The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (323 page)

Sean Penn
, b. Santa Monica, California, 1960
1991:
The Indian Runner
. 1995:
The Crossing Guard
. 2001:
The Pledge
. 2007:
Into the Wild
.

Sean Penn is clearly a figure in the Hollywood landscape. In his friendship and association with Dennis Hopper, he harks back to the era of Dean and Brando. And he is maybe the only actor now who, in interviews, can summon up the tortured introspection of early Method actors without irony or shame. He is also an icon for a group of actors who are more or less his age—for Tim Roth, Brad Pitt, and so on. More than that, because of his pronounced hostility towards the press—culminating in a six-month jail sentence for assault in 1987—he has acquired the hangdog glamour of a rebel. Don’t let such things obscure his talent as an actor, or his limits as a director. He threatens to give up the former for the latter, which may be one of the misguided ambitions in American film now.

He is the son of a TV and movie director Leo Penn and the actress Eileen Ryan (who appears in
The Indian Runner
). He abandoned college to join the Group Repertory Theatre of Los Angeles. As well as a little TV work, he made a striking movie debut in
Taps
(81, Harold Becker) as a commanding kid. He was equally impressive in
Fast Times at Ridgemont High
(82, Amy Heckerling); in prison in
Bad Boys
(83, Rick Rosenthal);
Crackers
(84, Louis Malle);
Racing with the Moon
(84, Richard Benjamin); quite brilliant, going to pieces on drugs, in
The Falcon and the Snowman
(85, John Schlesinger).

In 1985, he married Madonna—an odd move for anyone so shy of attention—and they made the wretched
Shanghai Surprise
(86, Jim Goddard) together, a venture so grisly that it added to one’s reverence for the deranged power of love. But then Penn was remarkable again, and very moving, especially with Christopher Walken, in
At Close Range
(86, James Foley). He played a cop in
Colors
(88, Hopper) and he took a small role in his father’s
Judgment in Berlin
(88). Then he was the rogue sergeant in
Casualties of War
(89, Brian De Palma), riveting, yet with the first suspicion of mannerism.

The marriage to Madonna ended, and shortly thereafter Penn married another actress, Robin Wright. Comedy escaped him in
We’re No Angels
(89, Neil Jordan), but he was back on form in
State of Grace
(90, Phil Joanou), a movie that felt like an actors’ class.

Since then, he has been the jittery lawyer in
Carlito’s Way
(93, De Palma) and the condemned man in
Dead Man Walking
(95, Tim Robbins), perfect demonstrations of his range and immersion, even if they were both so arresting that one could not quite forget the skill and authority of the acting. Still, Penn got a best actor nomination for
Dead Man Walking
and moved wonderfully from the sexual insolence of the man to the terror.

As a director, he is awkward, not gifted with narrative, pretentious, but very good with actors. In
The Crossing Guard
, for instance, the performances were so strong that one longed to liberate the film from his rather repressive artiness.
The Pledge
(from Dürrenmatt) is dark, obscure, and, finally, not as complex as it seems.

He was good again (with Wright) in
She’s So Lovely
(97, Nick Cassavetes), a film that was a tribute to John Cassavetes and to Penn’s earnest love of untidiness. He followed with the brother in
The Game
(97, David Fincher);
U Turn
(97, Oliver Stone); the indulgent
Hugo Pool
(97, Robert Downey); one of the larger roles in
The Thin Red Line
(98, Terrence Malick); a full-throttle coke addict in
Hurlyburly
(98, Anthony Drazan); a performance of great charm as the guitarist in
Sweet and Lowdown
(99, Woody Allen); romantic in
Up at the Villa
(00, Philip Haas);
Before Night Falls
(00, Julian Schnabel);
The Weight of Water
(00, Kathryn Bigelow); spectacularly retarded, and nominated for an Oscar, in
I Am Sam
(01, Jessie Nelson);
It’s All About Love
(03, Thomas Vinterberg); very actorly in
Mystic River
(03, Clint Eastwood), for which he won his Oscar, much to the relief of the young Hollywood actors who revere him;
21 Grams
(03, Alejandro González Iñárritu);
The Assassination of Richard Nixon
(04, Niels Mueller).

