.

“Walking with the Enemy” is inspired by the true story of Tibor Rosenbaum, who led a group of resistance fighters, and saved many Jewish lives through his Nazi officer impersonations, also directing his people to the “Glass House,” an old factory that printed Swiss passports for those Hungarian Jews during the war. The story in the film is condensed and fictionalized through the character of Elek Cohen, portrayed by Jonas Armstrong (known in Britain for his role as Robin Hood, portrayed on a TV series from 2006-09). British character actor Simon Dutton portrays Miklos Schoen,...

Look, it's Shakespeare's 450th birthday. We at Riot are generally concerned with internet memes and Zac Efron's musculature, but let's give credit where its due: These are real celebs kicking real ass in real Shakesperean roles and no one's worthy. And we can't contain ourselves.  So, here are 10 people kicking thine ass in Shakespearean roles and leaving you in the mortal, pathetic dust. 1. Meryl Streep Serving You Death Sass In "The Taming Of The Shrew'2 Judi Dench With Gunpowder Eyes And A Kevlar Heart In "Twelfth Night" 3. Ralph Fiennes Is A Hotheaded Traitor Bad-ass In "Coriolanus," So Just Deal With It. 4. Kate Winslet Has A Song For You Losers, And It's A Heartbreak And A Goddamn Treasure In "Hamlet" 5. Now Is The Winter Of You Melting At The Computer, Because Kevin Spacey Is A Hunchbacked Hellraiser In "Richard III" 6. This Is CNN? Close, Moron, It's James Earl Jones...

Irreverent musical The Book of Mormon and hit geopolitical drama Chimerica were the big winners Sunday at Britain’s Olivier stage awards, on a night when London’s small theaters flexed their substantial muscle.

The Book of Mormon — which stormed London just as it earlier wowed New York — won four prizes, including best new musical and best actor in a musical, for Gavin Creel.

Choreographer and co-director Casey Nicholaw said the success of the show — written by South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone — came down to its blend of “good contemporary satire and good old-fashioned entertainment.”

Lucy Kirkwood’s Chimerica,...

Actors best known for their roles in TV and cinema are thrilling audiences and critics in plays full of violent, challenging action

The revered Kenneth Tynan, who reviewed theatre for the Observer in the 1950s and 1960s, said: "A good drama critic is one who perceives what is happening in the theatre of his time." All the same, it can be hard to spot a golden age when you are in the middle of it. It seems probable, though, that the London stage is enjoying at least a golden winter.

Four British actors, each of them a household name across the world, are delighting theatre audiences in leading roles in four plays that are not obvious crowd pleasers: Coriolanus, Richard II, Henry V and a new musical version of the Bret Easton Ellis novel American Psycho. The popularity of the leading men, two from the world of film, Jude Law and Tom Hiddleston,...

We got a brilliant, kaleidoscopic entertainment that evoked the National's past and opened up possibilities for the future

I count myself fortunate to have been part of the audience at Saturday night's celebration of the National theatre's 50th birthday. I don't know how it looked to viewers on BBC 2 or in cinemas at home and abroad. But, sitting in the Olivier, what we got was a brilliant kaleidoscopic entertainment that not only evoked the National's past but also, through astute recasting, opened up possibilities for the future.

Obviously it was moving to see legendary actors, either through archival footage or live performance, repeating past successes. There was a white-haired Joan Plowright, filmed at the Old Vic only last month, sternly replying to her accusers as Shaw's Saint Joan. There, too, was Maggie Smith – seen one moment on film rolling a wine glass across her forehead as the affectedly sexy Myra in Coward's Hay Fever,...

In the world of horror cinema, the best way to fight a monster–be it supernatural, human, or natural one–is with a character that possesses special knowledge and skills. These experts, recruited into battle by other characters or colliding with the conflict intentionally, are the savants of the horror world.

Examples of savant characters include David Warner’s bat expert Phillip Payne in Nightwing, Zelda Rubinstein’s spiritual medium Tangina in Poltergeist, Matthew McConaughey’s dragon slayer Denton Van Zan in Reign of Fire, Lin Shaye’s paranormal investigator Elise Rainier in Insidious, and Otto Jespersen’s monster killer Hans in Trollhunter.

