The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (450 page)

She was raised in the San Fernando Valley, she was in Israel for a time, and she had a serious yet still rather mysterious accident while working at Magic Mountain. She was adventurous or reckless—take your pick. She played Lynda Carter’s younger sister on TV in
Wonder Woman
, and she made an unremarkable movie debut in
Slumber Party ’57
(77, William A. Levey), followed by
Special Olympics
(78, Lee Philips) for TV,
Thank God It’s Friday
(78, Robert Klane), and
French Postcards
(79, Willard Huyck).

Urban Cowboy
launched her heady years, during which she contributed at least something to the voice of
E.T
. (82, Steven Spielberg).
Cannery Row
(82, David S. Ward) was a complete flop, but Winger was robust, funny, and touching as the young whore, and she and Nick Nolte made an unusually attractive pair of wayward lovers.
Mike’s Murder
(84, Bridges) was a star vehicle and a disaster, a film that went through agonies before it was released. Among other things, it showed Winger cast beyond her real range—actors need so much more work than they have a chance for today, and Winger had had little training.

Legal Eagles
(86, Ivan Reitman) is famous only as a grotesque agency package: Winger was miscast and physically overshadowed by the far less talented Daryl Hannah. For
Black Widow
(86, Bob Rafelson), she was offered her choice of either of the two female roles. The plot is implausible, yet maybe the killer would have tested her better. She had an uncredited walk-on in
Made in Heaven
(87, Alan Rudolph), which starred her then-husband, Timothy Hutton. She could do nothing to bring a shred of credibility to the dreadful
Betrayal
(88, Costa-Gavras).

There are mixed feelings over
Everybody Wins
(90, Karel Reisz). Pauline Kael believed Winger was extraordinary in it, playing a schizophrenic, swooping from sexuality to coldness. I felt the picture was incoherent and foolish, and another sign of the actress’s lack of technique. No player could be blamed for
Everybody Wins
. The script was the root of the problem. But why had she accepted the part? And how did she seem so undirected?

The Sheltering Sky
(90, Bernardo Bertolucci) was her best work in years. She looked like Jane Bowles, and understood her jittery intelligence. The movie betrayed the actress in its last third, but until then, with John Malkovich, she had made a wonderful picture of a failed yet inescapable marriage. Still, no one went to see
The Sheltering Sky
, and, closing in on forty, Winger seemed a problem to the business and herself.

She was good, and a little removed from center stage, in
Leap of Faith
(92, Richard Pearce), a film that made little mention of her in its promotion. Her next film,
Wilder Napalm
(93, Glenn Gordon Caron), came and went as quickly as a fire. But as
A Dangerous Woman
(93, Stephen Gyllenhaal), she gave an uncanny performance as a disturbed woman. The film was a mess, and yet another failure, but it was hard to miss the sanity and danger in Winger. At last, she had a mainstream hit, in
Shadowlands
(93, Richard Attenborough).

Forget Paris
(95, Billy Crystal) was nowhere near working. At that point, despite her three Oscar nominations—
An Officer and a Gentleman, Terms of Endearment
, and
Shadowlands
—Ms. Winger effectively retired. I’m not sure that she ever announced it, but there was no work and no real word, apart from news of her marriage to actor Arliss Howard (they had met on
Wilder Napalm
). Then, in 2001, he directed her in
Big Bad Love
. She then acted in
Radio
(03, Michael Tollin);
Eulogy
(04, Michael Clancy).

Her status was reflected in Rosanna Arquette’s essay film,
Searching for Debra Winger
(01). There have been a few more films, like
Dawn Anna
(05, Howard) and
Rachel Getting Married
(08, Jonathan Demme), but not everyone feels they justify the cult status.

