15 Actors I Miss, So Much
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- Soundtrack
River Phoenix was born River Jude Bottom in Madras, Oregon. His mother, Arlyn (Dunetz), a Bronx-born secretary, and his father, John Bottom, a carpenter, met in California in 1968. They worked as itinerant fruit pickers, and later joined the Children of God religious group (John was originally Catholic, while Arlyn was born Jewish). By the time River was two, they were living in South America, where John was the sect's Archbishop of Venezuela. They later left the group and, in 1977, moved back to the United States, changing their last name to "Phoenix". They lived with River's maternal grandparents in Florida, and later moved to Los Angeles. His parents encouraged all of their children to get into movies and, by age ten, River was acting professionally on TV. His film debut was in Explorers (1985), followed rapidly by box-office successes with Stand by Me (1986) and The Mosquito Coast (1986), and as young Indiana in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989). His role as Danny Pope in Running on Empty (1988) earned him an Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actor. His best role was probably Mike, the hustler in My Own Private Idaho (1991).
A dedicated animal-rights activist and environmentalist, River was a strict vegetarian and a member of PeTA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). River was a talented musician as well as an actor, and he played guitar, sang, and wrote songs for his band, Aleka's Attic, which also included his sister Rain Phoenix, while living in Gainsville, Florida. Although the band never released its own album, their song "Across the Way" can be found on PeTA's "Tame Yourself" album, used to fight animal abuse. River was in the middle of filming Dark Blood (2012), playing the character Boy when he died. The film couldn't be finished due to too many unfilmed crucial scenes. His mother was later sued.
River died of acute multiple drug intoxication involving lethal levels of cocaine and morphine at age 23 outside the Viper Room, Johnny Depp's Los Angeles club.- Actor
- Director
- Cinematographer
When hunky, twenty-year-old heart-throb Heath Ledger first came to the attention of the public in 1999, it was all too easy to tag him as a "pretty boy" and an actor of little depth. He spent several years trying desperately to sway this image, but this was a double-edged sword. His work comprised nineteen films, including 10 Things I Hate About You (1999), The Patriot (2000), A Knight's Tale (2001), Monster's Ball (2001), Ned Kelly (2003), The Brothers Grimm (2005), Lords of Dogtown (2005), Brokeback Mountain (2005), Casanova (2005), Candy (2006), I'm Not There (2007), The Dark Knight (2008) and The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009). He also produced and directed music videos and aspired to be a film director.
Heath Ledger was born on the fourth of April 1979, in Perth, Western Australia, to Sally (Ramshaw), a teacher of French, and Kim Ledger, a mining engineer who also raced cars. His ancestry was Scottish, English, Irish, and Sephardi Jewish. As the story goes, in junior high school it was compulsory to take one of two electives, either cooking or drama. As Heath could not see himself in a cooking class he tried his hand at drama. Heath was talented, however the rest of the class did not acknowledge his talent. When he was seventeen he and a friend decided to pack up, leave school, take a car and rough it to Sydney. Heath believed Sydney to be the place where dreams were made or, at least, where actors could possibly get their big break. Upon arriving in Sydney with a purported sixty-nine cents to his name, Heath tried everything to get a break.
His first real acting job came in a low-budget movie called Blackrock (1997), a largely unimpressive cliché; an adolescent angst film about one boy's struggle when he learns his best mate raped a girl. He only had a very small role in the film. After that small role Heath auditioned for a role in a T.V. show called Sweat (1996) about a group of young Olympic hopefuls. He was offered one of two roles, one as a swimmer, another as a gay cyclist. Heath accepted the latter because he felt to really stand out as an actor one had to accept unique roles that stood out from the bunch. It got him small notice, but unfortunately the show was quickly axed, forcing him to look for other roles. He was in Home and Away (1988) for a very short period, in which he played a surfer who falls in love with one of the girls of Summer Bay. Then came his very brief role in Paws (1997), a film which existed solely to cash in on guitar prodigy Nathan Cavaleri's brief moment of fame, where he was the hottest thing in Australia. Heath played a student in the film, involved in a stage production of a Shakespeare play, in which he played "Oberon". A very brief role, this offered him a small paycheck but did nothing to advance his career. Then came Two Hands (1999). He went to the U.S. trying to audition for film roles, showcasing his brief role in Roar (1997) opposite then unknown Vera Farmiga.
