The actor Faye Dunaway says has a great gift: “The magic is there”
One of the most celebrated performers of the ‘New Hollywood’ era, Faye Dunaway made a habit of partnering up with some of the industry’s best and brightest talents to lend her gifts to a succession of classics to help define the movement that altered the complexion of Tinseltown.
Whether it was Arthur Parker’s Bonnie and Clyde opposite Warren Beatty, Roman Polanski’s Chinatown with Jack Nicholson, lending support to Paul Newman and Steve McQueen in disaster thriller The Towering Inferno, working with Sydney Pollack on Three Days of the Condor and Network, or sparring with Kirk Douglas in Elia Kazan’s The Arrangement, Dunaway racked up legends like it was nobody’s business.
She didn’t get to work with one of the era’s most inspirational figures during that period, though, even if she did get her chance more than two decades later. His own career may have been on a downturn when the enfant terribles of ‘New Hollywood’ first burst onto the scene, but thanks to his Academy Award-winning performance in The Godfather, Marlon Brando was right back on top by the early 1970s.
With an Oscar of her own from three nominations to go along with a Bafta, a Primetime Emmy, and three Golden Globes, Dunaway is among the most decorated stars of her generation. However, like many of her similarly awards-laden contemporaries, she was happy to bow at the altar of Brando.
They didn’t appear in the same production until 1994’s Don Juan DeMarco, but when they did, she couldn’t help but hop on the bandwagon to praise his inimitable talent in an interview with Paul Freeman. “What I loved about working with him was that he finds a way to get into the role, to really wear it and mould it into him,” she said. “And it’s by not being rigid at all. And it’s by moving into it and mixing himself with it. It’s all the stuff you learn when you learn how to act. And he does it perfectly.”
At that point in his professional life, Brando had earned the tag of being difficult. That wasn’t something Dunaway experienced first-hand, although his other reputation as one of the all-time greats remained intact. “I had preconceived notions that were corroborated, really. He’s a great artist. And he was great to work with,” she continued. “He was there, available, not a problem. And he brought a lot to the project.”
Don Juan DeMarco featured one of latter-stage Brando’s best performances but for Dunaway, watching the master at work transported her to another time altogether. “I felt like I was in the back of the cab in On the Waterfront, I swear to you,” the star exclaimed. “Time stood still because the magic is there. He’s got it. He’s got a great gift.”
Dunaway was a generational talent in her own right, but even she was left in awe in the mere presence of Brando, not that she’s alone in that regard.