His status is unquestioned, even if he was lost in
The Interpreter
(05, Sydney Pollack); too busy to be straight in
All the King’s Men
(06, Steven Zaillian); and good enough to win a second Oscar in
Milk
(08, Gus Van Sant). Meanwhile, he directed again:
Into the Wild
was adventurous, romantic, and finally rather silly, but it was done with high feeling. Sean Penn could yet turn into Anthony Quinn.

Barry
(Robert)
Pepper
, b. Campbell River, British Columbia, Canada, 1970
Twice in movies so far, Barry Pepper has “hit”—as the sniper in
Saving Private Ryan
(98, Steven Spielberg) and as the nearly sickly looking Roger Maris, the then home-run record hitter in
61
(01, Billy Crystal). There was something tense and vivid in both performances. It left you believing the story that as a boy Pepper had sailed the South Seas on a family-made ship. On dry land, he became a keen rugby player before going to the Vancouver Actors Studio.

One has to add that since then he has been easily the screen’s poorest Tom Ripley in
Ripley Under Ground
(05, Roger Spottiswoode). Against that, he did an excellent job as the stupid killer in
The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada
(05, Tommy Lee Jones). So which way does he go? Perhaps this is just a way of saying that we want to know where his haunting character in
Saving Private Ryan
has come from? How is he both a perfect killer and a Bible-quoting obsessive? Is he really a kid from the 40s, or has a game-show action man sneaked into the picture? Otherwise, there is not a lot to go on:
Firestorm
(98, Dean Semler);
Enemy of the State
(98, Tony Scott);
The Green Mile
(99, Frank Darabont);
Battlefield Earth
(00, Roger Christian);
Knockaround Guys
(01, David Levien);
We Were Soldiers
(02, Randall Wallace);
25th Hour
(02, Spike Lee);
3: The Dale Earnhardt Story
(04, Russell Mulcahy), which he produced;
Flags of Our Fathers
(06, Clint Eastwood);
Unknown
(06, Simon Brand).

Walker Percy
(1916–1990), b. Birmingham, Alabama
The movies owe much to novelists. Dickens, Conan Doyle, Graham Greene, Raymond Chandler, Mario Puzo, to name some notable examples, have provided inspiration, direction, material. Moviegoing owes a similar debt to just one novelist. Percy’s first, and best, novel,
The Moviegoer
, not only boasts a cameo appearance from William Holden (seen while shooting on location in the book’s main setting, New Orleans). It also includes a passage that might serve as a moviegoing credo, an understated yet unblinking acknowledgment that film can come to loom larger in a person’s internal life than actual experience. “The fact is I am quite happy in a movie, even a bad movie,” Percy’s narrator, Binx Bolling, tells us. “Other people, so I have read, treasure memorable moments in their lives: the time one climbed the Parthenon at sunrise, the summer night one met a lonely girl in Central Park.… I too once met a girl in Central Park, but it is not much to remember. What I remember is the time John Wayne killed three men with a carbine as he was falling to the dusty street in
Stagecoach
, and the time the kitten found Orson Welles in the doorway in
The Third Man
. ” The tone is both elegiac and ironic (“so I have read”!), yet the words recall occasions of incontestable happiness—mediated, yes, but (and this may be what’s most important) a happiness shared with countless others.

It’s a commentary on the division between serious literature and film that none of Percy’s six novels has been adapted to the screen, although there have been reports of Wim Wenders filming
The Second Coming
. One would like to think of Percy’s shade keeping watch over moviegoers, as Wenders’s angels do in
Wings of Desire
over Berliners.

Anthony Perkins
(1932–92), b. New York
Perkins was the son of character actor Osgood Perkins. Educated at Rollins College in Florida and Columbia University, he seemed caricatured in his first movies by lonely sincerity. This adolescent archetype was very fashionable at the time, and it was hammered home by his Broadway performance as Eugene in the play taken from Thomas Wolfe’s
Look Homeward, Angel
. Thus in his film debut,
The Actress
(53, George Cukor), he was a gawky boyfriend; in
Friendly Persuasion
(56, William Wyler) a troubled Quaker; a petulant son in
The Lonely Man
(57, Henry Levin); in
Fear Strikes Out
(57, Robert Mulligan) a baseball player with a nervous breakdown; an inexperienced sheriff in Anthony Mann’s
The Tin Star
(57); and then anxiously clutching Sophia Loren in
Desire Under the Elms
(58, Delbert Mann). Joseph Anthony’s
The Matchmaker
(58) and especially Joshua Logan’s
Tall Story
(60) revealed a sense of fun in Perkins, and the first allowed him to experiment with drag.

