Dan Callahan is one of our best writers on the craft of acting. Not only does he describe why a performance is good, he digs into the much thornier issue of how it is good. This is where most critics fail. They have no idea “how” something is good, and if they tried to describe it, words would fail. What quality in an actor’s voice expresses a moment? What makes a certain gesture so eloquent? What is going on in a particularly famous closeup? Callahan breaks apart the nuts and bolts of moments, so we can see what might be happening, while also acknowledging that there is a beautiful mystery involved with great acting talent.

Callahan has had a busy couple of years. In 2012, his first book, Barbara Stanwyck: The Miracle Woman, was published. In 2014, he wrote the first biography of Vanessa Redgrave, Vanessa: The Life of Vanessa Redgrave. (I interviewed Dan about his Vanessa book for Rogerebert.com.) What distinguishes these two works from other more conventional biographies is Callahan’s well-considered analysis of Redgrave’s and Stanwyck’s acting gifts, not just who they were and are, but who they are as actresses. Last year came two books from Callahan: his beautiful first novel, That Was Something, about a movie-mad undergraduate in 1990s New York (I wrote about it here), as well as The Art of American Screen Acting, 1912-1960, where Dan writes about figures as varied as Lillian Gish and James Dean. (I interviewed Callahan about this book for Slant.)

The Art of American Screen Acting 1960 to Today, the second volume, was published last month. In it, Callahan writes about 40 actors, 20 men and 20 women, whom he considers to be, as he says in the interview below, “masters of the acting art.” From Jack Nicholson to Patricia Clarkson, Callahan turns his insightful focus onto what these actors did (and still do), and – more important – how they do it.

It was a pleasure to sit down and talk with Dan about his book.

Faye Dunaway, “Bonnie and Clyde”

Were there unique challenges for you in putting together this second volume? It takes us through a very different era of acting, so I’m curious how you handled it.

The narrative arc of the first book – from silent-era Lillian Gish to Method-based Kim Stanley – is very clear. The arc here isn’t as clear. I knew I needed to present some contrasts because so many of the people in the book – Al Pacino, Faye Dunaway, Jane Fonda – studied with Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio. This is why I brought in the English actors and the influence of Olivier. Someone like Daniel Day-Lewis is torn between the two. He’s influenced by Montgomery Clift and a lot of the Method actors but then he’s also influenced by Olivier, especially as he gets older. In interviews he will often speak against Olivier. Anthony Hopkins sometimes does too.

Is this like “the anxiety of influence”?

Yes. They want to get away from Olivier’s influence.

In the book, you use a famous anecdote to illustrate this contrast: the exchange between Laurence Olivier and Dustin Hoffman while filming Marathon Man. Olivier watched Hoffman’s preparations to play the role and said, “Why don’t you just try acting, dear boy?”

That anecdote is almost always told in favor of Olivier. People take Olivier’s side. I think they’re both right and both wrong. What Hoffman’s doing in his performance in Marathon Man is way too much. On the other hand, Olivier does some very bad work towards the end of Marathon Man because he doesn’t care enough. Olivier doesn’t care enough and Dustin Hoffman cares too much. The ideal would be to care just enough. So much of acting comes down to proportion.

Laurence Olivier and Dustin Hoffman, “Marathon Man”

That’s the problem with the Actors Studio actors sometimes. They give their all for every single part and if they work a lot, they start to look promiscuous. You’re giving your soul for every little episode of Law & Order. Anne Jackson said that unless Kim Stanley went into a frenzy of emotion, she didn’t feel like she was giving it her all. But you don’t always have to go into a frenzy of emotion. I sound like a Stella Adler student, which is what I am.

Another dichotomy you lay out so well is the difference between the teachings of Stella Adler and Lee Strasberg. So many people in the book studied with either one or the other, and it becomes a theme almost, or an organizing principle for the book. To those who don’t know about the disagreement between the two teachers, could you sum it up?

There was a war between Stella Adler and Lee Strasberg, mainly on her side. She said that acting is all about the imagination and research and the physical, whereas Strasberg went into sense memory, private moments, and using your own life and emotions for your characterization. What Stella Adler said was: if you are playing a Queen abdicating her throne, what in your puny little life is going to possibly be analogous? You have to do research, you have to use your imagination for that.