Then Australian director Gregor Jordan auditioned him for the lead in Two Hands (1999), which he got. An in your face Aussie crime thriller, Two Hands (1999) was outstanding and helped him secure a role in 10 Things I Hate About You (1999). After that, it seemed Heath was being typecast as a young hunk, which he did not like, so he accepted a role in a very serious war drama The Patriot (2000).
What followed was a stark inconsistency of roles, Ledger accepting virtually every single character role, anything to avoid being typecast. Some met with praise, like his short role in Monster's Ball (2001), but his version of Ned Kelly (2003) was an absolute flop, which led distributors hesitant to even release it outside Australia. Heath finally had deserved success with his role in Brokeback Mountain (2005). For his portrayal of Ennis Del Mar in in the film, Ledger won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor and Best International Actor from the Australian Film Institute, and was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role and for the Academy Award for Best Actor.
Ledger was found dead on January 22, 2008 in his apartment in the Manhattan neighborhood of SoHo, with a bottle of prescription sleeping pills near-by. It was concluded weeks later that he died of an accidental overdose of prescription drugs that included pain-killers, sleeping pills and anti-anxiety medication. His death occurred during editing of The Dark Knight (2008) and in the midst of filming his last role as Tony in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009).
Posthumously, he shared the 2007 Independent Spirit Robert Altman Award with the rest of the ensemble cast, the director, and the casting director for the film I'm Not There (2007), which was inspired by the life and songs of American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan. In the film, Ledger portrayed a fictional actor named Robbie Clark, one of six characters embodying aspects of Dylan's life and persona.
A few months before his death, Ledger had finished filming his performance as the Joker in 'The Dark Knight (2008). His untimely death cast a somber shadow over the subsequent promotion of the $185 million Batman production. Ledger received more than thirty posthumous accolades for his critically acclaimed performance as the Joker, the psychopathic clown prince of crime, in the film, including the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, a Best Actor International Award at the 2008 Australian Film Institute Awards (for which he is the second actor to win an acting award posthumously after Peter Finch who won an Oscar for Network (Best Actor 1977)), the 2008 Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actor, the 2009 Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor - Motion Picture, and the 2009 BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actor.- Actor
- Writer
- Stunts
Edward Montgomery Clift (nicknamed 'Monty' his entire life) was born on October 17, 1920 in Omaha, Nebraska, just after his twin sister Roberta (1920-2014) and eighteen months after his brother Brooks Clift. He was the son of Ethel "Sunny" Anderson (Fogg; 1888-1988) and William Brooks Clift (1886-1964). His father made a lot of money in banking but was quite poor during the depression. His mother was born out of wedlock and spent much of her life and the family fortune finding her illustrious southern lineage and raising her children as aristocrats.
At age 13, Monty appeared on Broadway ("Fly Away Home"), and chose to remain in the New York theater for over ten years before finally succumbing to Hollywood. He gained excellent theatrical notices and soon piqued the interests of numerous lovelorn actresses; their advances met with awkward conflict. While working in New York in the early 1940s, he met wealthy former Broadway star Libby Holman. She developed an intense decade-plus obsession over the young actor, even financing an experimental play, "Mexican Mural" for him. It was ironic his relationship with the bisexual middle-aged Holman would be the principal (and likely the last) heterosexual relationship of his life and only cause him further anguish over his sexuality. She would wield considerable influence over the early part of his film career, advising him in decisions to decline lead roles in Sunset Boulevard (1950), (originally written specifically for him; the story perhaps hitting a little too close to home) and High Noon (1952).
His long apprenticeship on stage made him a thoroughly accomplished actor, notable for the intensity with which he researched and approached his roles. By the early 1950s he was exclusively homosexual, though he continued to hide his homosexuality and maintained a number of close friendships with theater women (heavily promoted by studio publicists).
