The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (415 page)

J
. (John)
Lee Thompson
(1914–2002), b. Bristol, England
1950:
Murder Without Crime
. 1952:
The Yellow Balloon
. 1953:
The Weak and the Wicked
. 1954:
For Better For Worse
. 1955:
As Long As They’re Happy; An Alligator Named Daisy
. 1956:
Yield to the Night; The Good Companions
. 1957:
Woman in a Dressing Gown
. 1958:
Ice Cold in Alex; No Trees in the Street
. 1959:
Tiger Bay; NorthWest Frontier
. 1960:
I Aim at the Stars
. 1961:
The Guns of Navarone; Cape Fear
. 1962:
Taras Bulba
. 1963:
Kings of the Sun
. 1964:
What a Way to Go; John Goldfarb, Please Come Home
. 1965:
Return from the Ashes
. 1966:
Eye of the Devil
. 1968:
Before Winter Comes
. 1969:
The Most Dangerous Man in the World; MacKenna’s Gold
. 1971:
Country Dance
. 1972:
Conquest of the Planet of the Apes
. 1973:
Battle for the Planet of the Apes
. 1974:
Huckleberry Finn; The Reincarnation of Peter Proud
. 1976:
St. Ives
. 1977:
The White Buffalo
. 1978:
The Greek Tycoon; The Passage
. 1980:
Caboblanco
. 1981:
Happy Birthday to Me
. 1983:
The Evil That Men Do; Ten to Midnight
. 1984:
The Ambassador
. 1985:
King Solomon’s Mines
. 1986:
Murphy’s Law; Firewalker
. 1987:
Death Wish 4: The Crackdown
. 1988:
Messenger of Death
. 1989:
Kinjite: Forbidden Subjects
.

An actor and playwright, Lee Thompson wrote for the screen in the late 1930s
—The Price of Folly
(37, Walter Summers);
Glamorous Night
(37, Brian Desmond Hurst);
The Middle Watch
(40, Thomas Bentley);
East of Piccadilly
(41, Harold Huth)—and began directing with his own play,
Murder Without Crime
.

Not that he has subsequently impressed one as a director looking for good material. On the contrary, he has lunged about in wayward maneuvers, dabbling in British comedy, sham realism, lip-smacking psychological tension, epics, and such lunacy as
Eye of the Devil
and
Country Dance
. The enormous boxoffice success of
The Guns of Navarone
and
MacKenna’s Gold
appears almost accidental and owes more to Carl Foreman’s single-minded production than to Lee Thompson. He has tended over the years to choose sensational subjects:
The Yellow Balloon
and
Yield to the Night
were both thought outspoken in their time, and
Cape Fear
is still downright nasty. Perhaps the last word on Lee Thompson is that nothing from him would come as a surprise, much less a revelation.

Billy Bob Thornton
, b. Hot Springs, Arkansas, 1955
1996:
Sling Blade
. 2000:
All the Pretty Horses
. 2002:
Daddy and Them
.

When Billy Bob Thornton leaped into prominence with
Sling Blade
(96) as a remarkable triple threat (writer, actor, and director), there was retaliatory talk that he might be a one-film wonder. Clearly, some people hadn’t seen
One False Move
(92, Carl Franklin), where Thornton was coauthor of a very original script, and a brilliant actor in a vein so removed from his retard in
Sling Blade
. Then we had Thornton’s fine performance in
A Simple Plan
(98, Sam Raimi) to demonstrate authentic range.

How will he settle? It’s as writer-director, I suspect, that the real future rests. He was in
South of Reno
(87, Mark Rezyka);
For the Boys
(91, Mark Rydell);
Bound by Honor
(93, Taylor Hackford);
Indecent Proposal
(93, Adrian Lyne); as the saloon bully in
Tombstone
(93, George P. Cosmatos);
On Deadly Ground
(94, Steven Seagal);
Floundering
(94, Peter McCarthy);
The Stars Fell on Henrietta
(95, James Keach); winning the adapted screenplay Oscar and being nominated as supporting actor in
Sling Blade; Dead Man
(96, Jim Jarmusch);
A Family Thing
(96, Richard Pearce), which he cowrote;
The Apostle
(97, Robert Duvall);
U-Turn
(97, Oliver Stone);
The Winner
(97, Alex Cox);
Armageddon
(98, Michael Bay);
Home Grown
(98, Stephen Gyllenhaal);
Primary Colors
(98, Mike Nichols);
A Gun, a Car, a Blonde
(98, Stefani Ames);
Pushing Tin
(99, Mike Newell).