Stella Adler

Robert De Niro studied with Stella Adler and he is the type of Method actor who does research and wants to become the character. Whereas, when I interviewed Ellen Burstyn, I asked her: “Do you ever look outside of your own experience when you do a characterization?” and she said no. I was somewhat surprised, even though I knew in the back of my head that she worked this way. She is the shining star of the Lee Strasberg style.

Lee Strasberg

But we have moved away from all of this, and the reason for that is Meryl Streep. She – almost single-handedly – moved acting away from the Strasberg style. Al Pacino, when he was interviewed by Lawrence Grobel, said he saw Sophie’s Choice, and was very inspired and so when he did Scarface, he wanted to do all of these physical transformations. When Streep studied at Yale, she was offended when the Actors Studio people and the old Group Theatre people told her to use her own emotions. So throughout the 80s, she did all these movies, using Olivier-type acting, with wigs and accents, and it had a profound effect on everyone.

Meryl Streep, “Sophie’s Choice”

That’s why acting began to change in the 80s, and that’s why actors now can pick and choose how they want to work. You don’t have this orthodoxy of the Strasberg students of the 70s which – as impressive as a lot of their work is – is overly gloomy. So many of the films in this book – as compared to the films in the first book – are bleak tragedies, without any hope, or even a catharsis.

Not too many romances, either.

No! It’s a very male era. That’s why the men come first in this book, whereas the women were first in the first book. The men take over in the 70s. Now, this was 50 years ago, and we’re moving away from that again. I included Ben Whishaw – whom I love – because he is unthinkable in any other time than our own. He’s a “right now” kind of actor. He’s very poetic, he works in the theatre, he allows himself to be fragile.

Ben Whishaw, “Beat”

Gérard Philipe and River Phoenix were like that too. River Phoenix is an important actor and what he did in My Own Private Idaho in particular is still enormously influential, but I also think you can’t go any further with that kind of self-destructive acting. Phoenix didn’t study with Strasberg, but what he’s doing in that movie – which I love – is the end of that 60s/70s ripping-yourself-to-shreds for a part. River Phoenix in My Own Private Idaho is the end point for that.

River Phoenix, “My Own Private Idaho”

You did not include Meryl Streep and Jessica Lange in the book.

These are really survey books and Streep and Lange are both too big as subjects for this type of book. Meryl Streep is the Apollonian and Jessica Lange is the Dionysian, so I do want to treat them at some length at some point.

Jessica Lange, “Frances”

Of all the people I left out of the book, I wish I had included Robert Duvall. It was between him and Gene Hackman and Gene Hackman got in because of Another Woman. So Robert Duvall should be in the book. When he turns up in movies now as an older man in character parts, he lifts up the game of everyone around him.

With the Pacino chapter fresh in my mind, over the last two days I watched the Godfather trilogy. His performance as Michael Corleone is so famous it’s almost in danger of being taken for granted. Talk to me about why Michael Corleone is so important.

Pacino’s performance as Michael Corleone impressed me the most of any of the performances in the book, particularly the scene in the Italian restaurant where he has to decide if he’s going to kill for his crime family. That’s why it’s the image on the cover of the book. With every shift of his eyes, it’s like a whole Dostoevsky novel right there on his face.

Al Pacino, “The Godfather”

Right before he stands up, his eyes go up into the back of his head. It’s like he’s erasing himself morally. When Greta Garbo dies at the end of Camille, her eyes go up into her head, but his eyes go up because he’s killing himself while he’s still alive. And then there’s his great physical movement of tossing the gun away. He doesn’t do it in a showy way. The proportions of the performance are all perfect. Like I said, great acting is all about proportion. The arc of the character, the moral decay of the character, is complete in that first movie.

De Niro has said that everyone in Hollywood read for Michael. It’s the part every actor wanted. One of the things you do in the book is to highlight the distinct qualities of whatever actor you’re discussing. These people are not interchangeable and it’s difficult to imagine them swapping roles. This is most obvious in the case of Michael Corleone, since practically every male actor in your book read for the role.

I can imagine Jack Nicholson as Sonny, but not as Michael. De Niro and Dustin Hoffman could play aspects of Michael and they probably would have done it really well. But none of them could do the full picture like Pacino did.

And what is that? What is the full picture?

