The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (383 page)

Since then, she has done a mess of minor work, including
The Interrogation of Michael Crowe
(02, Don McBrearty);
Shelter Island
(03, Geoffrey Schaaf);
Noise
(04, Tony Spiridakis);
Day Zero
(06, Bryan Gunnar Cole);
The Junior Defenders
(07, Keith Spiegel);
Steam
(07, Kyle Schickner);
Harold
(08, T. Sean Shannon);
Citizen Jane
(09, Armand Mastroianni).

Martin Sheen
(Ramon Estevez), b. Dayton, Ohio, 1940
Sheen is known for his productivity—for the quantity of his own work, for the great variety of liberal causes he serves, and for a family of actors that includes his two sons, Emilio Estevez and Charlie Sheen. Rather in the spirit of a union leader who will talk at any gathering, Sheen has done many forgettable films. Sometimes, it seems, he has lost his youthful and ironic edge under the weight of jobs. But there have been enough instances of outstanding work for us to stay alert. He runs the risk of being typecast in rectitude and social responsibility (such a curse!), but there are demons in Sheen, as witness the indolent, casual humor of his Charles Starkweather in
Badlands
(73, Terrence Malick) and his unyielding commitment to
Apocalypse Now
(79, Francis Ford Coppola), especially in the scene in the hotel room.

He had worked on the stage before getting into movies:
The Incident
(67, Larry Peerce);
The Subject Was Roses
(68, Ulu Grosbard), which he had done on the stage;
Catch-22
(70, Mike Nichols); a conscientious objector in
No Drums, No Bugles
(71, Clyde Ware);
Pickup on 101
(72, John Florea);
Rage
(72, George C. Scott); for TV in
The Execution of Private Slovik
(74, Lamont Johnson);
The Cassandra Crossing
(77, George Pan Cosmatos);
The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane
(77, Nicolas Gessner);
Eagle’s Wing
(79, Anthony Harvey);
The Final Countdown
(80, Don Taylor);
Loophole
(80, John Quested);
Enigma
(82, Jeannot Szwarc); the journalist in
Gandhi
(82, Richard Attenborough); as Judge Samuel Salus II in
In the King of Prussia
(82, Emile de Antonio);
Man, Woman and Child
(82, Dick Richards);
That Championship Season
(82, Jason Miller);
The Dead Zone
(83, David Cronenberg); and
Firestarter
(84, Mark L. Lester).

He narrated
Broken Rainbow
(85, Maria Flores), an Oscar-winning documentary about the Navajo; he acted in a melodrama about Santeria,
The Believers
(87, John Schlesinger); and then helped narrate the letters-from-Vietnam documentary,
Dear America
(87, Bill Couturie). After
Siesta
(87, Mary Lambert), he played a union official to his son Charlie Sheen’s financier in
Wall Street
(87, Oliver Stone) and then son to Barnard Hughes in
Da
(88, Matt Clark), on which he was also executive producer.

He also acted in and helped produce
Judgment in Berlin
(88, Leo Penn);
Beverly Hills Brats
(89, Dimitri Sotirakis);
Cadence
(91), which he wrote and directed and in which he acted with his two sons; and
Hear No Evil
(93, Robert Greenwald).

Between
Hear No Evil
and now, the International Movie Database lists more than ninety acting jobs for Martin Sheen. And it’s being modest, for just one of those is
The West Wing
, in which, for seven seasons, Sheen was our most appealing modern president (and maybe the hardest working). He does many narrating jobs, which might be handled in a day. But he also seems ready to consider any project offered, especially those with a liberal pull to them. But how strange that an actor should make so many minor films and be the cherished lead in a hit TV series at the same time:
The Killing Box
(93, George Hickenlooper); as Robert E. Lee in
Gettysburg
(93, Ronald Maxwell);
Fortunes of War
(93, Thierry Nitz);
Roswell
(94, Jeremy Paul Kagan); an assistant to Michael Douglas in
The American President
(95, Rob Reiner); Dillinger in
Dillinger and Capone
(95, Jon Purdy);
Captain Nuke and the Bomber Boys
(95, Charles Gale);
The War at Home
(96, Emilio Estevez);
Truth or Consequences, N.M
. (97, Kiefer Sutherland);
Free Money
(98, Yves Simoneau);
A Letter from Death Row
(98, Marvin Baker and Bret Michaels);
Voyage of Terror
(98, Brian Trenchard-Smith);
Stranger in the Kingdom
(98, Jay Craven); a President in
Family Attraction
(98, Brian Hecker);
Lost & Found
(99, Jeff Pollack);
O
(01, Tim Blake Nelson);
Catch Me If You Can
(02, Steven Spielberg);
Jerusalem
(03, Jakov Sedlar); Nicholas Katzenbach in
The Commission
(03, Mark Sobel); getting a great death fall in
The Departed
(06, Martin Scorsese);
Bobby
(06, Estevez);
Bordertown
(07, Gregory Nava).

