Leading actors - where do they train/practice?

[southwest88]

Thinking about A. Rickman - who I'll miss. I enjoyed his work, voice-overs. But thinking back to Richard Burton, Peter O'Toole, Omar Sharif, a handful of other male actors. There isn't the scope of movies for up & coming actors to practice their craft in. If you look around now, in the US it's Clint Eastwood & Harrison Ford - both nearing the end of their careers in front of the camera. We have a handful of actors who might develop further - but no one's making epic movies - @ least, not enough for the actors to rise through the ranks.

Ford has been in a series of very profitable movies - Star Wars, Jack Ryan, Indiana Jones, & interesting singles - Blade Runner, American Graffiti.

Humphrey Bogart, John Wayne, Clark Gable - were actors who got better as they did more movies. Personally, I like Kevin Spacey - but he seems pulled just as much to theater as to movies/TV. Kevin Branagh is another - I enjoy his work, but he seems just as happy to be in theater, & more & more, he also seems to be producing/directing.

Where is the next set of excellent actors going to come from?

[Matty]

Ryan Gosling and DeCaprio are both very good. and they don't get much better than DeNiro.

[Cigar]

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/25-best-drama-schools-2014-706880


Normally these are places Conservatives call useless

[texan]

It would be fun to do this, every sales person thinks they can do it................I know I could.

[Standing Wolf]

Edward Norton is, pound for pound, probably the most profoundly great actor in films today.

Quite frankly, some of the big names from the middle of the last century - Gable, Cooper, even Bogart and certainly Wayne - were and are overrated in the talent department. They were images, profiles, mannerisms - they learned a few film "tricks" in the course of their careers, but they were rarely if ever challenged to act in quite the way actors are challenged today.

One huge change that has come about in just the last ten years or less is the general acceptance by actors of television as a legitimate place to work. From the late '40s to just very recently, a t.v. job was the kiss of death. Former leading men like William Lundigan and Fred McMurray either just phoned it in or slunk around with a permanent scowl and talked to no one off-screen. Now many good actors move from t.v. to film and back again without a second thought. Believe it or not, many currently up-and-coming film actors even put in time on daytime soap operas.

[southwest88]

Ryan Gosling and DeCaprio are both very good. and they don't get much better than DeNiro.

Yah, I like DeNiro & the things I've seen DeCaprio in. I was also thinking about the confluence of big movies & stars - Lawrence of Arabia, High Noon, Casablanca (yah, I know - but people liked the movie), Dr. Zhivago. There are movies that were very good as being of their type: Zulu, The guns of Navarrone, Close encounters of the third kind, Jaws, Gone with the wind.

I haven't seen much of Gosling's work.

The point remains - we're just not making epic movies like those - Bridge on the River Kwai. I don't know what the issue is - no one wants to risk all that capital & effort on a single movie? I can't believe that all the movies that are possible have been done - I know there are science fiction novels out there that have never been made into movies, & likely other genres have gems that haven't been filmed.

For instance, there's a mini-series of War & peace that's about to release on cable. We'll have to see how that does.

[Don]

Its too bad movie making like almost everything else is just about money. Its not about the art or storytelling. They think they have to have a big "star" to make it succeed. When guys like Stallone or Schwarzenegger can get $30 to $50 million for sequels there is something wrong. If I were a producer or director and had a movie with an important story to be told I would go with able actors not superstars.

[Standing Wolf]

Its too bad movie making like almost everything else is just about money. Its not about the art or storytelling. They think they have to have a big "star" to make it succeed. When guys like Stallone or Schwarzenegger can get $30 to $50 million for sequels there is something wrong. If I were a producer or director and had a movie with an important story to be told I would go with able actors not superstars.

If it's going to put butts in the seats, it makes financial success to go for "the name". Not sure what Arnold, for instance, was paid for that last Terminator movie, but would anyone have gone to see it if they hadn't? You could film the phone book and put Denzel or Mark Wahlberg or Leonardo in it and almost certainly turn a tidy profit.

[Orion Rules]

Why was Jody Foster the center of something? Why did Oksana become famous? Was it because of Mel Gibson?

Then add in Robert Downey, Jr., with handcuffs he can get his hands out of, and then what were those forums?

Is Hollywood going to grow up and become what it was intended to be, that when a character can star in films.

[nathanbforrest45]

Thinking about A. Rickman - who I'll miss. I enjoyed his work, voice-overs. But thinking back to Richard Burton, Peter O'Toole, Omar Sharif, a handful of other male actors. There isn't the scope of movies for up & coming actors to practice their craft in. If you look around now, in the US it's Clint Eastwood & Harrison Ford - both nearing the end of their careers in front of the camera. We have a handful of actors who might develop further - but no one's making epic movies - @ least, not enough for the actors to rise through the ranks.

Ford has been in a series of very profitable movies - Star Wars, Jack Ryan, Indiana Jones, & interesting singles - Blade Runner, American Graffiti.

Humphrey Bogart, John Wayne, Clark Gable - were actors who got better as they did more movies. Personally, I like Kevin Spacey - but he seems pulled just as much to theater as to movies/TV. Kevin Branagh is another - I enjoy his work, but he seems just as happy to be in theater, & more & more, he also seems to be producing/directing.

Where is the next set of excellent actors going to come from?

Detroit