Terry Gilliam’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
(1998); the cocaine king George Jung in Ted
Demme’s Blow(2001); Sir James Matthew Barrie,
the author of Peter Pan, in Marc Forster’s Finding
Neverland(2004); Lord Rochester, the seventeenth-
century English poet, in Laurence Dunmore’s The
Libertine(2004); and gangster John Dillinger in
Michael Mann’s Public Enemies(2009). In the cur-
rent phase of his career, among other roles, he’s
played the over-the-top character of Captain Jack
Sparrow in the Pirates of the Caribbean series:
The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003), Dead Man’s
Chest (2006), At World’s End(2007), and On
Stranger Tides (2011). Gore Verbinski directed the
first three films and Rob Marshall, the last.
These swashbuckling pirate comedies have had
enormous success with audiences, but many critics
feel that Depp has compromised his overall achieve-
ment as an actor with this role.
Finally, there is the nonprofessional actor—
someone who has achieved success in another field
who is cast to bring verisimilitude to a part. Exam-
ples include football great Brett Favre playing
himself in Bobby and Peter Farrelly’s There’s Some-
thing about Mary(1998); rap star Eminem playing
Jimmy “B-Rabbit” Smith, Jr., a rapper whose rise
to superstar status parallels his own, in Curtis
Hanson’s 8 Mile (2002); fashion designer Isaac
Mizrahi playing an art director in Woody Allen’s
Hollywood Ending(2002); and rapper 50 Cent play-
ing Marcus, a character loosely based on his own
life, in Jim Sheridan’s Get Rich or Die Tryin’(2005).
With these actors essentially playing themselves,
there is very little distinction between the person
and the part.
Whereas previous generations of stage actors
knew that their duty was to convey emotion
through recognized conventions of speech and ges-
ture (mannerisms), screen actors have enjoyed a
certain freedom to adopt individual styles that
communicate emotional meaning through subtle—
and highly personal—gestures, expressions, and
varieties of intonation. American screen actor Bar-
bara Stanwyck credited director Frank Capra with
teaching her that “if you can think it, you can make
the audience know it.... On the stage, it’s manner-
isms. On the screen, your range is shown in your
eyes.”^5 In addition, many different types of inspira-
tion fuel screen acting; many factors guide actors
toward their performances in front of the camera.
Consider American movie actor Sissy Spacek,
who has been nominated six times for the Academy
Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role and who
won for her performance as country singer Loretta
Lynn in Michael Apted’s Coal Miner’s Daughter
(1980). We might say that Spacek’s appearance—
diminutive figure; pale red hair; large, open, very
blue eyes; sharp, turned-up nose; abundant freck-
les; and Texas twang—has destined her to play a
certain type of role: a sweet, seemingly simple and
frail, but ultimately strong, perhaps strange and
even otherworldly woman. Spacek brings out the
depths within her characters, however, making
each unique, believable, and easy to connect with
or at least care about.
Depending on what the role calls for, Spacek can
make herself look plain (avoiding makeup and hair-
styling) or beautiful. Between the ages of twenty-
four and twenty-seven, she played three characters
in their teens, all childlike and somewhat naive. In
Terrence Malick’s Badlands(1973), she plays Holly,
whose unemotional narration, taken from her flat
yet poetic diary entries, contrasts markedly with
her physical passion for Kit (Martin Sheen), a mur-
derer who takes her on a horrifying odyssey.
In Brian De Palma’s Carrie(1976), a horror movie
based on a novel by Stephen King, she plays the title
character, a lonely, misunderstood teenager raised
by a fundamentalist mother, tormented by her con-
ceited schoolmates, and possessing the telekinetic
ability to perform vengeful acts. In Robert Altman’s
3 Women(1977), she plays Pinky Rose, perhaps the
most enigmatic of these three characters: vulnera-
ble, unsophisticated, sensitive to what others think
of her, and clumsy, but also shrewd in getting what
she wants and psychologically haunted by what
seems to be a dream of the past. Spacek’s recent
roles, each character and performance distinct
from the others, include Ruth Fowler in Todd Field’s
In the Bedroom(2001), Alice Aimes in Niki Caro’s(^5) Barbara Stanwyck, qtd. in Actors on Acting for the Screen:
Roles and Collaborations, ed. Doug Tomlinson (New York:
Garland, 1994), p. 524.
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