|
You get immediate gratification in the theatre, applause. Also you get to do something from beginning to end, you feel accomplished. It amazes me when I hear some of my colleagues have never been in a play. I'm like: Where'd you learn to act? You don't know how to piece things all together unless you have acted in the theatre. Q: But you like doing movies the best? Jackson: Well, when I was young I thought theatre was like the mailroom. TV was like getting an office, and the movies, the big screen, that was like running the company. Q: You had some trouble along the way with drugs? Jackson: Yeah, when I was doing the drinking and the drugging I didn't deprive myself of work, but it kept me from places I needed to get to. I checked myself into rehab and that's not easy once you do it. Change is difficult and scary. But I got clean and I saw direct results, especially with being able to focus. Q: You played a junkie in Jungle Fever. Jackson: It was like two weeks after I got out of rehab. It was cathartic to do that role. When that character got killed it was like a huge exclamation point in my life, a door that I could close. Q: How do you choose roles? Jackson: Story first, then character, if it is a challenge, if there is depth. I wanted to emulate the films I loved as a kid. So I got my pirate out with Star Wars, and that light-sabre, I got the war thing out with Rules of Engagement. I'd like to do a horror movie, and a Western. -Coleen Long. Surprises, surprises at SAG awards
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA- The road-trip comedy Sideways led contenders Tuesday for the Screen Actors Guild Awards with four nominations, including honours for lead performer Paul Giamatti and the ensemble cast. Four other films followed with three nominations: the Howard Hughes film biography The Aviator; Finding Neverland, tracing the creative roots of J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan; Hotel Rwanda, the real-life tale of an innkeeper sheltering refugees from genocide; and the boxing saga Million Dollar Baby. All five of those films earned nominations for their overall casts, the equivalent of a best-picture prize for the guild, which represents Hollywood actors. Because of a tie in voting, the guild nominated a sixth film for best cast, the Ray Charles film biography Ray. Besides a nomination among the Ray cast, star Jamie Foxx earned three other honours, selected as a lead-actor nominee for the title role in Ray, supporting actor for the hit-man thriller Collateral and best actor in a TV movie or miniseries for the prison drama Redemption. Foxx, considered a front-runner to win the best-actor Academy Award, also has three nominations for Ray, Collateral and Redemption at this Sunday's Golden Globes.Besides Foxx and Giamatti, who plays a loser with a fresh chance at love in Sideways, the guild's best-actor film nominees were Don Cheadle as hotel manager Paul Rusesabagina in Hotel Rwanda; Johnny Depp as Barrie in Finding Neverland; and Leonardo DiCaprio as Hughes in The Aviator.
|
Nominated for best actress were Annette Bening as a 1930s London stage diva in Being Julia; Catalina Sandino Moreno as a Colombian woman who takes on a perilous job as a drug mule in Maria Full of Grace; Imelda Staunton as a housekeeper who moonlights as an abortion practitioner in 1950s Britain in Vera Drake; Hilary Swank as a boxer whose life turns tragic in Million Dollar Baby; and Kate Winslet as a woman who has erased memories of her ex-boyfriend in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Swank also had a nomination for actress in a TV movie or miniseries for the suffrage drama Iron Jawed Angels. Moreno was a surprise nominee, overlooked in most earlier Hollywood honours. The supporting categories also produced some surprise picks, including Cloris Leachman as a boozy grandma in