This article, divided into three sections based on what type of monstrous force is being fought, focuses on the greatest savant characters the horror genre has to offer.

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Vs. The Supernatural

Peter Cushing as Doctor Van Helsing in Horror of Dracula and The Brides of Dracula: In these two Hammer films,...

Just as political correctness has made it nearly impossible for a white actor to play Othello, the iconic films of Franco Zeffirelli and Baz Luhrmann have conditioned audiences — even theater audiences — to expect Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers to be played by actors only recently weaned from their CW series. Millennials, be banished! The 36-year-old Orlando Bloom is making his Broadway debut as the teenage Romeo — and unfortunately, that’s the least of the problems with director David Leveaux’s revival, which opened Thursday night at the Richard Rodgers Theater. (Fyi, Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud were each hovering around 30 when they famously.

From a critically-acclaimed stage performance to a critically-acclaimed screen performance…and now back to what may be a critically-acclaimed screen performance based on that stage performance.

British actor Chiwetel Ejiofor is signed on to revive his stirring turn in the stage production of A Season in the Congo for the big screen. Ejiofor drew raves at the Young Vic in London this summer for his portrayal of Patrice Lumumba, a beer-seller and political activist who later became Congo’s first democratically elected prime minister – a position Lumumba held for a mere three months. Critics hailed his performance, describing a complexity from the actor similar to the one he displayed in a stage version of Othello in 2008, which won him a Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor.

The film version will be helmed by Joe Wright (Atonement, Anna Karenina), who also directed Ejiofor in the stage play. A Season in the...

Happy Birthday, Laurence Olivier Born in 1907, Olivier remains one of the most revered actors of the 20th century. He was the first artistic director of the National Theatre of Great Britain and its main stage is named in his honour. Olivier's career as a stage and film actor spanned more than six decades and included a wide variety of roles, from the title role in Shakespeare's Othello and Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night to the sadistic Nazi dentist Christian Szell in Marathon Man and the kindly but determined Nazi-hunter in The Boys from Brazil. Olivier played more than 120 stage roles Richard III, Macbeth, Romeo, Hamlet, Othello, Uncle Vanya, and Archie Rice in The Entertainer. He appeared in nearly sixty films, including William Wyler's Wuthering Heights, Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca, Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus, Otto Preminger's Bunny Lake Is Missing, Richard Attenborough's Oh What a Lovely War,...

We're getting to know The Film Experience community one-by-one. Today we're talking to Morgan Borthwick from New Zealand. We've never been but it's on our brains due to Jane Campion's stunning miniseries "Top of the Lake". Here's Morgan.

 

Hi, Morgan. Do you love Jane Campion? (Please note: There is only one correct answer to this question)

Morgan: Of course! She understands film is as much art as it is storytelling and I could rhapsodise all day about her many gifts.  As a director, I love what she does with her actresses, particularly Barbara Hershey who is beyond superlatives in Portrait of a Lady, Abby Cornish in Bright Star and Elizabeth Moss in Top of the Lake, making me forget Peggy of Mad Men ever existed. She should have two best director nominations by now at least, but that's a gripe for another time about the academy and their "we've nominated you once,...

Happy Birthday, Laurence Olivier Born in 1907, Olivier remains one of the most revered actors of the 20th century. He was the first artistic director of the National Theatre of Great Britain and its main stage is named in his honour. Olivier's career as a stage and film actor spanned more than six decades and included a wide variety of roles, from the title role in Shakespeare's Othello and Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night to the sadistic Nazi dentist Christian Szell in Marathon Man and the kindly but determined Nazi-hunter in The Boys from Brazil. Olivier played more than 120 stage roles Richard III, Macbeth, Romeo, Hamlet, Othello, Uncle Vanya, and Archie Rice in The Entertainer. He appeared in nearly sixty films, including William Wyler's Wuthering Heights, Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca, Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus, Otto Preminger's Bunny Lake Is Missing, Richard Attenborough's Oh What a Lovely War,...

