The one actor who mesmerised Frances McDormand: “It was like a basic acting lesson”
Acting is a profession where standing still is tantamount to going backwards, and even the best in the business are constantly learning from their peers. Frances McDormand is well on her way to becoming an all-time great if she isn’t already, but her eyes and ears always remain open.
Few performers in the modern era can match McDormand’s achievements, with the actor and producer’s nomination for at least one Academy Award in five consecutive decades underlining her longevity and consistency.
She’s the only person other than Katharine Hepburn to win three Oscars for ‘Best Actress’, a ‘Best Picture’ prize as the producer of Nomadland made her the first to win an Oscar for acting in and producing the same movie, and she’s one of only 24 names to have ever won the ‘Triple Crown’ after adding two Primetime Emmys and a Tony to her collection, never mind those three Golden Globes and trio of Baftas.
With that in mind, McDormand would be well within her rights to coast by on reputation alone, but no star with designs on doing their best work should ever operate with a closed mind. It’s been a key part of her approach for decades, with the actor picking up tricks and techniques since her earliest days.
While being quizzed by Willem Dafoe for Bomb, McDormand admitted her number one driving force behind choosing a role was how much of a challenge they posed. She’s not one for intense or exhaustive research, but being in the presence of a legend taught her a thing or two that she’s carried as part of her performative arsenal ever since.
“For example, in Mississippi Burning, I didn’t do any research,” she said. “All I did was listen to Gene Hackman. He had an amazing capacity for not giving away any part of himself. But the minute we got on set, little blinds on his eyes flipped up, and everything was believable. It was mesmerising. He’s really believable, and it was like a basic acting lesson. I think that’s the thing I do most in film; I listen.”
McDormand earned the first Oscar nomination of her career for Alan Parker’s incendiary dramatic thriller, with Hackman also making the ‘Best Actor’ shortlist for a film that notched a further five nods, including ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Director’.
It was only McDormand’s fourth feature and the first that didn’t hail from the minds of the Coen brothers, so it was the furthest outside of her comfort zone that she’d ever been. Sharing the screen with a legend like Hackman wasn’t going to be anything other than an education, though, and it was a learning tree she was more than happy to sit under for the duration of the shoot.
