Post by petrolino on Jun 22, 2018 20:29:41 GMT
Ian Holm (born 12 September 1931, Goodmayes, Essex, England)
'It's an accepted part of any successful actor's career that sooner or later they will have to write their autobiography and for Sir Ian Holm, that time has come. His book 'Acting my Life' came out this week. Two of his best known roles were in the BBC children's series 'the Borrowers', and for playing the character Bilbo Baggins in 'Lord of the Rings'. His book is described as 'a candid and personal memoir' by one of Britain's greatest living actors.
Holm's fifty year career has seen him take his place as one of the favourite actors of his generation, with an ability to play diverse roles with great ease. His career includes work on stage, screen, television and radio. Just a handful of the memorable roles which have earned him numerous awards include his performances in 'Chariots of Fire', 'Alien', 'Another Woman', 'Hamlet', 'Frankenstein', 'Henry V', 'Greystoke', 'Time Bandits', 'Dance With a Stranger'. And of course, 'King Lear' - reckoned to be one of the best performances this century.
Holm's personal life has been somewhat colourful and he's very frank about this in his book. He talks about his childhood as the son a doctor who ran a mental hospital (Sir Ian was actually born there), the early death of his elder brother, his five marriages and the effect this has had on his children. He even touches on a breakdown he experienced on stage while appearing in 'The Iceman Cometh' and his recent battle with prostrate cancer.'
Holm's fifty year career has seen him take his place as one of the favourite actors of his generation, with an ability to play diverse roles with great ease. His career includes work on stage, screen, television and radio. Just a handful of the memorable roles which have earned him numerous awards include his performances in 'Chariots of Fire', 'Alien', 'Another Woman', 'Hamlet', 'Frankenstein', 'Henry V', 'Greystoke', 'Time Bandits', 'Dance With a Stranger'. And of course, 'King Lear' - reckoned to be one of the best performances this century.
Holm's personal life has been somewhat colourful and he's very frank about this in his book. He talks about his childhood as the son a doctor who ran a mental hospital (Sir Ian was actually born there), the early death of his elder brother, his five marriages and the effect this has had on his children. He even touches on a breakdown he experienced on stage while appearing in 'The Iceman Cometh' and his recent battle with prostrate cancer.'
- The British Broadcasting Corporation reviews 'Acting My Life' by Ian Holm
"Very early on I saw John Gielgud play Lear in his tour when it came to Manchester in a rather outlandish design production and as much as I've admired productions they've never really engaged me. Now I never saw Robert Stevens do it [in Stratford] or Ian Holm more recently at the National. But I just got the impression that there is something so overwhelming and difficult about the part, that makes it impossible to play well; it's like the part of Falstaff. Now another reason is that there's so many wonderful parts in the play that unless they are all well played the play itself doesn't work. It's not a one-man show, anyway. And then of course people would tell me it is so exhausting and while people don't die when they do King Lear, it's a young man's part. Paul Schofield played it when he was 40."
- Ian McKellen, The Economist
"During her first marriage, to Daniel Massey, Penelope Wilton had a son born at 31 weeks who died. Alice, their second child, was born at 32 weeks weighing just 2lbs, but survived. Further attempts to have another child with Massey, and with her second husband, Ian Holm, failed. The heartbreak of not having the family that she longed for is far behind her now, as are her two marriages to actors 14 and 16 years older than herself – father figures, perhaps. Both had psychological problems: Massey was depressive; Holm suffered acute stage fright. On top of that, she had to deal with Massey marrying her younger sister after they divorced in 1984. Most recently she was devastated by the death of Anna Massey, whom she had known for nearly 40 years.
Her career, however, appears to have been one long discreet triumph from the moment she left drama school, although she says there was a thin patch “when I moved from daughter to mother”. In the Eighties, she became known for the television series Ever Decreasing Circles, with Richard Briers. Since then, her roll-call stretches for pages, and includes everything from The Borrowers and Shaun of the Dead, to Hamlet, Calendar Girls and Doctor Who. She particularly loves the stage, even if it means braving the walk home from Ladbroke Grove station at night: “It requires you to have an understanding of language.”
Her career, however, appears to have been one long discreet triumph from the moment she left drama school, although she says there was a thin patch “when I moved from daughter to mother”. In the Eighties, she became known for the television series Ever Decreasing Circles, with Richard Briers. Since then, her roll-call stretches for pages, and includes everything from The Borrowers and Shaun of the Dead, to Hamlet, Calendar Girls and Doctor Who. She particularly loves the stage, even if it means braving the walk home from Ladbroke Grove station at night: “It requires you to have an understanding of language.”
- Cassandra Jardine, The Telegraph
"So much for family values. Shakespeare's most honored tragedy is essentially about two dads who screw up. One is an aging British monarch, the other his friend, the Earl of Gloucester. Both have good and bad offspring and make horrific blunders when choosing which siblings to trust. This plot and paralleling subplot drive "King Lear," which is Sunday's ultra-bravissimo opener for another "Masterpiece Theatre" season. Fortunately for PBS viewers, the Lear they're getting is not just any old king on a mad, goofy, self-crippling binge but Ian Holm's commanding dynamo of a Lear in a highly praised Royal National Theatre production that has been stunningly restaged for television under the direction of Richard Eyre.
