Leading Men Have No Character

Marlon Brando

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal Arts & Entertainment section touched upon the trajectory of Matt Damon’s career in the context of his “faintly squashed or shifty face,” remarking that it wasn’t until his role as the deceptive, murderous social climber in The Talented Mr. Ripley that he finally “owned up to his tricky face,” being free to display the “naked pretense” of “lying as much as acting.”

Film critic David Thomson goes on to trace the change from the old Hollywood style of acting (Clark Gable, Tyrone Power, Errol Flynn) to the sincerity of the Method school, exemplified by James Dean, Marlon Brando, and later, Robert De Niro and Al Pacino. He also laments how this style has become as “stale, tedious and hollow” as its predecessor because it has been “employed automatically,” and reserves distinct disappointment for the “dreary, monotonous performances” of De Niro and Pacino in recent years.

Indeed, those two actors, once so heralded and ground-breaking, seem to be playing the same character in every movie they’ve appeared in since (and possibly including) 1995’s Heat. No one would ever confuse leading men De Niro or Pacino with Messrs. Rebhorn, Brown, Ribisi, or Cooper, but they seem to have crossed the line into “that guy” territory by phoning in performances which are essentially stereotypes of themselves.

The most recent example of the positive legacy of the Method is Christian Bale, who so famously transformed himself from emaciated (The Machinist) to extra-buff (Batman Begins) and who even keeps the accent of the character he’s playing in concurrent press for his films. Despite phoning it in for certain clichéd action roles, Bale is an excellent example of someone becoming someone else. We don’t see what Thomson dubs the “wide eyes and unwavering look” so often taken as “proof of acting.” We only see the character.

Christian Bale

Thomson posits a theory of a kind of “new, unofficial school” of acting, one that “has no studio, no text and little public understanding,” but is exemplified by guys like George Clooney, Robert Downey, Jr., John Malkovich, and Kevin Spacey. He talks about this culture of “cool pretending” and offers that it even stretches back to people like Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart, “actors who never had any intention of letting us catch them personally.”

Opinions vary on the acting talents of these gentlemen, but it’s my opinion that out of all of them, only Clooney and Downey are true “leading men” in the handsome, Hollywood mold. And although all of them have given us fine performances, none of them have ever become their characters; they just try them on for a while, their real selves peeking through.

The real problem is that we know too much about many current actors’ personal lives (Clooney, Brad Pitt, anyone on the cover of US Weekly), so it’s difficult to separate the charming guy at the press conference or red carpet event from the charming guy in the movie. Good looks and charm do not an actor make.

On the other hand, Christian Bale is strappingly handsome and certainly qualifies as a leading man. (Also, he’s Batman. End of debate.) And while opinions vary on whether or not Cillian Murphy is good looking or just creepy, the camera seems to love him. (No one’s doing fashion photo shoots of James Rebhorn these days.)

Few seem so divided on Cillian Murphy’s level of talent. (Or Bale’s for that matter.) He has been praised in both ensemble roles and leading ones. Perhaps it is possible for him to become that rare kind of actor: a leading man with character, who pretends while still remaining affecting, a pioneer in a style that goes farther than the one Thomson suggests, a new school of blurring boundaries. (If Christian Bale does more films like Rescue Dawn and Harsh Times and fewer like Terminator: Salvation, he can teach classes.)

Here’s to THAT new school.

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