LOS ANGELES--I was thinking back to a day at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival, when I had lunch with John Travolta after the screening of "Pulp Fiction." It was clear that the movie represented the rebirth of his career, and…
It started like this. We were talking about her new film "Down in the Delta," where Alfre Woodard plays a hard-drinking woman from the Chicago projects who gets a fresh start on her uncle's farm in the Mississippi Delta. It…
LOS ANGELES Bill Paxton has an Oscar contender and a giant gorilla movie coming out within a couple of weeks of each other, and that's the story of his career. He makes little movies ("One False Move," "Traveller," "Trespass") and…
Lew Grade, a titan of the British entertainment industry, died Sunday in London at age 91. For many years, he was a colorful fixture at the Cannes Film Festival, where after the box office failure of his film "Raise the…
Michael Caine likes to talk. Some actors hide in the mountains, or huddle in private clubs with their friends. Caine opens restaurants. Then he sits in a table near the door--not counting the customers, just pleased to see them.
It's like, you know, I'm talking with Drew Barrymore and she is like so drowning me in words, and I'm like so getting it, and I'm thinking like, here is a girl who is like still only 23 years old…
Actors are always sort of ambivalent about special-effects movies. They know the movie's likely to do well at the box office, but they feel strange about co-starring with the special effects. Alec Guinness observed, for example, that he spent most…
"Pleasantville" contains the last major role by the much-admired character actor J. T. Walsh. He plays the head of the 1950s sitcom Chamber of Commerce, a man much threatened by change, who warns, "There is something happening in our town"…
TORONTO It is a disturbing movie. People don't know how to think about it. They laugh, and then they squirm. Afterward, they get into heated discussions, some calling it trash, others insisting it's a masterpiece. "Happiness" is like a challenge…
This grave, attractive young woman sitting across from me, this person who seems like someone to whom I could turn for advice, is 17 years old.