Vivacious Irish actor best known for her role opposite Albert Finney in Tom Jones

The red-haired, vivacious and provocative Irish actor Joyce Redman, who has died aged 93, will for ever be remembered for her lubricious meal-time munching and swallowing opposite Albert Finney in Tony Richardson's 1963 film of Tom Jones. Eyes locked, lips smacked and jaws rotated as the two of them tucked into a succulent feast while eyeing up the afters. Sinking one's teeth into a role is one thing. This was quite another, and deliciously naughty, the mother of all modern mastication scenes.

Redman and Finney were renewing a friendship forged five years earlier when both appeared with Charles Laughton in Jane Arden's The Party at the New (now the Noël Coward) theatre. Redman was not blamed by the critic Kenneth Tynan for making nothing of her role as Laughton's wife. "Nothing," he said, "after all, will come of nothing.

Actress Joyce Redman, Oscar nominated for both Tom Jones and Othello, died in Kent, England, earlier today. The Newcastle-born Redman, who was either 93 or 96, had been suffering from pneumonia. Film lovers will remember her as Tom Jones‘ Mrs. Waters, stealing the movie while “sexting” — as in, sex while eating — Albert Finney. Mostly a stage and television performer, the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art-trained Redman appeared in only a handful of movies. Yet, her brief film career was notable because of her two Best Supporting Actress Academy Award nominations. In fact, Redman brought "Oscar luck" to her movies and fellow players: Best Picture Oscar winner Tom Jones (1963) earned five nominations in the acting categories (Joyce Redman, Albert Finney, Diane Cilento, Dame Edith Evans, Hugh Griffith), while the filmed version of Britain’s National Theatre presentation of Othello (1965) earned four (Joyce Redman as Emilia, Laurence Olivier, Maggie Smith, Frank Finlay). Regarding the nominations for the Othello actors,...

Oscar-nominated Irish actress Joyce Redman has died at the age of 96.

The star passed away in Kent, England on Thursday following a short battle with pneumonia, according to her actor son Crispin Redman.

She is best known for playing Emilia alongside Dame Maggie Smith and Sir Laurence Olivier in the 1965 movie version of Othello, a role which earned her an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actress.

Redman was also nominated for an Oscar in 1963 for the adventure comedy Tom Jones.

Olivier wasn't just a great actor – he was a quintessentially modern performer, who cast a powerful spell over audiences

It's a shock to realise that few people under the age of 60 will ever have seen Laurence Olivier on stage. It came as an even greater shock to be told recently that many young actors have either scarcely heard of him, or routinely dismiss him as an "old ham". Nothing could be further from the truth. I first came under Olivier's spell when, as a 15-year-old schoolboy, I saw him play Malvolio, Macbeth and Titus Andronicus in a single Stratford season. He was not only a great actor. He was also, allowing for changes of style and taste, a quintessentially modern actor.

How to explain his power? I would seize first of all on the voice. What was initially a light tenor became, through training and application, a uniquely flexible instrument...

The play Barrymore, which in 1997 earned Christopher Plummer a Tony Award for his portrayal of legendary stage and screen star John Barrymore, will be shown at movie houses in Canada in May. Screenings in the United States and elsewhere will follow in October. Could that possibly mean a third Oscar nomination for Plummer, this year's Best Supporting Actor winner for Mike Mills' Beginners? Unless Academy rules have changed in that regard — and Barrymore gets shown for a week in the Los Angeles area — that's certainly a possibility. Filmed plays — Barrymore was filmed with multiple high-definition cameras last year — have earned Academy recognition in the past. For instance, a 1965 filmed version of Britain's National Theatre presentation of Othello earned acting nods for Laurence Olivier, Frank Finlay, Maggie Smith, and Joyce Redman. In 1975, James Whitmore was shortlisted in the Best Actor category for the Theatrovision production of his one-man show Give 'em Hell,...

The UK's black stars are succeeding at the American box office – but are they working there because some parts offered in the UK are off limits, while others play to stereotypes?

