Topic 3: Favorite actor

[bironic]

cincodemaygirl asked: Favorite actor and why you love them?

And argh, that is hard. I love so many actors. I have had crushes on many more actors than real people. It took a lot of restraint not to list them all here. :)

But I guess the one who has been most consistent since I've been a grownup, and isn't really tangled up in hormones, is Sarah Polley. She is an excellent actress, thoughtful in her performances and choices of projects, a talented director, a lovely singer, and pretty without being perfectly-Hollywood-pretty (ex. charmingly crooked teeth!). I like that she's more or less my age. I respect that she's an atheist and a political activist, too. I will watch her in pretty much anything, and it's bound to be worthwhile.

I fell in love with Sarah Polley when I was maybe 16 years old and saw her in Guinevere with Stephen Rea, for reasons that maybe had more to do with myself than anything else, but whatever. I went through some of her back catalog, sometimes just to see her and sometimes by coincidence. She (and everyone else) was spectacular in The Sweet Hereafter, and she was good in Exotica, too, although she had a lesser role in that one. I remember having fun watching her in Go.

A college friend and I went to see her once when she came to the Brattle Theater in Cambridge, possibly to promote her directorial debut, Away From Her, and that was a treat. Since then, I have enjoyed her even in so-so movies like The I Inside (which I watched for *cough* Robert Sean Leonard and only recall his Pert Plus hair and an argument on a staircase) and Dawn of the Dead, and in downright bizarre ones, like No Such Thing. She hit it out of the park in The Secret Life of Words, even if I couldn't gauge the accuracy of her accent.

Probably most fandom people who are familiar with her know her from Slings & Arrows? I'm really looking forward to watching that one day. Ditto for the two recent movies she directed and got many accolades for: Take This Waltz (in the Netflix queue) and Stories We Tell, which I was disappointed to miss when it played at the AFI this spring.

In conclusion: \Sarah Polley/

Comments

[zulu.livejournal.com]

A lot of these movies are on my to-watch list! I think I'll acquire one or two for this very evening. Thanks for the recs!

[bironic.livejournal.com]

I watched Take This Waltz, and it was very good. More ambivalent about its characters and their choices, and more philosophical about the motivations behind them, than some reviewers wanted to see. What did you end up choosing?

[zulu.livejournal.com]

I chose Away From Her, but then I left it too late to start watching it last night. Maybe this afternoon! It is a lazy Sunday.

[cincodemaygirl.livejournal.com]

Dying to read your list of actor crushes! Please stop restraining yourself!

I like Sarah Polley very much too, she's always good in things! Do you recommend Guinevere? I haven't seen The Sweet Hearafter, either, or Away From Her.

Slings and Arrows is outstanding--perhaps I should bring it when I visit, there's only 6 episodes in a season so we could probably knock out the first one. I think there's not much chance you won't enjoy it, tbh!

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Please stop restraining yourself!

Oh, jeez. If you'll pardon the mostly straight & mostly whiteness of it, uh: Jeff Goldblum, Gary Oldman, Robert Sean Leonard, Eric Stoltz, Ralph Fiennes, Alan Rickman, Gabriel Byrne, Thomas Kretschmann, Alexander Skarsgard, the Star Trek collection (Alexander Siddig, DeForest Kelley, Odo, all the Cardassians, Ricardo Montalban), Sebastian Roche, Jaye Davidson, Rodney Grant from Dances with Wolves, Jason Isaacs sort of, Pascal Greggory, Vincent Perez, James Marsters, Anthony Stewart Head, I don't even know. ^Joe Flanigan, duh. ^Peter Horton. And actresses who fall somewhere between what I like to watch and who I wish I could be: Natalie Portman, Anna Paquin, Katie Holmes, Kristen Kreuk, Alyson Hannigan, Anne Hathaway, probably also Sarah Polley.

Do you recommend Guinevere? I haven't seen The Sweet Hearafter, either, or Away From Her

I 100% recommend The Sweet Hereafter, if you don't mind tears. It's a fantastic movie. Guinevere I'm not so confident about. At that age, I loved the plot of the young woman being taken on by the older man for sexual and artistic education. On more recent rewatch more of the nuances of the mistakes being made and the reactions of those outside the relationship changed my perspective of what was happening - like anything probably when you watch it young and then again later - on top of which, what seemed like nuances don't seem subtle anymore. Anyway, if the synopsis intrigues you, yeah, I'd say give it a try.

Slings and Arrows is outstanding--perhaps I should bring it when I visit

Hey, yeah, that would be fun! If I decide that's the show I want to watch over winter break, I'll let you know, but since it's only available on disc instead of streaming, chances are still slim. :)

ETA to add two more names, and I have to stop now. Okay.