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Annette Bening Biography

Posted by Vogt
at May 9, 2008

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The preternatural poise exuded by versatile, attractive performer Annette Bening is a byproduct of her years of successful stage work in regional theater that culminated with a 1987 Tony-nominated portrayal in Tina Howe’s “Coastal Disturbances”. Although her feature debut as the sexually frustrated wife of Dan Aykroyd in the lackluster comedy “The Great Outdoors” (1988) may have disappointed, audiences soon took note of her streamlined carriage and superb vocal instrument when she etched an aptly uneasy portrait of wickedness as the Marquise de Merteuil in Milos Forman’s “Valmont” (1989). The cool subtlety of her performance caught the attention of Stephen Frears, who ironically had directed his own version of the same tale, “Dangerous Liaisons”, six months earlier. (Bening had, in fact, auditioned for Michelle Pfeiffer’s role in that film).

Frears cast Bening alongside John Cusack and Anjelica Huston in his classy film noir, “The Grifters” (1990), adapted from the novel by Jim Thompson. Although it was her nude scenes in the film which generated the most publicity, Bening injected considerable verve and authority into her portrayal of a tough young hustler who coolly uses her body as one of the tools of her trade–a performance intentionally modeled after Gloria Grahame’s in Fritz Lang’s landmark noir “The Big Heat” (1953). The role earned Bening a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination, propelled her into the front rank of Hollywood leading ladies and prompted references to her as the “thinking man’s sex symbol.” She went on to demonstrate her versatility by portraying nurturing, supportive wives in “Guilty By Suspicion” and “Regarding Henry” (both 1991) before returning to a more seductive role opposite future husband Warren Beatty in “Bugsy” (1991), surprising everyone by winning the heart of the Playboy of the Hollywood World.

After a three year hiatus to marry and start a family, Bening and Beatty again co-starred, this time in “Love Affair” (1994), the second remake of a 1939 film of the same title. They played two people engaged to others who fall in love after an accidental meeting. While many hoped to draw comparisons between the couple’s real-life romance and their film characters, the pair vehemently denied any connections and the on screen results were less than stellar. Juggling motherhood and a career, Bening has made sacrifices, relinquishing the coveted Catwoman role in “Batman Returns” (1992) when the stork first flew into her life and dropping out of “Disclosure” (1994) due to her second pregnancy. She won acclaim for her deft comic turn as a lobbyist romanced by “The American President” (Michael Douglas) and as Queen Elizabeth in Ian McKellen’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Richard III” (both 1995).

After appearing in Tim Burton’s “Mars Attacks!” (1996), Bening starred alongside Bruce Willis and Denzel Washington in “The Siege” (1998) and teamed with Aidan Quinn as a psychic with telepathic connections to a killer in Neil Jordan’s “In Dreams” (1999). She followed with what many felt was her best work in years, playing the domineering real estate broker wife of a man undergoing a mid-life crisis in the acclaimed “American Beauty” (also 1999). For her performance, she netted a Best Actress Academy Award nomination. Bening followed with a comic turn opposite Garry Shandling in the Mike Nichols-directed comedy “What Planet Are You From?” (2000). After a lengthy hiatus from the screen, Bening—who dropped out of the Disney comedy remake “Freaky Friday” shortly after filming began—took on the role of actor/director Kevin Costner’s spirited and refreshingly age-appropriate love interest Sue Barlow in the under-appreciated Western revival “Open Range” (2003). The actress then accumulated some of the best reviews of her career when she starred as a diva stage actress caught up in a May-December romance with a young social climber only to end up plotting a delicious revenge in “Being Julia” (2004), a bravura turn that ultimately earned her a Golden Globe award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy. Hot off the heels of her Golden Globe win, Bening grabbed an Oscar nomination for Best Actress in a Leading Role and was considered a heavy favorite going into the awards.

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Kathy Bates Biography

Posted by Vogt
at May 9, 2008

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While Hollywood has always been about looks, talent sometimes wills out. For Kathy Bates, it took some twenty years before she truly broke through in films playing the deranged fan of a mystery writer (James Caan) in the screen adaptation of Stephen King’s “Misery” (1990), directed by Rob Reiner. After copping a Best Actress Oscar, she continued to offer a series of finely detailed character roles as well as developing a burgeoning secondary career as a director.

