the kind of gently ironic distance that Robbins cre-
ates in The Player.
In Coen’s The Hudsucker Proxy(1994), however,
both Robbins and Leigh tailor their performances
to fit the madcap mood and mannered decor of an
Art Deco screwball comedy. Indeed, part of the
movie’s appeal lies in watching an ensemble of
actors working in this style. Channeling Cary Grant
and Rosalind Russell in Howard Hawks’s His Girl
Friday(1940) and Spencer Tracy and Katharine
Hepburn in Walter Lang’s Desk Set(1957), Robbins
plays Norville Barnes, a goofy mailroom clerk who
becomes company president, and Leigh plays Amy
Archer, a hard-boiled, wisecracking newspaper
reporter. Robbins and Leigh’s zany comic interac-
tion fits perfectly in Coen’s jigsaw puzzle, which
lovingly pays tribute to an era when movie style
often transcended substance.
Today, actors struggle to get parts and to create
convincing performances, and like their earlier
counterparts, seldom have the chance to prove
themselves across a range of roles. Once typecast—
that is, cast in particular kinds of roles because
of their looks or “type” rather than for their acting
talent or experience—they continue to be awarded
such parts as long they bring in good box-office
receipts. No star system exists to sustain careers
and images, but now, as in earlier periods of movie
history, some individuals use films to promote
themselves—like music stars, sports stars, or other
celebrities who sometimes appear in a movie or
two, but leave no mark on the history of film acting.
The transition from studio production to inde-
pendent production has markedly affected the
livelihood of actors and the art of acting. The shape
of the average career has fundamentally changed;
because fewer major movies appear each year,
actors supplement film work with appearances on
television shows, in advertisements, and in theater.
(Salaries and contractual benefits, such as residual
payments for television reruns, provide excellent
financial security.) In addition, because today the
average movie is a comedy targeted at—indeed,
mass-marketed to—the under-thirty audience (and
a comedy relying on physical humor, often of a scat-
ological nature, rather than verbal wit), fewer qual-
ity roles are available to actors.
Some extremely versatile actors—Chris Cooper,
Russell Crowe, Benicio Del Toro, Johnny Depp,
Leonardo DiCaprio, Samuel L. Jackson, Nicole
Kidman, John Malkovich, Julianne Moore, Kevin
Spacey, and Hilary Swank, to name a few—have,
with two or three successful films, become stars
quickly. The greater their drawing power at the box
office, the greater the urgency to promote them to
top rank and cast them in more films. As independ-
ent agents, however, they can contract for one film at
a time and thus hold out for good roles rather than
having to make a specific number of films for a givenContemporary star powerUnlike some actors who
become movie stars almost overnight, Robert Downey, Jr.
began to appear in avant-garde movies directed by his father
at the age of five. Working in the independent era, he was
able to choose a range of roles that revealed his
extraordinary talent. Downey’s breakthrough as a major
performer came with Richard Attenborough’s Chaplin(1992),
for which he received an Oscar nomination as Best Actor. He
continued to demonstrate his remarkable versatility in
serious roles in Robert Altman’s Short Cuts(1993), Oliver
Stone’s Natural Born Killers (1994), Richard Loncraine’s
Richard III(1995), and Michael Hoffman’s Restoration(1995).
Between 1996 and 2001, his acting career faltered because of
his drug abuse, and—with the exception of his role in Curtis
Hanson’s Wonder Boys(2000)—he was cast in relatively
unimportant projects. He returned to serious roles, deserving
serious attention, in such movies as George Clooney’s Good
Night, and Good Luck(2005), Dito Montiel’s A Guide to
Recognizing Your Saints(2006), Steven Shainberg’s Fur : An
Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus(2006), and David
Fincher’s Zodiac(2007). Soon after, he began playing two
completely different characters: Tony Stark in Jon Favreau’s
Iron Man(2008) and Iron Man 2(2010) and Sherlock Holmes
in Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes(2009) and Sherlock
Holmes: A Game of Shadows(2011). In this image, we see
Downey as the brilliant, cool, arrogant, and intense Tony
Stark, aka Iron Man.
THE EVOLUTION OF SCREEN ACTING 305