The performances that inspired Jeremy Strong: “Moved the earth under my feet”
There are several markers of a great performance, something that has been endlessly debated by cinephiles and actors alike, with those who devote themselves to the craft offering unique pearls of wisdom on the actors who have given the most earth-shattering performances.
Whether it be Al Pacino and his undying love for Robert De Niro, or Robert De Niro and his lasting admiration for Al Pacino, countless actors have chipped in their two cents on the performers who are most inspiring in what they do.
However, while many are fantastic performers, there is one branch of the act that continues to cause the most buzz, with method actors constantly making headlines after doing new and bizarre things to realise their characters or being so staggering in what they achieve that they blow everyone else out of the water.
For Jeremy Strong, this is certainly the case, with deep, powerful and devastating performances that have shattered our ideas of what acting entails. While he might himself be an emotional genius, Strong has made it a point to describe the other performers who have most inspired his unique approach.
After his portrayal of Kendall Roy in Succession, the original HBO family drama about the Roy siblings and their fight for power within their father’s company, Strong quickly became notorious for his emotionally incisive and cripplingly vulnerable performance as the eldest boy and his slow descent to humanitarian destruction.
Despite beginning the show as the most sensitive of the siblings, with an eager approach to business and a strong need to prove himself after struggling with drug addiction and mental illness, Kendall might just be the most simultaneously endearing and evil of the siblings, going to increasingly dire lengths to assert his dominance within the family.
It was the kind of performance that will no doubt be studied and pored over for years to come, with Strong describing the performances that first inspired him to venture down this career path himself.
The actor explained, “There have been a lot of seminal moments for me. Performances that moved the earth under my feet. It’s hard for me to pinpoint one of them in particular, but I can still recall Peter Mullan’s brilliant and devastating performance in Ken Loach’s film My Name Is Joe, for which he also won the Award for ‘Best Actor’ in Cannes in 1998. I could also cite Dustin Hoffman in Midnight Cowboy and Kramer vs Kramer, Daniel Day-Lewis in My Left Foot, Robert De Niro in Raging Bull or Isabelle Huppert in The Piano Teacher. And how can you not be inspired by Juliette Binoche, whose work is absolutely flawless in my eyes? She embodies raw honesty, fearlessness, and versatility.”
All of these people are legends of the business for a reason, with Huppert’s performance in particular sticking out as one of the most fearless of all time, going to depths that would be too painful for anyone else to charter. It’s something we can certainly see in Strong’s work, particularly within his recent portrayal of Roy Cohn, being both despicable and innocently crushing as he longs to be cared for by the people he has defended his entire life, marking him as one of the next greats to be cited alongside these seminal names.