Spanglish; Sophie Okonedo as Rusesabagina's wife in Hotel Rwanda; and Freddie Highmore as a boy who inspires Barrie in Finding Neverland. Joining Leachman and Okonedo in the supporting-actress category were Cate Blanchett as Katharine Hepburn in The Aviator; Laura Linney as the wife of sexuality researcher Alfred Kinsey in Kinsey; and Virginia Madsen as a waitress romanced by Giamatti in Sideways. Along with Foxx and Highmore, supporting-actor nominees were Thomas Haden Church as Giamatti's randy buddy in Sideways; Morgan Freeman as a former boxer in Million Dollar Baby; and James Garner as a man trying to jog his ailing wife's memories in The Notebook-TAB. Garner also is receiving the guild's lifetime-achievement award. In TV categories, the late Jerry Orbach earned his first nomination for best actor in a dramatic series for Law & Order. Orbach's death Dec. 28 likely brought a late rush of votes for him before the guild's balloting closed 10 days later. Patricia Heaton earned three nominations, for best actress in a comedy series for Everybody Loves Raymond, as a member of that show's overall cast, and for actress in a movie or miniseries for Neil Simon's The Goodbye Girl. The Sopranos led TV shows with four nominations, for its cast, actor James Gandolfini and actresses Drea de Matteo and Edie Falco. Awards will be presented Feb. 5 in a ceremony televised on TNT. SAG nominations are chosen by 4,200 randomly chosen members of the union. The guild's full membership of 98,000 is eligible to vote for winners. Nominees for the 11th annual Screen Actors Guild awards: Movies: Actor: Don Cheadle, Hotel Rwanda; Johnny Depp, Finding Neverland; Leonardo DiCaprio, The Aviator; Jamie Foxx, Ray; Paul Giamatti, Sideways. Actress: Annette Bening, Being Julia; Catalina Sandino Moreno, Maria Full of Grace; Imelda Staunton, Vera Drake; Hilary Swank, Million Dollar Baby; Kate Winslet, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Supporting actor: Thomas Haden Church, Sideways; Jamie Foxx, Collateral; Morgan Freeman, Million Dollar Baby; James Garner, The Notebook-TAB; Freddie Highmore, Finding Neverland. Supporting actress: Cate Blanchett, The Aviator; Cloris Leachman, Spanglish; Laura Linney, Kinsey; Virginia Madsen, Sideways; Sophie Okonedo, Hotel Rwanda. Cast: The Aviator, Finding Neverland, Hotel Rwanda, Million Dollar Baby, Ray, Sideways. Television: Actor in a movie or miniseries: Jamie Foxx, Redemption; William H. Macy, The Wool Cap; Barry Pepper, 3: The Dale Earnhardt Story; Geoffrey Rush, The Life and Death of Peter Sellers; Jon Voight, Mitch Albom's the Five People You Meet in Heaven. Actress in a movie or miniseries: Glenn Close, The Lion in Winter; Patricia Heaton, Neil Simon's the Goodbye Girl; Keke Palmer, The Wool Cap; Hilary Swank, Iron Jawed Angels; Charlize Theron, The Life and Death of Peter Sellers. Actor in a drama series: Hank Azaria, Huff; James Gandolfini, The Sopranos; Anthony LaPaglia, Without a Trace; Jerry Orbach, Law & Order; Kiefer Sutherland, 24. Actress in a drama series: Drea de Matteo, The Sopranos; Edie Falco, The Sopranos; Jennifer Garner, Alias; Allison Janney, The West Wing; Christine Lahti, Jack & Bobby. Actor in a comedy series: Jason Bateman, Arrested Development; Sean Hayes, Will & Grace; Ray Romano, Everybody Loves Raymond; Tony Shalhoub, Monk; Charlie Sheen, Two and a Half Men. Actress in a comedy series: Teri Hatcher, Desperate Housewives; Patricia Heaton, Everybody Loves Raymond; Megan Mullally, Will & Grace; Sarah Jessica Parker, Sex and the City; Doris Roberts, Everybody Loves Raymond. Drama series cast: 24; CSI: Crime Scene Investigation; Six Feet Under; The Sopranos; The West Wing. Comedy series cast: Arrested Development; Desperate Housewives; Everybody Loves Raymond; Sex and the City; Will & Grace. -David Germin.
|
Paul
Giamatti and Virginia Madsen in a scene from Sideways.