[John Whitworth]

Hugh Grant went to a public school (private school) but not a particulalrly posh one and he did it on a scholarship. He did go to Oxford, which means he was (is) clever. I have never detected anything sinister about him, though he can easily do sly bastard, see the amateur thespians film from the Beryl Bainbridge novel (the title is from Peter Pan but I can't remember it) that he's in with Alan Rickman, a long time before Bridget Jones. I think he plays up the vague upper-class Brit because he can and because that's what the public wants.

Now Cary is sinister, I agree. But Archie Leach was not posh at all, his mother was locked up in a lunatic asylum and he was actually expelled from his state grammar school. What for? Could have been you-know-what. if you think about his shacking up with Randolph Scott. That's considered rather English, isn't it?

[Terese Coe]

Agree there's nothing sinister about Hugh or Cary Grant--unless you consider drop-dead gorgeous faces, lithe grace, alluring tones, posh accents (which anyone can have, of course, given a good ear and concentration) and killer smiles (not to mention arch ripostes and eminently expressive eyes) sinister.

The best of the Brits where magnetic appeal is concerned.

Daniel Day-Lewis has outperformed them in certain types of roles. Could you imagine Hugh or Cary G. doing D-L's role in Last of the Mohicans? LOL. Perhaps D-L has more breadth, though he doesn't seem to have Cary's comic talent (if he does, let me know; I may have missed the film). And while Hugh Grant does comedy really well, no one can match Cary Grant. Even his pratfalls were perfect, and that's high praise in theater and film.

I agree with Sam, too, that Leslie Howard was divine. Too sweet for this life. Was evil part of his repertoire? Not that I know of. (Again, I don't claim to have seen all or even half of his films.)

Edit to add: Just read John W's "Neither Bale nor Statham are posh brits, both rather common, but would you Americans be able to tell?"

John! That's almost as evil as some English art gallery curators in New York! lol--thank heaven I don't have to deal with them, though I have in the past. I mean talk about sinister! Actors can't touch those guys.



[This message has been edited by Terese Coe (edited September 03, 2008).]

[Gregory Dowling]

Alicia mentioned the British villains in Disney films. I think this really started with George Sanders as Shere Khan in The Jungle Book - and you don't get much posher than his accent. Jeremy Irons is obviously going for something similar in The Lion King, but isn't quite so suavely and sinisterly charming (although he's pretty good).

[Janet Kenny]

Gregory, wasn't George Sanders Hungarian?

James Mason could be sinister as could his New Zealander protégé Sam Neill who passes for English when he chooses, like many of us.

[Martin Rocek]

Terese,
Do you know the film "Eversmile, New Jersey"? It is Daniel Day-Lewis's most
obscure film, and people tend to love it or hate it--I love it. It is a totally
deadpan surreal comedy set in bleakest Patagonia; DD-L plays an itinerant
dentist spreading dental hygiene consciousness. Hard to find, but well
worth the effort. Not Cary Grant at all, but hilarious. And as always, totally
different from anything else DD-L has done.

Martin

[Terese Coe]

No, Martin, but now that you've mentioned it I will seek it out. I could see DD-L doing "deadpan surreal comedy" in almost any environment--but an itinerant dentist? Sounds as bleak as parts of Patagonia, as weird as the phrase "dental hygiene consciousness"! Thank you!

Never heard the title--it's totally creepy, isn't it?

Once saw him interviewed on tv--he actually seemed shy. And I don't think it was an act.

[John Whitworth]

Does everyone know that Daniel Day Lewis is the son of the poet Cecil Day Lewis? C.D. Lewis was a handsome man (unlike most ofus poets but like his son) and a serial womaniser who wrote OK detective stories as Nicholas Blake.
Janet, George Sanders was not Hungarian but he was born in Saint Petersburg during the Russian Revolution. That is according to wikipedia.

[Terese Coe]

Not answering for everyone, John, but yup. I'll have to read more about Lewis pere, as almost all my information comes from Woolf's Letters. Why was CD-L so despised by her? Was it as simple as a negative review? (It's been a while since I read the Letters, but as I recall he was anathema to a number of Bloomsbury figures.)

Edited in: Oh wait, that was Wyndham Lewis. Pardon. Is he related too?

Found this [partial] outtake from There Will be Blood online. What a powerful performance DD-L put in. And here, in the train scene, sitting thinking about the moral atrocity he is about to pull off--portraying the neurotic introversion in such a sequence is far more difficult than it appears.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/video/2008/jul/04/1

In comparison to the Grant men, he's incredibly articulate about art, acting, his position as a celebrity, and his needs in order to survive. I don't know of a more writerly actor.

So yes, re David's original question, he too did Bad Guys in film, but his sheer delight in horrifying viewers was, for me, a revelation. It is his ability to metamorphize that captures the viewer, not his "acting." His idealist roles are equally mindblowing.




[This message has been edited by Terese Coe (edited September 03, 2008).]

[Janet Kenny]

Originally posted by John Whitworth:

Janet, George Sanders was not Hungarian but he was born in Saint Petersburg during the Russian Revolution. That is according to wikipedia.

Ah! It's probably because he was once married to Zsa Zsa Gabor that I had that impression.

[John Whitworth]

Wyndham Lewis is different and not related. WyndhamLewis was primarily a painter (good I think) but he also wrote novels, unreadable to me, and indulged in controversy. A powerful, not altogether nice man. I think Woolf may have despised, or hated, Wyndham Lewis because of his very right-wing politics. In otherwords they were enemies. Day Lewis was the fourth in the Macspaunday crew identified by Roy Campbell, MacNeice,Spender, Auden and Day Lewis, all leftist poets who either went or said they would go to fight in the Spanish Civil War on the Nationalist side against Franco. Campbell was pro-Franco because of his Catholicism. So Daniel would have grown up in that sort of bookish, free-thinking, left wing household. I THINK, though Iam not sure about this, that his mother, the one his father was unfaithful to, was, or had been an actress.