His film debut was Red River (1948) with John Wayne quickly followed by his early personal success The Search (1948) (Oscar nominations for this, A Place in the Sun (1951), From Here to Eternity (1953) and Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)). By 1950, he was troubled with allergies and colitis (the U.S. Army had rejected him for military service in World War II for chronic diarrhea) and, along with pill problems, he was alcoholic. He spent a great deal of time and money on psychiatry.
In 1956, during filming of Raintree County (1957), he ran his Chevrolet into a tree after leaving a party at Elizabeth Taylor's; it was she who saved him from choking by pulling out two teeth lodged in his throat. His smashed face was rebuilt, he reconciled with his estranged father, but he continued bedeviled by dependency on drugs and his unrelenting guilt over his homosexuality.
With his Hollywood career in an irreversible slide despite giving an occasional riveting performance, such as in Stanley Kramer's Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), Monty returned to New York and tried to slowly develop a somewhat more sensible lifestyle in his brownstone row house on East 61st Street in Manhattan. He was set to play in Taylor's Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967), when he died in the early morning hours of July 23, 1966, at his home at age 45. His body was found by his live-in personal secretary/companion Lorenzo James, who found Clift lying nude on top of his bed, dead from what the autopsy called "occlusive coronary artery disease." Clift's last 10 years prior to his death from his 1956 car accident were called the "longest suicide in history" by famed acting teacher Robert Lewis.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Brandon De Wilde was born into a theatrical family and made a much-acclaimed Broadway debut in "The Member of the Wedding" at age 9. He was the first child actor to win the Donaldson Award, and went on to repeat his role in the film version, directed by Fred Zinnemann in 1952. As the blond-haired, blue-eyed Joey who idolizes the strange gunman played by Alan Ladd in the film Shane (1953), he stole the picture and received an Oscar nomination for his work. During 1953-54, Brandon starred in his own television series, Jamie (1953), and made his mark as a screen adolescent during the 1960s playing a younger brother in All Fall Down (1962) and nephew in Hud (1963), starring Paul Newman. He managed to keep his career-building into early adulthood, but his career was tragically cut short: en route to visit his wife at a hospital where she had recently undergone surgery, he was killed when the camper-van he was driving struck a parked truck. He was only 30 years old.- Actor
- Composer
- Music Department
Popular but troubled renegade French actor Patrick Dewaere was christened Jean-Marie Patrick Bourdeaux on January 26, 1947, at Saint-Brieuc in Britanny in the north-west region of France. The third of six children born to actress Mado Maurin (1915-2011), his mother made acting a family affair. All of his siblings -- Jean-Pierre Maurin (1941-1996), Yves-Marie Maurin (1944-2009), Dominique Maurin (1949- ), Jean-François Vlerick (also known as Jean-Francois Maurin) (1957- ) and Marie-Véronique Maurin (1960- ) -- all became thespians. Patrick made his film debut at the age of four under the name Patrick Maurin in Amazing Monsieur Fabre (1951).
While growing up, he was taunted by his schoolyard friends for his young film endeavors, he learned sensitivity and isolation at an early age. Other films during this adolescent period of time included his playing an unbilled child role in Gene Kelly's The Happy Road (1957).
As a young adult in the early 1960s Patrick appeared on French television, then joined the "Café de Gare" theatrical troupe in 1968 where he remained for nearly a decade. It was during these stage years that he changed his stage name to Dewaere, the maiden name of his great grandmother. He also met and became romantically involvement with fellow troupe member Miou-Miou. A child, Angele, was born to this liaison in 1974, but the couple broke up after only two years. Another daughter, Lola, was born in the early 1980s from a later marriage.