Pacino has this dangerous seductive thing, which De Niro and Hoffman don’t have. Nicholson and Warren Beatty don’t have it, either. It’s this evil romantic seductive thing, based in vulnerability. Pacino is small, with a delicate face and large eyes. There’s something feminine there. All the great stars have a mixture of the two sexes. Pacino is a great actor in his best work because of this feminine strain in him and the delicacy of his face. He’s at his best when you don’t see anything that he’s actually thinking. You only see little glimmers of it behind the mask of the face. That’s Lee Strasberg work. Michael Corleone is a perfect part for the Strasberg technique.

Have you seen Paterno?

I hadn’t seen Paterno when I turned in my book. I think it’s one of Pacino’s best recent performances.

Al Pacino, “Paterno”

He plays a man presenting a front to the world, and it’s so convincing that you don’t know as an audience member what this guy knows or thinks. It’s only at the end that you see he’s been lying the whole time. Pacino’s only shown you tiny glimmers. Everything is internal and he barely shows you anything and yet you feel all this stuff going on.

Your book inspired me to track down The Local Stigmatic on Youtube! It was so fantastic.

We were just talking about him being seductive. He is so seductive in The Local Stigmatic. It’s a perfect Pacino performance.

Al Pacino, “The Local Stigmatic”

Pacino is so in touch with evil, and he didn’t need to be. He could have done cute victim parts, which he did in Scarecrow. But his actual interest is the underside of being cute and seductive which is: this cute seductive person might be evil. In The Local Stigmatic, he plays more of a small-time crook than Michael Corleone and yet it’s more concentrated in a way because it’s a short film. The Godfather is Pacino’s great statement on evil.

I guess now is the time to address the vast subject of Robert De Niro. You really put him into context, I think. He stands alone.

When I was writing the book, I dug into the De Niro-Scorsese collaboration and I really understood for the first time how unique those films are and how important what De Niro did in them is. I admired the films they made together, but the accomplishment of them wasn’t as apparent to me until I put it in the context of everybody else in the book. What De Niro does in those movies – Taxi Driver and Mean Streets mostly – it isn’t like anything anyone else has done.

Robert De Niro, “Taxi Driver”

It’s somewhat like Brando – and of course he played Brando’s character as a young man in The Godfather II. De Niro’s work is like Brando’s in that his performances are ALL physical. Robert De Niro is a great example of a Stella Adler actor. There isn’t any of this Pacino-Hoffman stuff of “I’ve done all this work and it’s churning away in me.” No. De Niro does a lot of work … but where is it? You do not see the work at all. In Mean Streets it’s like he’s catching a flame, and then in Taxi Driver and the few films after that – he took what Brando was doing and went as far as you could go with it, you cannot go any further, that’s it, you hit your head against the wall. It’s not crowd-pleasing work at all. With De Niro’s work, you have to ask questions like: Where is the self? IS there a self? Somehow he has gone on for 30 years as a huge star even though he can’t do any of the things that stars usually do. He can’t be warm. He can’t really interact with other people.

You compare him to Robert Ryan, which I think is brilliant.

No charm. Nothing seductive. Nothing ingratiating.

I re-watched Mean Streets this week. He is completely unselfconscious.

There is no self. That’s the thing. That’s what happens with Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver. He’s so unselfconscious that … there is no self. Robert De Niro is like an alien who doesn’t know what human behavior is. But we all feel that sometimes, don’t we?

Robert De Niro, “Mean Streets”

I think that’s why the alienated characters he played still have such a big impact. It’s why, 40-50 years later, he still has that reputation. People keep trying to imitate what he did.

But you can’t follow De Niro. There is nowhere else to go. He’s already done it. It’s over. De Niro’s accomplishment is a lonely one.

You really get into it with Anthony Hopkins. Looks like I need to see War and Peace as soon as possible.

As far as men go, Anthony Hopkins is probably the most all-around talented of the 20 men in the book. He’s got danger. Volatility. His performance as Pierre in the BBC mini-series of War and Peace knocked me out. Everything about this part stimulates him. The series lets him develop the characterization over many episodes. All of the facets of a human being are there.

Anthony Hopkins, “War and Peace”

How does he work? What’s his process?

He trained with Olivier. If you see him in Three Sisters from 1970, he’s stuck with these British actors who are singing the lines and it’s all very dead, this embalming of the classics. He knew he needed to get away from that. What’s fascinating is: If you look at his filmography, there’s a lot of trash! He has a great taste for trash. So he’ll do Hollywood Wives, and then he’ll do a difficult Ibsen play, brilliantly, and then he does A Change of Seasons where he’s tussling in a hot tub with Bo Derek. Or Magic. Magic is vital genre material and it unleashes something in him.