The youngest of three daughters, Bates was born and raised in Tennessee. Possessed with fine porcelain skin, striking blue-green eyes and full, pouty lips, she is an attractive woman who is capable of hiding her looks as the role required. Her one admitted problem was a tendency to gain weight, considered a cardinal sin in film and TV. Casting agents bluntly told her she was too unattractive for the roles for which she auditioned and even some critics (chiefly John Simon) ridiculed her appearance. Bates persevered and carved a rich career. She made her feature debut (billed as Bobo Bates) as an auditioning singer performing a song she wrote in Milos Forman’s “Taking Off” (1971) but quickly turned to the theater. Bates achieved her first taste of success as one of the Texas belles in the Off-Broadway hit “Vanities” (1976) and originated the role of Lenny, the eldest sibling, in Beth Henley’s “Crimes of the Heart” (1978) and finally made it to Broadway in the short-lived “Goodbye Fidel” (1980), supporting Jane Alexander.

In 1982, Bates created the role of the loudmouthed Stella May in the Broadway production “Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean” (reprising it in Robert Altman’s film version later that year). The following year, she scored a major hit as the depressed daughter bent on committing suicide in the Pulitzer-winning “‘night Mother”, earning several awards and a Tony nomination. She rounded out the decade as a frustrated waitress discovering love in “Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune” (1987-88) a part written expressly for her by playwright Terrence McNally and replacing Amy Irving as a South African schoolteacher in Athol Fugard’s “The Road to Mecca” (1988-89).

While her stage career was blossoming, Bates was making small inroads in other media, most notably in TV. She had made her primetime debut as a bride on “The Love Boat” in 1977 and had guest roles on “Cagney and Lacey”. “L.A. Law” and “China Beach”. There was even a 1984 recurring role on ABC’s daytime soap “All My Children” as the cell mate of an incarcerated Erica Kane (Susan Lucci). Her film roles, though, tended to be negligible except for “Straight Time” (1978), in which she was Gary Busey’s put-upon wife. Tired of watching roles she had created go to other actresses (perhaps the biggest insult was the casting of the gorgeous Michelle Pfeiffer as the mousy waitress in the film “Frankie and Johnny”), Bates relocated to L.A. and made a concerted effort to raise her profile. Indelible character turns in such films as “Men Don’t Leave” and “Dick Tracy” (both 1990) laid the groundwork for her superlative work as the psychotic Annie Wilkes in “Misery”. Following her Academy Award win, the actress delivered a strong turn as Aidan Quinn’s repressed missionary wife whose grief over the death of their son causes her to have a breakdown in “At Play in the Fields of the Lord” (1991). She rounded out the year playing the slightly passive role of the woman listening to the stories of a nursing home resident (Jessica Tandy) in “Fried Green Tomatoes”.

Despite her acclaim and standing, Bates found good roles difficult to find; a function partly of her being a character player, partly of the lack of imagination by casting agents and producers and partly because of both her age and her full figure. When she did land roles, she often proved better than the material (i.e., “Used People” 1992; “A Home of Our Own” 1993). Ironically, perhaps, it was embodying another of Stephen King’s crusty characters that gave her career a boost. As “Dolores Claiborne” (1995), Bates was terrific, delivering a showy turn as a murder suspect. Although some felt her miscast as a hard-boiled detective investigating a possible homicide in the pallid remake “Diabolique” (1996), she injected a much needed spark to the film. Similarly, her foul-mouthed, aggressive agent-turned-producer in the HBO movie “The Late Shift” (1996) proved her ability to handle comedy as well as drama. James Cameron tapped her to portray another larger-than-life character, Molly Brown, in his epic “Titanic” (1997) and, though her appearances were brief, the actress made a memorable impression as the nouveau riche Coloradan. “Primary Colors” offered her yet another rich role, a straight-talking, no-nonsense, take-no-prisoners political campaign advisor, and while “The Waterboy” (both 1998) was hardly high-brow, it was entertaining and her white trash mother to Adam Sandler was another gem.

