The actor Gene Hackman called his complete opposite: “At the other end of the pole”
It is pretty easy to divide actors up into different categories, which makes it all the more shocking when they cross those boundaries – like when Adam Sandler appeared in Punch Drunk Love, for example.
You’ve got the stars who prefer a more palatable, mainstream flick that doesn’t challenge the audience all that much and would definitely never be seen in an arthouse movie. These actors range in skill, of course, with actors like Tom Hanks at one end of the spectrum and Vin Diesel at the other.
Then you’ve got those who are much more likely to appear in an experimental film yet won’t turn down something more mainstream – think Nicole Kidman – and then those who predominantly stick to arthouse, boundary-pushing titles, refusing to sell out in any way by giving into the demands of Hollywood, like Vincent Gallo.
The best actors are the ones who fall somewhere in that middle category, exercising their muscles in challenging roles as well as slightly more accessible and perhaps enjoyable titles. In doing so, they can experience a full range of characters and directing styles, retaining a sense of integrity while also keeping a steady pay cheque coming in.
Oscar-winning star Gene Hackman thought that, besides this, there are actors who exude a sense of mystery, leaving you guessing what they’re like off-screen, while others have a slightly more relatable quality. He thought he fell into the latter category, while another older Hollywood legend made it into the former, possessing an intrinsic sense of charm and mystique that kept people captivated.
“There’s several kinds of movie actors who are popular,” Hackman told Film Comment. “There’s the kind who have the mystique. Cary Grant is a good example. I would not begin to try to tell you who he is, what he’s about personally. But I know from watching him that he’s a great actor and does what he does better than anybody has ever done”.
“So there’s that kind of mystique,” he continued. “Then there’s the other end of the pole, which is guys like myself. And then there are guys who probably fall in between, who have a little bit of what I have, maybe, and also have developed a kind of mystique, through whatever it is they do in their private lives.”
Evidently, you don’t need mystique to be a good actor, according to Hackman, even if that mystique elevated stars like Grant to whole new levels of greatness. Grant might never have won a competitive Oscar during his fruitful career, which saw him appear in the likes of North by Northwest, Bringing Up Baby, and The Philadelphia Story, but he had this suave and elusive appeal, undercut by a great sense of humour, that kept him popular.
Hackman explained his ideas a little further, emphasising his own relatability, “I guess the audiences respond to the proletarian man they see in me: the working guy who’s doing vicariously what they would like to do. I think that’s why essentially The French Connection worked. I don’t have any illusions about my being the only actor who could have played that. A lot of guys could have.”
If the audience can recognise the guy they’re watching on screen as some everyman kind of figure, they’ll feel closer to the character, drawn into the story with a sense of curiosity. “They’re able to say that, in some funny kind of way, you know, ‘Yeah, I know who that guy is.’ And that works both positively and negatively, I think, because what it does is give you a kind of familiarity, without the mystique, which is what people are really attracted to, I think,” he concluded.