Anthony Hopkins, “Magic”

War and Peace does too. Because of his theatrical training, he has great versatility, unlike Pacino – as great as he is in Godfather and Dog Day Afternoon. Hopkins found the perfect balance between what he learned from Olivier and the classics and what he got from American genre material and he blended it all together. The Remains of the Day is probably his best feature film performance. There’s that great scene with Emma Thompson when she tries to look at the book he’s holding.

Emma Thompson and Anthony Hopkins, “The Remains of the Day”

He’s very feminine in the scene, like a little girl almost, soft and yielding. And yet the man he’s playing is a fool.

Which is the tragedy of the character. The character has wasted his life.

And here’s the thing: There’s nothing sentimental about Hopkins. It wouldn’t work if he was playing for sympathy. He doesn’t. You sympathize with the character because he the actor doesn’t play for sympathy. That’s why he’s so good. He’s tough. You have to be tough like that. We all want to be liked, but actors can’t worry about that and Anthony Hopkins doesn’t.

Daniel Day-Lewis is a very important figure in the book. You compare him to so many different people and styles: Charles Laughton, James Cagney, silent film stars, Paul Muni, Method actors …

Daniel Day-Lewis is the best and the worst of all of these.

Can you talk about that?

He has a large reputation which I feel is based a little too much on publicity and his persona. He is at his best when he is working in the vein of Charles Laughton or Montgomery Clift and that’s what he does in My Left Foot. He’s just as good as Laughton at his best in that movie.

Daniel Day-Lewis, “My Left Foot”

But when you get to There Will Be Blood, he’s decided to not do a Laughton-Clift thing, and instead he works in the way Olivier worked, and some of it feels like Olivier at his worst. When you work as seldom as Daniel Day-Lewis does, everything has to count. His work is erratic and it wouldn’t matter as much if there was more of it. If you look at his young performances, you can see him coasting on his looks and his natural charisma. He’s very good and very personal in Phantom Thread. I think he’s returned to the Montgomery Clift-Al Pacino way of working which is “I’ve got all this stuff going on and I’m only going to show you a little bit of it.” The Method style works for him very well. The more heightened style of Olivier and Meryl Streep can lead him into disaster.

Jane Fonda, Faye Dunaway, and Ellen Burstyn all studied with Lee Strasberg.

And it shows. Jane Fonda is as good as she is in They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? because the situation of the dance marathon gets rid of all her tension. Tension sometimes blocks her as an actress. I say in the book that the part is playing her, rather than her playing the part.

Jane Fonda, “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?”

It’s very effective and touching, but you can only do that once. Like I was saying about River Phoenix in My Own Private Idaho, Fonda in They Shoot Horses – you can’t make a career of performances like that.

You describe Faye Dunaway as having almost a dissociated quality.

Like in Puzzle of a Downfall Child. In Puzzle of a Downfall Child, where she plays a mentally disturbed character, she completely detaches from the meanings of words. The mental instability of the character allows her to be as artificial as possible. Thankfully, Dunaway got parts in the 70s where her artificiality works.

Faye Dunaway, “Chinatown”

Evelyn Mulwray in Chinatown is artificial because she has a secret, she’s hiding behind a mask. Diana Christensen in Network is so artificial it’s almost like there’s a human component missing. Faye Dunaway had some great parts in a row and then she did Mommie Dearest which blew it all up. And Mommie Dearest wasn’t really her fault, it was the director’s fault. But still, Dunaway found some good parts for her Strasberg technique, where it’s all internal, and the audience only sees little bits of it. I end the chapter with her best credits. No one’s going to care about the silly films she’s done in the 21st century, and that reality contest show. Her legacy is secure.

Ellen Burstyn is an interesting case. You write about how her performance in Requiem for a Dream raised the stakes for acting.

Burstyn’s red dress monologue in Requiem for a Dream is like Pacino’s restaurant scene in The Godfather. She’s ready for the moment as an actress but then she suddenly somehow channels something else, a kind of soul, this frightened thing, and it’s like she’s going down the drain.

Ellen Burstyn, “Requiem for a Dream”

When I interviewed her, she said she didn’t want to do more than one take of the scene. See, that’s very Strasberg, very un-Olivier. She couldn’t repeat what she did in that scene. It’s like Fonda in They Shoot Horses, or River Phoenix in Idaho. It’s a particular strain in American acting, based on self-destruction and as impressive as it is, I shy from it. I prefer the Lillian Gish style, the Anthony Hopkins style.