In 1995, Bates made her directorial debut staging the PBS adaptation of “Talking With”, a series of monologues performed by women (she also delivered one). Since then, she has gradually honed her craft, tackling episodes of the police dramas “Homicide: Life on the Street” and “NYPD Blue” as well as the gritty HBO prison drama “Oz” and “several episodes of HBO’s dark dramedy “Six Feet Under,” along with the family-oriented “Everwood.” Although still a relative novice, Bates tackled her first longform, guiding Sam Shepard and Judy Davis through their paces as Dashiell Hammett and Lillian Hellman in the 1999 A&E biopic “Dash and Lilly,” for which she was nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Directing for a Miniseries or a Movie.

But Bates also continued to thrive before the camera, winning multiple awards and nominations–including an Academy Award nomination– for her turn as the hard-driving politco Libby Holden in the presidential campaign drama “Primary Colors,” and taking small but pivotal and often comedic roles in films such as “A Civil Action” (1998), “Rat Race” (2001), “American Outlaws” (2001) and “Dragonfly” (2002) on the big screen. Her zesty performance as Miss Hannigan in the TV-movie version of the stage hit “Annie” (1999) earned her a new round of critical kudos and shed light on her powerful singing voice–it also snagged her an Emmy nomination as Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or Movie. That same year, in which she was also nominated as a director, Bates was nominated as Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series for a stint on “3rd Rock from the Sun.” Her next career-defining performance came in the 2002 film “About Schmidt,” in which she played Roberta Hertzel–the eccentric, low-class mother of Jack Nicholson’s prospective son-in-law. Bates attacked the role with comedic gusto and no regard for vanity, resulting in critical accolades and an Academy Award nomination for her supporting turn. In 2003 she began a recurring role on “Six Feet Under” playing the earthy, outspoken Bettina, who helps Ruth Fisher (Frances Conroy) break out of her self-repressing ways, and earned an Emmy nomination as Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series.

In 2004 Bates had a cameo role as Queen Victoria in the contemporary remake of “Around the World in 80 Days” and she turned up in support of Brittany Murphy in the middling comedy “Little Black Book” (2004) as the daytime talk show hostess Kippie Kahn. She received rave reviews for her turn as physical therapist Helena Mahoney, who helps Franklin Delano Roosevelt (Kenneth Branagh) come to terms with his debilitating case of polio in the acclaimed HBO telepic “Warm Springs” (2005), for which she was nominated for an Emmy as Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie. That same year she directed and starred in the Lifetime telepic “Ambulance Girl” playing a former food writer who overcomes a bout of clinical depression when she begins working as a paramedic.

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Fairuza Balk Biography

Posted by Vogt
at May 9, 2008

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Blue-eyed, dark-haired Fairuza Balk weathered the storms of Oz, gradually breaking free from her fresh-faced little kid persona to plunge into dark and depressing film scenarios that ultimately reveal an optimism at her core. She worked first on TV in NBC’s “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever” (1983) before beating out 1,200 girls to fill Dorothy’s ruby slippers in Walter Murch’s feature debut, “Return to Oz” (1985). Refusing to be traumatized by critics comparing her unfavorably to Judy Garland, Balk rebounded for more kid stuff as the well-meaning klutz Mildred Hubble in “The Worst Witch”, a 1986 HBO movie based on the popular children’s book.

Balk attracted attention in her first somewhat adult role as the virginal Cecile de Volanges promised in marriage to someone 30 years her senior in Milos Forman’s “Valmont” (1989). She turned in an outstanding performance as a young rape victim in the TV film “Shame” (Lifetime, 1992) and played the blossoming younger sister of Ione Skye in Allison Anders’ indie favorite “Gas Food Lodging” (1992). Balk portrayed the older daughter who inadvertently becomes head of the household when the latest scheme of her father (Harvey Keitel) turns sour in “Imaginary Crimes” (1994) and was extremely sympathetic as a self-destructive prostitute in the little-seen “Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead” (1995). She continued to work steadily in features of varying quality, including playing a high school student caught up in the dark side of witchcraft in the hit supernatural thriller “The Craft” (1996) and co-starred with Edward Norton and Edward Furlong in Tony Kaye’s “American History X” (1998), about a white supremacist who reforms.

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