Friedrich --

Have you run across the writing of the British actor Simon Callow? I think he's one of the handful of really good writers on performers and performance, topics that are amazingly difficult to write about well. Callow's biography of Charles Laughton (buyable here) is, for me, one of the very best biographies ever written about an actor; Callow knows what acting is and he knows what Laughton was about. And he treats Laughton's work with the kind of respect and knowledge we expect in discussions of writers and painters but almost never encounter in discussions of performers.

You can sample Callow's mind and touch in this good, long review by Callow (for the Guardian) of Gary O'Connor's new biography of Alec Guinness, here.

Sample passage:

O'Connor is keenly aware of the nature of the acting enterprise that Guinness was slowly identifying for himself, his unusual sense of character, his uncommonly economical transformations (I was in the dressing room with him on the last night of his Merchant of Venice, for which he produced one of his most remarkable physicalisations, and watched him dismantle his Shylock by simply removing two pieces of Blu-tack from behind his ears - "Jumbo ears" he said - and some eye-liner). Above all Guinness possessed the thrilling capacity to embody thought, to harness mental power. "An actor needs a slightly mystical approach to the stage," he said at a relatively early period in his career. "You can't force yourself on the character."

Best,

Michael

wouldn't that make him bi?

Posted by: Norrell on November 27, 2002 3:10 AM

Could well be, though discussions about bi and gay sex get political so fast that I'm just going to dodge the question. I wonder what the bio itself contends. It's buyable now from Amazon.co.uk.

Posted by: Michael Blowhard on November 27, 2002 11:34 AM






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