When Resident Evil: The Retribution, starring Milla Jovovich, is released in cinemas in the autumn the arrival on screen of the man they call One, the mysterious leader of a commando unit, may surprise British audiences. And not just because he was chopped up into pieces by a laser in the first of this franchise of American action films. No, the reappearance of One is unexpected because he is played by British actor Colin Salmon, also known to television viewers from the ITV1 show Law and Order: UK, among many other popular homegrown television drama series.

Salmon, 49, is one of a growing group of distinguished black British stars making big budget Us film and television projects to supplement a British acting career.

Vanessa Redgrave already has one Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress ("Julia," 1977) and she may need room on her mantel for another with the release of "Coriolanus." She brings such a vibrancy to her role as Volumnia, the mother of ancient Roman general Gaius Marcius Coriolanus (Ralph Fiennes), she steals the movie from a remarkable ensemble. The undeniable high point of "Coriolanus" comes during a fiery, impassioned monologue in the final act brilliantly delivered by Redgrave. Pleading with her son -- who has been banished from Rome -- not to take revenge on the city, Redgrave secures her place in the Best Supporting Actress race by tackling the Bard's words with a confidence and capability almost never seen in Shakespearean adaptations. She will join a short list of women to be nominated for Shakespearean roles that includes Maggie Smith ("Othello," 1965), Jean Simmons ("Hamlet," 1948), and Norma She...

Legendary actor and life-long activist Vanessa Redgrave on bad habits, brother Corin and why the battle for the beleaguered Travellers of Dale Farm matters so much to her

When Corin Redgrave suffered a heart attack while pleading with councillors not to evict Travellers from Dale Farm in Essex in summer 2005, his sister, Vanessa, was thousands of miles away in the Us. "If it wasn't for a Traveller giving him mouth to mouth, he would have died," she says. "As it was he had such loss of oxygen to his brain that he had extreme short-term memory loss. Forty Travellers came to the Basildon hospital to pray for him."

So is her current support for the Travellers due to be evicted from Dale Farm later this month to honour her dead brother? "Oh very, very, very much so. The Dale Farm Travellers are inseparable from him for me. It's totally personal.

The greatest performance that I've seen is Laurence Olivier in "Othello" at London's Old Vic in the '60s. I'll tell you a little story. I was producing a show on Broadway, "You Know I Can't Hear You When the Water's Running." Melinda Dillon's contract was over, and she wanted to do other things. We cast a replacement: a young actress who had no career subsequently. We asked her to wear leg makeup. Very common thing. She balked, and her manager balked. So the issue was whether this woman was going to wear leg makeup or not. Now, I fly to London on business. I go to see Olivier in "Othello," not once but twice. And I have to stand for both performances. But it was breathtaking. It was absolutely an incandescent performance, and I see this actor who at that time must have been in his 50s. And he has.

Bob Ellis on the Oscar-winning The King’s Speech (available on DVD this month), Biutiful, The Company Men and the passing of Sidney Lumet.

The Oxford scholar Peter Levi had a theory that Shakespeare was popular because he had only one theme. A man or a woman, he said, is given a task to which he or she is unequal, and comedy or tragedy follows. Thus Hamlet, an adequate joshing student, is a poor avenger, Brutus, an adequate stoic philosopher, a poor generalissimo, Othello a fine generalissimo but a dumb older husband of a young white wife, Malvolio a shambolic wooer, Viola a lousy transvestite, and so on.

This theory well fits The King’s Speech and explains its international popularity. We all of us as children have been made to recite, or sing, or perform acrobatics on stage, and have dreaded the anguished humiliation the experiment was bound to bring to us.

He may be white, but Johnny Depp is perfect casting for Tonto, the Lone Ranger's Native American sidekick

Reports that a movie remake of The Lone Ranger will star Johnny Depp as the Native American sidekick Tonto have brought immediate complaints that the Kentucky white boy is taking a part that might have gone to a performer who has the correct racial makeup, rather than having to apply it in his trailer each day.