After numerous film bits, stardom was finally his with the leading rebel-like role of Pierrot in Bertrand Blier's anarchic comedy Going Places (1974) [Going Places], which also starred up-and-coming actor Gérard Depardieu and lady love Miou-Miou. He and Depardieu earned instant "anti-hero" stardom in this tale of two wanderlust petty thugs. Patrick's genius for dark, offbeat comedy was apparent in the number of black comedies that came his way. Catherine & Co. (1975) [Catherine & Co.] co-starred Patrick with Jane Birkin, a social commentary on the prostitution business. He followed this with the crime drama The French Detective (1975) [The French Detective] as Lino Ventura's inspector sidekick. Dewaere earned high marks for his off-balanced role in La meilleure façon de marcher (1976) [The Best Way], then paired up again with Depardieu in the Oscar-winning cross-over comedy Get Out Your Handkerchiefs (1978) [Get Out Your Handkerchiefs].
Infinitely more interested in searching out complex roles than fame, his work in films were more often than not experimental, low budget and quirky in style. He appeared innately drawn to playing sensitive, scruffy, miserable neurotics, misfits and losers, as exemplified by his characters in Hothead (1979) [Hothead], Serie Noire (1979), Heat of Desire (1981) [Heat of Desire], Hotel America (1981) [Hotel America] which co-starred Catherine Deneuve, and the critically-acclaimed Beau-père (1981).
This obsession may have triggered a deep and profound suffering in his own off-screen personal life. Unlike his counterpart Depardieu, Patrick's fame never branched out internationally, but he was recognized consistently throughout Europe for his superlative portrayals. Amazingly, he was nominated for seven César awards (the French equivalent of the "Oscar") but never won.
Patrick's career ended in tragic and still mysterious circumstances. Shortly before the release of the film Paradis pour tous (1982) [Paradise for All], a dark comedy in which his character commits suicide, the 35-year-old actor decided to end his own life by shooting himself with a rifle in his Paris home on July 16, 1982. At the time he was working on the Claude Lelouch's film Edith and Marcel (1983). A shocking, inexplicable end to friends, fans and family alike, Dewaere later became the subject of a full-length French documentary Patrick Dewaere (1992), which was shown at the Cannes Film Festival. The Patrick Dewaere Award was established in France in 1983.- Born in Florida in 1949, Brad Davis moved to Georgia after graduating from high school to pursue an acting career. From there, he moved to New York City, twice, to find work. By the early 1970s Davis was acting in off-Broadway plays while studying acting at the Academy of Dramatic Arts. His stage work led to his movie debut and to television shows such as the hit Sybil (1976) and the mini-series Roots (1977). His biggest success was in 1978 with the lead role in Midnight Express (1978) where he played Billy Hayes, a young American imprisoned in Turkey for drug smuggling. It won him a Golden Globe award.
Another memorable movie role in 1982 was playing the title character of Querelle (1982), a ruggedly lethal sailor who seduces and sets both men and women's hearts aflutter.
Davis contracted AIDS in 1979 apparently from his one-time cocaine addiction, but in response to the anti-AIDS hysteria in Hollywood, Davis kept his illness a secret for a number of years and continued to act. His later years had him finally revealing that he had AIDS by the late 1980s and he became an AIDS activist in bashing the Hollywood industry and US government for ignoring and shunning victims suffering from the hideous disease. Brad Davis died in 1991 at age 41. His widow, Susan Bluestein, continues his activist work in the fight against AIDS. - Actor
- Writer
Marc Porel was born on 3 January 1949 in Lausanne, Switzerland. He was an actor and writer, known for The Psychic (1977), Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man (1976) and Don't Torture a Duckling (1972). He was married to Barbara Magnolfi and Bénédicte Lacoste. He died on 15 August 1983 in Casablanca, Morocco.- Actor
- Soundtrack
It's fair to say that if 'Frank Capra (I)' hadn't cast Robert "Bobby" Williams in his 1931 film Platinum Blonde (1931) the actor would be entirely forgotten today. When the movie was made available on video in the 1980s the promotional copy on the video box emphasized the names most buffs would recognize: actresses Jean Harlow and Loretta Young, and director Capra himself. But for many viewers there's no question about it, Williams steals the show, with his low-key flair for comedy and unique, sleepy-eyed charm. Viewers may well ask "Who is this guy, and why haven't I heard of him?" The reason is simple, and sad: he died of peritonitis in 1931 just as 'Platinum Blonde (1931)_ went into wide release, just when he was on the brink of stardom.