Michael Sheen
, b. Newport, Wales, 1969
There are actors and impersonators, and in an age of stand-up TV mimicry and knockabout celebrity, it’s a wonder that there aren’t more full-blooded impersonators out there than Michael Sheen. From the part of Wales that made Richard Burton and Anthony Hopkins (enthusiastic mimics), Sheen abandoned soccer playing for the Bristol Old Vic and became a stage star in the 1990s in
When She Danced, Romeo and Juliet, Peer Gynt
, and as Jimmy Porter in a revival of
Look Back in Anger
. In that era, he was hailed for his own force and promise.

Onscreen, he drew attention as an unstable man in the TV serial
Gallowglass
(93, Tim Fywell). He was Lodovico in the Laurence Fishburne
Othello
(95, Oliver Parker); a footman in
Mary Reilly
(96, Stephen Frears); and Robbie Ross to Stephen Fry’s
Wilde
(98, Brian Gilbert). But then, in 2003, for writer Peter Morgan and director Stephen Frears, he played Tony Blair in
The Deal
—the story of his rivalry with Gordon Brown before Labour returned to power. He was Blair in ways that left acting aside—it was an inspired imitation.

He was in
Heartlands
(02, Damian O’Donnell);
The Four Feathers
(02, Shekhar Kapur); in the adaptation of
Vile Bodies, Bright Young Things
(03, Stephen Fry);
Timeline
(03, Richard Donner);
Underworld
(03, Len Wiseman);
The Open Doors
(04, James Rogan), a short that he helped produce;
Dead Long Enough
(05, Tom Collins); a priest in
Kingdom of Heaven
(05, Ridley Scott).

He wasn’t really advancing until the uncanny imitation of the tortured
Kenneth Williams: Fantabulosa!
(06, Andy DeEmmony). At that point Frears and Morgan asked him to re-do Blair in
The Queen
(06), an international success. For television, Sheen played Nero in
Ancient Rome
and Wells in
H. G. Wells: War with the World
(06, James Kent). Then he was in
Blood Diamond
(06, Edward Zwick); and he delivered an astonishing if rather technical performance as a man with cerebral palsy in
Music Within
(07, Steven Sawalich).

After creating the role of David Frost in Peter Morgan’s play
Frost/Nixon
onstage, he did Frost again in the movie (08, Ron Howard). What was interesting in that film was that Sheen was delivering a pitch-perfect imitation, while Frank Langella (as Nixon) was acting. In a tour de force, he then played Brian Clough, the football manager, in
The Damned United
(09, Tom Hooper), as scripted by Peter Morgan from the David Peace novel. It was a very ambitious failure, to be followed by
My Last Five Girlfriends
(09, Julian Kemp). He is now in high demand:
The Twilight Saga: New Moon
(09, Chris Weitz);
Unthinkable
(10, Gregor Jordan); the White Knight in
Alice in Wonderland
(10, Richard Ayoade); and trying Blair for a third time in
The Special Relationship
(10, Richard Loncraine).

Three Blairs may be more than the world needs, and Sheen may have been unduly affected by the politician’s aura of the slippery chameleon. On the other hand, Sheen is a notable figure in the reappraisal of acting as a field of pretending where sincerity and depth of character begin to look fraudulent.

Ron Shelton
, b. Whittier, California, 1945
1988:
Bull Durham
. 1989:
Blaze
. 1992:
White Men Can’t Jump
. 1994:
Cobb
. 1996:
Tin Cup
. 2000:
Play It to the Bone
. 2002:
Dark Blue
. 2003:
Hollywood Homicide
.