Holm's Lear in the 1997 London stage version earned him an Olivier award, England's equivalent of a Tony. And his heroic performance here, that white-bearded face a rainbow of emotions, will surely head this season's highlight reel of TV royals. As will the superb work of his supporting players, including Timothy West as the blinded Gloucester, his eyes turned to jelly, and Barbara Flynn and Amanda Redman as Lear's pair of loathsome older daughters. Eyre deploys his close-ups with care but not stingily. As a result, this is much less a traditional stage rendering than a TV production of a play that moves its audience beyond front row center to a position of even greater visual intimacy with the actors as they play out this tragedy on austere sets colored black, gray and muddy red. When Lear angrily tells his youngest daughter, Cordelia (Victoria Hamilton), "Better thou hadst not been born, than not to have pleased me better," you can witness the seething in his eyes and then, as she responds, the deep hurt in hers. Shakespeare's text has been trimmed for TV, but there's no shrinkage in the play's dance of language or essential ingredients, with the foolish, hot-tempered old king's demented eruption beginning almost immediately."
Holm's Lear in the 1997 London stage version earned him an Olivier award, England's equivalent of a Tony. And his heroic performance here, that white-bearded face a rainbow of emotions, will surely head this season's highlight reel of TV royals. As will the superb work of his supporting players, including Timothy West as the blinded Gloucester, his eyes turned to jelly, and Barbara Flynn and Amanda Redman as Lear's pair of loathsome older daughters. Eyre deploys his close-ups with care but not stingily. As a result, this is much less a traditional stage rendering than a TV production of a play that moves its audience beyond front row center to a position of even greater visual intimacy with the actors as they play out this tragedy on austere sets colored black, gray and muddy red. When Lear angrily tells his youngest daughter, Cordelia (Victoria Hamilton), "Better thou hadst not been born, than not to have pleased me better," you can witness the seething in his eyes and then, as she responds, the deep hurt in hers. Shakespeare's text has been trimmed for TV, but there's no shrinkage in the play's dance of language or essential ingredients, with the foolish, hot-tempered old king's demented eruption beginning almost immediately."
- Howard Rosenberg, The Los Angeles Times
Ian Holm & Sigourney Weaver
Milla Jovovich & Ian Holm
Ian Holm & Sarah Polley
"Ian Holm is one of those chameleonlike actors who is so good at what he does that he simply disappears into his roles. And that stands him in good stead in his latest movie, ''The Emperor's New Clothes,'' a romantic comedy about a fictional plot to return Napoleon to power. Here he essentially plays four characters: Eugene, a drunken lout who bears a striking resemblance to Napoleon; Eugene cunningly impersonating the emperor in exile and loving the high life, even on a desolate island; Napoleon himself, who longs to restore his empire; and finally Napoleon posing as an average citizen, loose on the streets of Paris.
An acclaimed Shakespearean actor, Mr. Holm, 70, has done his disappearing act in more than 50 films and in countless plays, but it has only been in the last few years that he has received top billing on screen. That came in ''The Sweet Hereafter,'' in which he played a relentless and melancholy lawyer representing parents in a fatal school bus accident, and in ''Joe Gould's Secret,'' in which he played a literary bum. The Canadian director Atom Egoyan, who directed Mr. Holm in ''The Sweet Hereafter,'' says he was surprised that the film was Mr. Holm's first starring role ''because,'' he says, ''he is often the most memorable thing about the movies he's been in.'' His protean performance in ''The Emperor's New Clothes,'' opening on Friday, is especially memorable."
An acclaimed Shakespearean actor, Mr. Holm, 70, has done his disappearing act in more than 50 films and in countless plays, but it has only been in the last few years that he has received top billing on screen. That came in ''The Sweet Hereafter,'' in which he played a relentless and melancholy lawyer representing parents in a fatal school bus accident, and in ''Joe Gould's Secret,'' in which he played a literary bum. The Canadian director Atom Egoyan, who directed Mr. Holm in ''The Sweet Hereafter,'' says he was surprised that the film was Mr. Holm's first starring role ''because,'' he says, ''he is often the most memorable thing about the movies he's been in.'' His protean performance in ''The Emperor's New Clothes,'' opening on Friday, is especially memorable."
- Peter Kobel, The New York Times
"Everybody looks the same now. Some of them can act and an awful lot of them can't. Scarlett Johansson was wonderful in 'Lost in Translation', and then, seemingly within a couple of weeks, she became completely Hollywoodised. I was shocked. I didn't recognise her. I hope to God it's just a phase. At the moment, the movie business has very little to do with artistic venture and that appals me."
- Ian Holm, The Independent
'The Man' - Goat Girl