Born in 1897 in the vicinity of Morganton, North Carolina, he was raised on a farm. The acting bug bit early: he ran away from home at age 11 to join a tent show. He endured a long, hard apprenticeship as an actor, performing on Mississippi river boats and in stock companies touring the Midwest before he reached New York as a young man. When Williams made his Broadway debut in the early 1920s, the New York stage had entered its richest era, when hundreds of shows opened each season. Williams' stage credits include Eyes of Youth opposite Marjorie Rambeau, The Trial of Mary Dugan, Milgrim's Progress, Scarlet Pages, and Love, Honor and Betray with Alice Brady. Several of these plays were made into silent movies but Bobby was not cast in the film versions, perhaps because he was based in New York. His best remembered Broadway role was that of Abie in the original production of Abie's Irish Rose (1922), an ethnic comedy considered old fashioned even when it opened. Critics hated it, but the show became the biggest success of its era, running for five years.
When Abie's Irish Rose opened, Bobby was married to singer Marion Harris, a vaudeville and recording artist who was far better known than he. Perhaps her greater fame was a source of tension, but for whatever reason the marriage did not last long. The couple had one daughter, also named Marion, who later became a singer in her own right under the name Marion Harris Jr.
Even at the time of Williams' greatest Broadway success in Abie's Irish Rose, he seemed stalked by tragedy. Just a few days after the show opened, Bobby was driving from his home in Great Neck, Long Island, to the theater for a matinée performance. When he reached Corona, Queens, a 7 year-old boy named James Cali dashed into the street in front of his car. Williams was unable to stop or swerve, and the boy was knocked to the ground. The child died of a skull fracture hours later while Williams was held by the police for questioning. Character actor Wallace Ford, who had played the role of Abie during the show's pre-Broadway tour, stepped back into the role for the matinée and the next few performances while Williams recovered from shock. It appears that no charges were filed against him in the wake of the tragedy. Williams resumed the role of Abie but did not stay with the show much longer.
In the spring of 1924, Williams married actress Alice Lake, best known as leading lady in several film comedies made by 'Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle' and Buster Keaton in the late 1910s. Once again, the marriage was brief. In February of 1925 the daily paper the New York Mirror detailed the couple's separation in an article with the headline: "Gay Life Parts Couple; Robert Williams, Juvenile Actor, Packs Trunk and Leaves His Wife, Alice Lake, Pal of Viola Dana ." Without directly stating that either Lake or Dana were gay or bisexual, the article strongly implied that their relationship went beyond friendship, and was responsible for the breakup of Lake's marriage to Williams. The following day the newspaper allowed Dana a rebuttal in which she denied being a home wrecker and said she knew nothing of the Williams' marital problems. In any event, the couple divorced soon afterward.
For the next several years Williams remained busy with stage work. He also married actress Nina Penn, and at last seemed to find marital stability. In 1930 Williams was cast in the Broadway production of Donald Ogden Stewart 's play Rebound which proved to be moderately successful, or at least successful enough to be purchased by RKO for filming. By this point the talkie revolution had hit Hollywood and the studios were snapping up plays, playwrights, and stage actors by the hundreds. Williams went to Hollywood and repeated his role of Johnnie Coles opposite Ina Claire in the film version of Rebound. In rapid succession he appeared in two other films for RKO, The Common Law (1931) opposite Constance Bennett, and Devotion (1931) with Ann Harding and Leslie Howard.
It was then that 'Frank Capra (I)' cast Bobby in Platinum Blonde (1931), for Columbia Pictures. Williams played down-to-earth reporter Stew Smith, who is drawn to socialite Anne Schuyler (Jean Harlow ) despite their obvious differences in background. Stew marries Anne while his fellow reporter Gallagher, a gal accepted in the city room as "one of the boys," waits patiently for Stew to recognize that his marriage was a mistake and that she is in love with him. The role of Gallagher was assigned, rather bizarrely, to the luminously beautiful Loretta Young, who was then 18 years old and would never be anyone's idea of "one of the boys." For that matter, Harlow wasn't all that believable as a haughty socialite either, but for Williams the role of Stew Smith fit like a glove. This was the sort of role that within a few years would become the province of actors like Spencer Tracy, James Cagney, and occasionally Clark Gable: the man's man with attitude, macho without being obnoxious about it, a guy who is good at his work but has a faint air of insolence about him. Williams pulls it off beautifully and effortlessly steals the show from his miscast co-stars. One wants to see more of his work.