These complaints echo Rupert Everett's lament, when his friend Colin Firth was cast in A Single Man, that, just as Hollywood was finally featuring mainstream gay roles, they were going to straight actors. Similar objections have been applied to The Kids Are All Right, in which Annette Bening and Julianne Moore play a lesbian couple, although viewers were reassured in the movie's publicity that they were just pretending.

These debates over casting go directly to...

From Twelfth Night to Danny Boyle's new production at the National Theatre, theatre adores twins and doppelgangers. What's really going on?

Danny Boyle's hotly anticipated production of Frankenstein, in a new version by Nick Dear, opens next week at the National theatre. The show's two leads, Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller, will be alternating the roles of Victor Frankenstein and the Creature, so, unless they can afford to go twice, audience members are going to have to choose which way round they want to see the casting. But is this doubling up just an astute marketing ploy? Or is it, perhaps, a broader commentary? Can the relationship of Frankenstein and the Creature tell us anything about the symbiotic relationship of stage and audience? Even about the theatre itself?

There is quite a history of doubling parts in the theatre. The renowned 19th-century actors William Macready and Samuel...

Welcome to Back Stage's exclusive guide to this year's Screen Actors Guild Award nominees in film and television. Here, you will find a write-up of every nominee for SAG Awards in 2011. Be sure to look for continued coverage of the awards race at our awards blog, "Behind the Scenes," at BackStage.com/bts.The 17th annual SAG Awards will be broadcast live Sunday, January 30, on TNT and TBS.Outstanding Performance By A Cast In A Motion Picture "Black Swan"A horror film set in the world of ballet? That's what Darren Aronofsky has accomplished with "Black Swan," his follow-up to 2008's "The Wrestler." For this film that has been in the works for 10 years, the director was inspired to collaborate with Natalie Portman after seeing her in 1994's "The Professional." But the ballet world wasn't exactly forthcoming for Aronofsky, who did his legwork in researching the demands that professional ballet...

Hey, folks. Michael C. here from Serious Film with another overlooked contribution to film greatness. This time out let's look at a favorite of mine going back to my teenage years: the fight choreography of Rob Roy (1995).

William Hobbs is the Marlon Brando of movie sword fighting. He is the guy who blasted away years of mannered and artificial fight choreography and brought it down to Earth. A fencing advisor with credits ranging from The Duelists and Dangerous Liaisons all the way back to Olivier's Othello, one would be hard pressed to find a memorable sword fight from the last fifty years which Hobbs did not have a hand in creating. Out of that lifetime of memorable scenes his masterpiece is undoubtedly the climactic duel from Michael Caton-Jones' Rob Roy. It is a scene that doesn't just sit atop the list of great movie sword fights, but deserves prominent...

If you're annoyed about random Asian characters being re-done by the white folk, how about this: Mickey Rourke told the Orlando Sentinel that he is going to play Genghis Khan in an upcoming biopic. Genghis. Khan. In other words, the Mongolian emperor whose invasions of neighboring lands earned him much of Central Asia and China, before successors stretched the barriers even further.

As a story of conquest, we're talking the thundering hooves of horses, large-scale massacres, and all the charming aspects of war -- prime content for a man like Rourke. But playing an Asian conqueror? What is this? 1965 and Laurence Olivier playing Othello? 1956 and John Wayne playing Genghis? It would be just as weird as John Cho playing Christopher Columbus. Anyhow, Rourke says that John Milius, the pen behind Red Dawn and Apocalypse Now, wrote the script, and it will focus on how Genghis' son and grandson saw him.

The stage production of hit movie Hairspray has won four Laurence Olivier Awards at a ceremony in London.

The West End hit was named best new musical while stars Michael Ball, Leanne Jones and Tracie Bennett all won awards for their roles.

Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber was honoured for his achievements in theatre and was also recognised for his role in bringing theatre to new audiences around the world.

Kristin Scott Thomas won best actress in the play category for her role in The Seagull, with Chiwetel Ejiofor named best actor for playing Othello.

The Magic Flute was named best musical revival, and Simon McBurney's Barbican production of A Disappearing Number was named best new play.

Richard E Grant hosted the ceremony at London's Grosvenor House on Sunday night.