Kate Winslet
, b. Reading, England, 1975
Kate Winslet was the female lead, the figurehead and a very fetching cabin companion, in what was for a time history’s most successful film,
Titanic
(97, James Cameron). But, of course, Mark Hamill was the lead in the
Star Wars
trilogy. Winslet has more on her side: she gave a miraculous debut performance in
Heavenly Creatures
(94, Peter Jackson), where her command of the fragile line between blithe teenage friendship and murderous force was the heart of the film. Against that, it may be said that Winslet has seemed specially suited to period costume. Does she feel like a modern woman? Is she a little too inclined towards Edwardian fleshiness? For the moment, as she continues to attract major directors (like Jane Campion and Philip Kaufman), let’s trust the talent:
A Kid in King Arthur’s Court
(95, Michael Gottlieb);
Sense and Sensibility
(95, Ang Lee); as Ophelia in
Hamlet
(96, Kenneth Branagh); excellent again in
Jude
(96, Michael Winterbottom);
Hideous Kinky
(98, Gillies MacKinnon);
Holy Smoke
(99, Campion).

At this point, it was evident that Winslet had pushed herself less than, say, Cate Blanchett, Gwyneth Paltrow, or Helena Bonham Carter. But she may pass them all. Her performance as the maid in
Quills
(00, Kaufman) was not just brilliant; it was the center of the film that allowed Geoffrey Rush his eccentricity. She was the eager, bespectacled helper in
Enigma
(01, Michael Apted); and she was ravishing as the young author or siren in
Iris
(01, Richard Eyre). But
The Life of David Gale
(03, Alan Parker) was a blunder. She married Sam Mendes in 2003 and made
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
(04, Michel Gondry);
J. M. Barrie’s Neverland
(04, Marc Forster);
Romance & Cigarettes
(05, John Turturro).

She was lost in
All the King’s Men
(06, Steven Zaillian), nominated for
Little Children
(06, Todd Field), and amicably marking time in
The Holiday
(07, Nacy Meyers). Then she struck—with two awesome and unhappy grownups: getting the Oscar for
The Reader
(08, Stephen Daldry) and needing a better co-star in
Revolutionary Road
(08, Mendes). But the flash of class was unmistakable. As I calculate it, Meryl Streep got her sixth Oscar nod when she was just a few months older than Winslet at the half-a-dozen mark.

Ray Winstone
, b. Hackney, London, 1957
An authentic “hard case,” Ray Winstone was a successful amateur boxer (he fought twice for England), who was on the point of being thrown out of the Corona drama school when Alan Clarke saw him and reckoned to translate his walk, his voice, and his aggro straight into
Scum
(77, Clarke) on TV. It was the making of the actor, maybe the first time he’d found something to concentrate on. He was in the movie of
Scum
(79, Clarke), and then he did bits and pieces in
Quadrophenia
(79, Franc Roddam),
That Summer
(79, Harley Cokeliss) and
Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains
(81, Lou Adler).

But a bigger break came playing the boxer hero in the TV series,
Fox
(80). That led to a lot of TV work, including Will Scarlet in the
Robin Hood
series, as well as many roles in TV drama. But he came back to movies in
Ladybird Ladybird
(94, Ken Loach), and above all as the husband (Ray) in
Nil by Mouth
(97, Gary Oldman). Oldman and Winstone had met at Alan Clarke’s funeral, and Winstone has always thanked the Clarke school for the work and the attitude that harnessed his violence. Still, in
Nil by Mouth
, he was fearsome, and clearly an actor of great power.

He prefers to work in Britain, with friends, and often in parts of London he knows. He has actually declined a big role in an American TV series, but he might still make his way as an extraordinary, spectacular villain:
Face
(97, Antonia Bird);
Our Boy
(97, David Evans);
Woundings
(98, Roberta Hanley);
Final Cut
(98, Dominic Anciano and Ray Burdis);
The Sea Change
(98, Michael Bray).

He was brilliant and again very frightening as the Dad in
The War Zone
(99, Tim Roth);
Agnes Browne
(99, Anjelica Huston);
Darkness Falls
(99, Gerry Lively);
Fanny and Elvis
(99, Kay Mellor);
There’s Only One Jimmy Grimble
(00, John Hay); outstanding in
Sexy Beast
(00, Jonathan Glazer);
Love, Honour and Obey
(00, Anciano and Burris); developing a more human side in
Last Orders
(01, Fred Schepisi);
The Martins
(01, Tony Grounds);
Ripley’s Game
(02, Liliana Cavani); in a short,
Bouncer
(02, Michael Baig-Clifford); out of his depth on TV as
Henry VIII
(03, Pete Travis); as a real American heavy in
Cold Mountain
(03, Anthony Minghella);
King Arthur
(04, Antoine Fuqua). He is much in demand now
—The Proposition
(05, John Hillcoat); in the TV series
Vincent
(05); as
Sweeney Todd
(06, Dave Moore) for the BBC;
All in the Game
(06, Jon O’Hanlon); effortlessly Boston in
The Departed
(06, Martin Scorsese) and London in
Breaking and Entering
(06, Minghella); a folly and a fantasy
—Beowulf
(07, Robert Zemeckis)—it should have been Beerwolf;
Fool’s Gold
(08, Andy Tennant);
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
(09, Steven Spielberg);
44 Inch Chest
(09, Malcolm Venville);
Edge of Darkness
(10, Martin Campbell);
Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll
(10, Mat Whitecross).