Unfortunately, his work was at an end, for this star-making performance turned out to be Williams' swan song. Bobby was rehearsing with Constance Bennett for his next RKO picture, Lady with a Past (1932), when he complained of stomach pains. After a day or two the pain worsened, and despite his protests Williams was rushed to a hospital for an appendicitis operation. Before the operation was completed his appendix burst. Days later, on November 3, 1931, Williams died of peritonitis. He was 34 years old. Platinum Blonde (1931) had been released just four days earlier, and the first reviews proclaimed that Hollywood had a new star. Instead, Robert Williams became one of Hollywood's great might-have-beens.- Actor
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Alan Bates decided to be an actor at age 11. After grammar school in Derbyshire, he earned a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London. Following two years in the Royal Air Force, he joined the new English Stage Company at the Royal Court Theatre. His West End debut in 1956, at 22, was also the company's first production. In the same year Bates appeared in John Osborne's "Look Back in Anger," a play that gave a name to a generation of postwar "angry young men." It made Bates a star and launched a lifetime of his performing in works written by great modern playwrights -- Harold Pinter, Simon Gray, Storey, Bennett, Peter Shaffer and Tom Stoppard (as well as such classic playwrights as Anton Chekhov, Henrik Ibsen, August Strindberg and William Shakespeare). Four years later Bates appeared in his first film, a classic: The Entertainer (1960), in which he plays one of Laurence Olivier's sons. More than 50 film roles have followed, one of which, The Fixer (1968) (from a novel by Bernard Malamud) earned an Academy Award nomination for Bates. He married Victoria Ward in 1970. Their twin sons, Benedick and Tristan, were born in 1971. Tristan died during an asthma attack in 1990; Ward died in 1992. Bates threw himself into his work to get through these tragedies, and spoke movingly about the effects of his losses in interviews. He was the Patron of the Actors Centre in Covent Garden, London; Bates and his family endowed a theatre there in memory of Tristan Bates, who, like his father and brother, was an actor. With few exceptions, Bates performed in premium works, guided by intuition rather than by box office. For each role he created a three-dimensional, unique person; there is no stereotypical Alan Bates character. Women appreciate the sensitivity he brought to his romantic roles; gay fans appreciate his well-rounded, unstereotyped gay characters; and the intelligence, humor and detail - the smile that started in the eyes, the extra pat or squeeze, the subtle nuances he gave to his lines, his beautiful, flexible voice - are Bates hallmarks that made him special to all his admirers. The rumpled charm of his youth weathered into a softer but still attractive (and still rumpled) maturity. In his 60s Alan Bates continued to divide his time among films, theatre and television. His 1997 stage portrayal of a travel writer facing life's big questions at the bedside of his comatose wife in Simon Gray's "Life Support" was called "a magnificent performance, one of the finest of his career" (Charles Spencer, Sunday Telegraph, 10 August 97). His last two roles in New York earned critical praise and all the Best Actor awards Broadway can bestow. He was knighted in January 2003, and only a few weeks later began treatment for pancreatic cancer. He was positive that he would beat the disease, and continued to work during its course, only admitting to being "a bit tired." His courage and strength were remarkable, and even in his final days his humor remained intact. After his death, there was an outpouring of affection and respect. As Ken Russell said in his Evening Standard tribute, "The airwaves have been heavy with unstinted praise for Alan Bates since his untimely death . . . All the tributes were more than justified for one of the great actors ever to grace the screen and stage."- Being born and raised in Edinburgh, Charleson attended the Royal High School and then went on to attend Edinburgh University. He initially studied architecture but switched to an MA degree after cultivating an interest in acting. He won a place at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art after graduating from Edinburgh.