One can hear Ron Shelton asking, “But isn’t everyone interested in sports?” Well, no, actually, plenty of men aren’t, and most women regard it as one of the ways of diverting their child-men. More to the point, for the men who are crazy about sports, there is television’s real-life ongoing documentary account—filmed with the care and the cameras usually reserved for Spielberg and Hitchcock. What is left, therefore? Well, there are some decent, and forgivable, sports movies, and
Bull Durham
is one of them.
Tin Cup
is fun. But the question remains how the likable Ron Shelton has the patience and the narrowness to persist. (We also have to add to the above list
Blue Chips
, 1994, a basketball movie, with Nick Nolte and Shaquille O’Neal, actually directed by William Friedkin, but written and coproduced by Shelton.) Shelton was a college star at basketball and baseball, and he was a few years in the Baltimore Orioles system before deciding he wasn’t good enough. A wide variety of jobs led to screenwriting and second-unit work:
The Pursuit of D. B. Cooper
(81, Roger Spottiswoode);
Under Fire
(83, Spottiswoode);
The Best of Times
(86, Spottiswoode), about high-school football and its aftermath.

Of course, Shelton has hit into the rough:
Blaze
is about politics, and
White Men
is a passable comedy on race.
Cobb
, however, concerns bigotry, malice, and the media as well as indulging Tommy Lee Jones. But I have to say that despite the fact that I watch too much sports live on TV, few directors depress me more.

Sam Shepard
(Samuel Shepard Rogers), b. Fort Sheridan, Illinois, 1943
After thirty-five years in the performing arts, and at least half that time hanging around moviemaking, Sam Shepard remains an enigma—and America does not really have much patience with unsolved mysteries. He is a frequent actor these days—he was even nominated for best supporting actor for his Chuck Yeager in
The Right Stuff
(83, Philip Kaufman). Yet he seems impeded by the notion that it is not quite manly to pretend in public. As Yeager, he did just about serve in Kaufman’s idealization of a lanky, laconic Gary Cooper figure. But Shepard seemed impervious to depth or nakedness, and his Mach 1 cowboy was not as rich or intriguing as the far more sprightly, energetic, and commercially compromised Yeager—a grinning imp who looks over Shepard’s shoulder at one moment in the film.

Then again, when Shepard’s play
Fool for Love
had its world premiere at the Magic Theater in San Francisco in 1984, with Ed Harris and Kathy Baker, Shepard’s direction was so visual and dynamic it seemed to signal his desire to make movies. After all, as a writer he had created a vision of poor, rural, and familial violence that smacked of film and surely influenced many filmmakers, even if few of his plays have reached the screen. But in 1985, Shepard did the script and contributed a glum, helpless appearance to Robert Altman’s wretched film of
Fool for Love
, so that memories of the evening at the Magic were eclipsed. When Shepard did direct a film at last—
Far North
(88), which he also wrote—it seemed that much of his own excitement had drained away.

Not the least part of the mystery is Shepard’s relationship with Jessica Lange. They have lived together, often in Virginia, with children and horses.
Vanity Fair
ran a photo spread of the couple glamorous enough to inspire imitation, scenario, and advertising. But the relationship has remained private: whenever they have worked together, there has been an air of convalescence, or going gently, as if one of them were ill and the other working as a nurse—
Frances
(82, Graeme Clifford), where Shepard is a loyal prop;
Country
(84, Richard Pearce), in which rural life is so much cleaner than in, say,
Buried Child
or
Crime of the Starving Class; Crimes of the Heart
(86, Bruce Beresford); and
Far North
. Am I alone in hoping for one great bloody fight between the two of them on screen—for something like
Fool for Love
even?

There are other things to mention: Shepard helped write
Me and My Brother
(68, Robert Frank) and
Zabriskie Point
(70, Michelangelo Antonioni); he acted in
Renaldo and Clara
(78, Bob Dylan), after he had been on Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue. He was the rich man in
Days of Heaven
(78, Terrence Malick), the first film that saw his iconic value, and which never asked for more. He was also in
Resurrection
(80, Daniel Petrie);
Raggedy Man
(81, Jack Fisk);
Baby Boom
(87, Charles Shyer)—either selling out his harsh, intractable heritage or testifying to the charm of Diane Keaton;
Steel Magnolias
(89, Herbert Ross);
Defenseless
(91, Martin Campbell);
Bright Angel
(90, Michael Fields); and
The Pelican Brief
(93, Alan J. Pakula). He directed
Silent Tongue
(92).