In fact, long skirts suited his tall frame. It was Alfred Hitchcock who showed how closely that fun could be related to mental disturbance. His Norman Bates in
Psycho
(60) is not only one of the best performances in a Hitchcock film, but very influential in the way that it mixed the horrors and sly attractiveness. Robert Walker had done some groundwork in
Strangers on a Train
(51), but Perkins’s Norman is more refined, more truly feminine, and more confusing of comedy and melodrama. The details of sidling walk, incipient stammer, chewing jaws, and snake-quick smile are marvelously organized. Above all, in that cold-supper sequence with Janet Leigh, Perkins showed us that Norman Bates is a sensitive, humane man in a world that has brutalized those virtues.

Perkins’s career never lived up to
Psycho:
perhaps it could not, for some films leave no room for development, while imprisoning the actor in a narrow image. He left Hollywood and settled in Europe. This involved him in two disastrous films:
Goodbye Again
(61, Anatole Litvak) and
Phaedra
(62, Jules Dassin); in
Une Ravissante Idiote
(63, Edouard Molinaro) and
Quelqu’un Derrière la Porte
(71, Nicolas Gessner); but a happy association with Claude Chabrol—in
The Champagne Murders
(66) and
Ten Days’ Wonder
(71); and in offbeat returns to America—for Noel Black’s
Pretty Poison
(68); as Major Major in
Catch-22
(70, Mike Nichols); as the priest in
WUSA
(70, Stuart Rosenberg); as the preacher in
The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean
(72, John Huston); writing the script of
The Last of Sheila
(73, Herbert Ross);
Murder on the Orient Express
(74, Sidney Lumet);
Mahogany
(75, Berry Gordy);
Remember My Name
(78, Alan Rudolph); and
Winter Kills
(79, William Richert).

One other part needs to be stressed: as Joseph K. in Welles’s
The Trial
(63). Again, his weird playfulness and spinsterly charm captured very serious human uncertainties and fears. Perkins always carried a hint of anxiety that was unique and alarming. An inconsistent worker and far from a star, he was a major screen personality, a gentle man.

He was doomed to be Norman Bates and other spectral frighteners no matter that he had a far wider range, and a capacity for gentleness. He was very good on TV as Javert in
Les Miserables
(78, Glenn Jordan), but no one seemed to notice, or respond;
The Black Hole
(79, Gary Nelson);
Double Negative
(80, George Bloomfield);
ffolkes
(80, Andrew V. McLaglen);
Twee Frouwen
(80, George Sluizer);
Psycho II
(83, Richard Franklin);
The Sins of Dorian Gray
(83, Tony Maylam);
Crimes of Passion
(84, Ken Russell);
Psycho III
(86, which he directed himself);
Lucky Stiff
(88, another directorial job);
Edge of Sanity
(89, Gerard Kikoine);
Psycho IV: The Beginning
(90, Mick Garris); and
I’m Dangerous Tonight
(90, Tobe Hooper). He died of AIDS.

Frank Perry
(1930–95), b. New York
1962:
David and Lisa
. 1963:
Ladybug, Ladybug
. 1968:
The Swimmer
(some sequences directed by Sydney Pollack). 1969:
Truman Capote’s Trilogy; Last Summer
. 1970:
Diary of a Mad Housewife
. 1971:
Doc
. 1972:
Play It As It Lays
. 1973:
Man on a Swing
. 1975:
Rancho Deluxe
. 1980:
Skag
(TV). 1981:
Mommie Dearest
. 1982:
Monsignor
. 1985:
Compromising Positions
. 1987:
Hello Again
. 1992:
On the Bridge
(d).

Frank Perry has battered away with strenuous seriousness and left a trail of broken, confused, but intriguing films. His background is theatre, where he worked as a director. His first wife, Eleanor, was scriptwriter on most of his films. His approach is to probe a human relationship until realism gives way to Freudian melodrama. This results in good character studies, humor, and a way with actors that degenerates into symbolism, allegory, and actors subdued by the portentousness of what they are doing.