Michael Winterbottom
, b. Blackburn, England, 1961
1990:
Forget About Me
(TV). 1992:
Under the Sun
(TV);
Love Lies Bleeding
(TV). 1993:
Cracker: The Mad Woman in the Attic
(TV). 1994:
Family
(TV);
Butterfly Kiss
. 1995:
Go Now
(TV);
Jude
. 1996:
Welcome to Sarajevo
. 1997:
I Want You
. 1998:
With or Without You
. 1999:
Wonderland
. 2000:
The Claim
. 2002:
24 Hour Party People; In This World
. 2003:
Code 46
. 2004:
9 Songs
. 2006:
A Cock and Bull Story; The Road to Guantánamo
. 2007:
A Mighty Heart
. 2008:
Genova
. 2009:
The Shock Doctrine
. 2010:
The Killer Inside Me
.

In just a few years, Winterbottom has given us several indelible locations: not just the uncertainties of Sarajevo, but the bleak English seaside resort in
I Want You
(maybe the gloomiest getaway since Yves Allégret’s
Une Si Jolie Petite Plage
), the modern London of
Wonderland
, and the epic Sierra Nevada (by way of Hardy’s Wessex) for
The Claim
. There are some who say that no one of those films is flawless, and that their diversity is so great it’s not easy to know much about Winterbottom. I think those critics are being inventively difficult. All four films, it seems to me, are far more right than wrong—and emphatically successful emotionally. Winterbottom has come out of British television, full of ideas but blessed with practical need and an urge to tell different stories. Let the unity of character settle in as it may. But it seems to me, already, that Winterbottom does have a theme: that of lost souls who are putting on a busy and ingenious display of being safe and sound. He is working in the mainstream, and he may have no higher urge than to be entertaining. I will settle for that.

What else? Just
9 Songs
with all its endless, real sex; an amazing film for Sterne; and a Jim Thompson adaptation that shocked Sundance. From 1996 onward, no one in indie film has been so various, so valiant, and so good. No one seems to have told Michael Winterbottom that film might be dead!

Shelley Winters
(Shirley Schrift) (1920–2006), b. St. Louis, Missouri
Blowsy, effusive, brash, and maternal, either voluptuous or drab, Shelley Winters was at her best when driven to wonder, “How did a girl like me get into a high-class movie like this?”

In fact, she had a very respectable New York stage training before her debut in
What a Woman
(43, Irving Cummings), followed by
She’s a Soldier, Too
(44, William Castle),
Nine Girls
(44, Leigh Jason), and
Tonight and Every Night
(45, Victor Saville). She may be seen, briefly, walking across screen in the wagon train dance sequence in
Red River
(48, Howard Hawks). But her first really worthy part was as the waitress in the Kanin/Cukor
A Double Life
(47) and she featured notably in
Cry of the City
(48, Robert Siodmak);
Take One False Step
(49, Chester Erskine);
The Great Gatsby
(49, Elliott Nugent);
Johnny Stool Pigeon
(49, Castle);
South Sea Sinner
(49, Bruce Humberstone);
Winchester 73
(50, Anthony Mann); and George Stevens’s
A Place in the Sun
(51) in which she is last seen hunched up in a rowing boat before Montgomery Clift’s uneasy resolve drowns her. Her role, and her being, were sacrificed to our love of Liz Taylor
—A Place in the Sun
is a key picture about wish fulfillment (and we do want Winters dead). In return, she was nominated as best actress (she lost to Vivien Leigh in
Streetcar
).