“I could barely speak after seeing that film”: the movie that stunned Julia Louis-Dreyfus
Some actors are always going to be defined by their most successful role. It’s no bad thing, it just sometimes means that the character they played was so famous, and meant so much to so many people, that it will forever be their greatest achievement. It’s true of Ricky Gervais and David Brent, of Steve Coogan and Alan Partridge, and it’s true of Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Elaine Benes from Seinfeld.
Of course, Dreyfus has had a long and successful career before and after the late 1980s sitcom that made her one of the most famous actors in America, not least on brilliant shows like the political comedy Veep that ran for seven years and the underrated romantic movie Enough Said with the late James Gandolfini.
Dreyfus spent the early part of her career doing improv in New York before landing a role on Saturday Night Live, which she appeared on for three years, and where she fatefully met Larry David. After a few spots on movies, including National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, she won the part on Seinfeld after producers refused to commission the series without a recurring female character.
It proved a masterstroke and Dreyfus picked up a string of awards for playing Elaine throughout the 1990s, including a Golden Globe, an Emmy and three Screen Actors Guild awards. Although she suffered from what critics called a ‘Seinfeld curse’, struggling to find another hit once the show finished after nine seasons, Dreyfus got acclaim for another show, The New Adventures of Old Christine in the mid-2000s and then considerable plaudits for her performance in Armando Iannucci’s satirical comedy Veep, winning six Emmys.
But what are her own influences when it comes to movies? In picking her top five films of all time for Rotten Tomatoes, she went with a mix of all-time classics from the modern era, a blend of fairy tales and gritty drama with some all-American sports thrown in. Her first choice was 1939’s The Wizard of Oz, the film that turned black and white into Technicolour mid-movie and is still loved almost ninety years on. Dreyfus said: “I adore that film from start to finish. It never gets old. I think it has a beautiful, tender tone of both real drama and huge comedy, and I adore it.”
Next up she went with Life is Beautiful from 1997, the Italian movie that won Best Foreign Film at the Oscars the following year. A powerful film based around the holocaust, Dreyfus said: “I could barely speak after seeing that film. I was so moved by it. And again, actually, come to think of it, it’s a very dramatic and comedic film all at once. It’s a true mash-up.”
Third on her list was the British romantic drama A Room with a View starring Maggie Smith and Daniel Day-Lewis, another hit with critics in 1986 when it earned eight Oscars, winning three. Said Dreyfus: “That to me is the most romantic film of all time, and it makes me cry whenever I watch it.”
Another film from the same era came next on Dreyfus’ list, which is Hoosiers, the sports drama starring Gene Hackman as the coach of a ragtag bunch of high school basketball players. Dreyfus said: “First of all, it’s Gene Hackman. Need I say more? Gene Hackman is the best American actor living today, in my view. And it is a sports story, but it’s so much more.”
Finally, Dreyfus went with the superb 1975 Ken Kesey adaptation One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest with Jack Nicholson, the mental institution movie that won every major Oscar including Best Actor for Nicholson. Dreyfus loves the film, explaining: “It’s a movie about social injustice and inequity and the disenfranchised, and it will kill you. It will sway you with its sadness, but in a way that is appropriate, and there is a glimmer of hope at the end, I would say.”
