“I just don’t enjoy pretty faces in leading roles” my friend Polina says. We’re eating bagels, ’cause we Jews. More specifically: Jews from the 50s. Whenever she’s in Berlin we meet up, to work on things and to eat the Jew-iest things we can find. But not like gefilte fish or anything. We have taam after all.
I find this aversion of hers puzzling. Just like with the concept of the “likable character” the “unsympathetic actor” – the unchecked gut reaction not to the what or the how, but the who – seems strange to me. Though there are indeed actors that I cannot stand – I won’t mention any names, because they might be readers – who seem not just empty but vacuous. Empty is fine, vacuous is deadly. Hear that, Ryan Gosling?
He always reminds me of that scene in “Get Shorty” where an old-school Method actor wants to learn from a gangster how to scare and intimidate people with just an expression. The actor tries his best, the gangster is not impressed: “What you’re telling me: You’re tired? You wanna go to bed?”
The “what you’re telling me” part is of course what makes this exchange so great. The actor wants to be a gangster, yes, but the gangster also desperately wants to be a Hollywood macher. There are quite a few reformed criminals who became actors: John Santucci, or Danny Trejo. The reverse also happens, like with Rip Torn who one day just woke up and found himself to be shooting up a bank.
And some people have a connection to both worlds. It’s never clear how much you can explore those connections in public without running the risk of libel. Anyway, let’s talk about Alain Delon.
I ask Polina if he’s not the perfect counterexample to her “pretty face” theory. “Well, I don’t like him as much as I could. With stuff like “Le Samourai” he was getting there I guess.” Her opinion, of course. Did I almost drop my bagel? Maybe.