Then in 2000, he entered into what was his third or fourth marriage—with Angelina Jolie (from
Pushing Tin
)—enough to deserve a break. But he works hard. He experiments with his looks—and with doing very little, as in
The Man Who Wasn’t There
(01, Joel Coen) and
Bandits
(01, Barry Levinson). Nothing is clear yet, beyond his range, talent, and poker-faced humor—plus his real skill in
Monster’s Ball
(01, Marc Forster), deserving Halle Berry’s thanks.

That marriage foundered in a fluster of tattoos and tabloid stories, and Thornton increased his ragbag collection of outsiders, hippies, and people not quite there:
The Badge
(02, Robby Henson);
Waking Up in Reno
(02, Jordan Brady);
Levity
(03, Ed Solomon);
Intolerable Cruelty
(03, Coen); wonderfully foulmouthed in
Bad Santa
(03, Terry Zwigoff); more cocky than Bushy in
Love Actually
(03, Richard Curtis); as Davy Crockett in
The Alamo
(04, John Lee Hancock);
Chrystal
(04, Ray McKinnon).

I believe it can safely be said that in recent years his work has gone to hell:
The Ice Harvest
(05, Harold Ramis);
Bad News Bears
(05, Richard Linklater);
School for Scoundrels
(06, Todd Phillips);
Mr. Woodcock
(07, Craig Gillespie);
Eagle Eye
(08, D. J. Caruso);
The Informers
(09, Gregor Jordan).

Ingrid Thulin
(1926–2004), b. Solleftea, Sweden
Ingrid Thulin’s marriage to Harry Schein, head of the Swedish Film Institute, may account for her early wish to move into international films. But her films for Ingmar Bergman were crucial in showing the harrowing trauma that waits on a beautiful woman. That expressive face has doleful eyes unable to forget pain and a wide mouth that can convey passionate suffering and fraught pleasure. It is a tragic face, the unforgettable image of the anxiety that surrounds Bergman’s world.

She studied ballet and then trained at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm. She began acting in films in the late 1940s:
Dit Vindarna Bar
(48, Ake Ohberg);
Havets Son
(49, Rolf Husberg);
Karleken Segrar
(49, Gustaf Molander);
Hjarter Knekt
(50, Hasse Ekman);
Nar Karleken kom till Byn
(50, Arne Mattsson);
Leva pa ‘Hoppet’
(51, Goran Gentele);
Mote med Livet
(52, Gosta Werner);
Kalle Karlsson fran Jularbo
(52, Ivar Johansson);
En Skargardsnatt
(53, Bengt Logardt);
Goingehovdingen
(53, Ohberg);
Tva Skona Juveler
(54, Husberg);
I Rok och Dans
(54, Yngve Gamlin and Bengt Blomgren);
Hoppsan!
(55, Stig Olin); and
Danssalongen
(55, Borje Larsson).

But it was as the youthful, fresh-air heroine in
Foreign Intrigue
(56, Sheldon Reynolds) that she first attracted attention outside Sweden. Next year, she played the daughter-in-law in
Wild Strawberries
and soon became one of Bergman’s favorite actresses: the woman who has had a miscarriage in
So Close to Life
(58); visually stunning as Vogel’s wife, masquerading as a youth, in
The Face/The Magician
(58); the mistress in
Winter Light
(63); the lesbian nymphomaniac in
The Silence
(63); the dead mistress in
Hour of the Wolf
(68); the wife/mistress in
The Rite
(69); and with Liv Ullmann and Harriet Andersson in Bergman’s immense study of Three Swedish Sisters,
Cries and Whispers
(72).

In Sweden, she has also appeared in
Donnaren
(60, Alf Sjoberg);
Night Games
(66, Mai Zetterling); and
Badarna
(68, Gamlin); as well as directing a short,
Hangivelse
(65).

Elsewhere, in 1962, Vincente Minnelli proved alert to her beauty in
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
, and the autumn sequence at Versailles is one of the most sensuous in all his work. She was wasted in
Return from the Ashes
(65, J. Lee Thompson), but silently loving in
La Guerre est Finie
(66, Alain Resnais).
The Damned
(69, Luchino Visconti) is gaseous opera compared to Bergman’s taut chamber music, but it owes much to Thulin’s archetypal proneness to tragedy. She has also appeared in
Agostino
(62, Mauro Bolognini);
Adelaide
(68, Jean-Daniel Simon);
N.P. Il Segreto
(72, Silvano Agosti); as Miriam in
Moses
(75, Gianfranco de Bosio);
The Cassandra Crossing
(76, George Pan Cosmatos); and as the brothel madam in
Salon Kitty
(76, Giovanni Tinto Brass). In 1978, she acted in and directed
One and One
with Erland Josephson and Sven Nykvist.

She directed another film,
Brusten Himmsel
(82), and she acted in
After the Rehearsal
(83, Bergman);
Control
(87, Guiliano Montaldo); and
La Casa del Sorriso
(90, Marco Ferreri).

Uma
(Karunna)
Thurman
, b. Boston, 1970
Well, of course, Uma Thurman is beautiful—who ever said she wasn’t? There she was, slender, pale, blond, on the half-shell as Venus in
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen
(89, Terry Gilliam), but not much more. And the question remains, is she an actress, or just a wan nymph with her own brief morning?

She is the child of a university professor in comparative literature, and as such she grew up on the campus of Amherst. But she put off higher education for herself to work as a model. That led to
Kiss Daddy Goodnight
(87, Peter Ily Huemer) and
Johnny Be Good
(88, Bud Smith). She was the seduced virgin in
Dangerous Liaisons
(88, Stephen Frears) and she then played in
Where the Heart Is
(90, John Boorman). Her best acting to date, by far, occurred in
Henry & June
(90, Phil Kaufman), where she gives a good account of uneducated toughness caught in a net of poseurs.

Since then, she has been a pouty Maid Marian in
Robin Hood
(91, John Irvin);
Final Analysis
(92, Phil Joanou); blind in
Jennifer Eight
(92, Bruce Robinson); the “present” in
Mad Dog and Glory
(93, John McNaughton). She won a supporting actress nomination for her gangster’s wife in
Pulp Fiction
(94, Quentin Tarantino), when she contributed not much more than a baleful look, a cool attitude, black hair, and some Egyptian fresco moves on the dance floor. She was barely competent in
A Month by the Lake
(95, Irvin), and then appeared in
Beautiful Girls
(96, Ted Demme);
The Truth About Cats & Dogs
(96, Michael Lehmann);
Gattaca
(97, Andrew Niccol); as Poison Ivy in
Batman and Robin
(97, Joel Schumacher);
Les Misérables
(98, Bille August); Emma Peel in the dreadful
The Avengers
(98, Jeremiah S. Chechik);
Sweet and Lowdown
(99, Woody Allen);
Vatel
(00, Roland Joffé);
The Golden Bowl
(00, James Ivory);
Tape
(01, Richard Linklater);
Chelsea Walls
(02, Ethan Hawke, her husband);
Hysterical Blindness
(03, Mira Nair);
Kill Bill: Vol. I
(03, Tarantino);
Paycheck
(03, John Woo);
Kill Bill: Vol. II
(04, Tarantino).

She was in
Be Cool
(05, F. Gary Gray);
Prime
(05, Ben Younger); as Ulla in
The Producers
(05, Susan Stroman);
My Super Ex-Girlfriend
(06, Ivan Reitman);
The Life Before Her Eyes
(08, Vadim Perelman);
The Accidental Husband
(08, Griffin Dunne);
My Zinc Bed
(08, Anthony Page);
Motherhood
(09, Katherine Dieckmann).

Gene Tierney
(1920–91), b. Brooklyn, New York
An effulgent, heart-shaped face made her one of the beauties of 1940s cinema. She is treasured especially for her appearances in Preminger’s
Laura
(44) and
Whirlpool
(49). In the first, her portrait was enough to cast a spell over Dana Andrews, long before she appeared. But Laura proves a conventionally pretty, rather commonplace girl—a sign of Preminger’s interest in the gulf between reputation and personality. In
Whirlpool
, Tierney moved with a childlike dreaming calm as the unhappy wife hypnotized by a demon José Ferrer. The long speeches in that film proved rather too demanding for her and she seldom got past her own gorgeousness. But in
Leave Her to Heaven
(46), she was ignited by John M. Stahl’s commitment to melodrama and by Technicolor. Her selfish girl in that film is frighteningly credible and she fully grasped the intensity of the astonishing staircase scene.