The Maggie Smith style?

If you were to ask me who is the best actor of the 40 in the book, right now I would say it’s Maggie Smith. I don’t know how she does what she does. There’s something very mysterious about her talent. Have you seen her as Violet Venable in Suddenly Last Summer? She plays that part in the damnedest way. She makes Violet frightened but evil at the same time. Maggie Smith is the most talented because she can play the greatest range of roles.

Maggie Smith, “Suddenly Last Summer”

And how can she do that? Training?

Training, yes. She always went back to the theatre to replenish herself. She played great classical parts. Why is she able to play Violet Venable so effectively? I think it’s who she is as a person. Maggie Smith is an intelligent woman. She has a very strong reaction and response to life. People love her because they see the surface of this, like “Oh, she’s bitchy,” and yes. She is. But it’s more than that. Of course the bitchiness is enjoyable, but the wellspring of her talent is that she sees what life is, and her judgment about it is negative. Her judgment is negative and authoritative. That is why she is at her most brilliant in Bed Among the Lentils, the 50-minute Alan Bennett monologue which she does to the camera. She plays this wife of a vicar who hates the women in his congregation. You can barely breathe while you watch her.

Maggie Smith, “Bed Among the Lentils”

Her sense of comic timing is also otherworldly.

There was a period in the early 70s when she went astray. She was doing quadruple takes and stuff like that. She started to get bad reviews, so she went to Stratford and did all these classic parts. Someone said Maggie Smith was like cheese in that she’s brilliant for two or three months and then she goes off. She starts schticking it up for the audience. And she knows better.

Maggie Smith as Lady Macbeth

In the 80s, just like Vanessa Redgrave, she got all these great parts. The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne, A Room with a View, A Private Function. Onstage, she did all these Edward Albee plays. Three Tall Women, The Lady from Dubuque, A Delicate Balance. Albee is perfect for her, it’s such astringent material. Maggie Smith is not a romantic. She sees life as it is.

Maggie Smith, “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie”

How did you decide to tackle the singular Gena Rowlands? What was your approach?

I watched A Woman Under the Influence and Opening Night back to back. I wasn’t really getting anywhere when I was dealing with the films separately, and if this chapter was going to be my official reaction to these two movies, I really needed to get it right. It was only when I saw the two films in tandem that I started to understand.

Gena Rowlands, “A Woman Under the Influence”

Mabel in Woman Under the Influence can’t stop her face from doing weird things, she doesn’t know how to be, who to be. Part of it is being a woman, but part of it is existential. Myrtle in Opening Night is like that too. Myrtle can’t act the way she did when she was younger because she’s too aware. It’s like being on a tightrope: if someone says “Look down” you’re going to fall. Myrtle has fallen.

Gena Rowlands, “Opening Night”

But Mabel … I’m so haunted by the moment in Woman Under the Influence where the guy in the backyard says, “You’ve been acting a little strange. Are you aware of that?” She doesn’t react at first, but then there’s a shot of her where she’s looking down, and it’s like this guy has caught her out. She has an idea of herself, of what she would like to be, and she is forced to confront the fact that she is freakish to other people.

The way he looks at her is very upsetting.

He doesn’t seem like an actor. He behaves the way a man would in that situation in real life. He’s uncomfortable. You can’t really blame him. She can be very aggressive. What do you think the ending of A Woman Under the Influence means? She says, “I’m really nuts. I don’t know how this whole thing got started.” They put the kids to bed and it’s almost like a catharsis has been reached. It’s the opposite of Myrtle in Opening Night. Myrtle is aware and her career is fucked. Mabel at the end becomes aware and it frees her.

Peter Falk and Gena Rowlands, “A Woman Under the Influence”

I think the ending shows Cassavetes’ generally positive attitude towards life, and our prospects as human beings. He made these movies in the grim 70s and they are not necessarily easy watches but I think he finds people interesting, and I think he has hope. His films are not Five Easy Pieces, which ends with the man leaving the woman at the truck stop. In Woman, husband and wife get into bed. There’s hope.

That’s true. This is probably why I can watch A Woman Under the Influence or Opening Night any time, but I’m not throwing on Five Easy Pieces or The King of Marvin Gardens. People seem to think A Woman Under the Influence or Opening Night are grueling, but I don’t find them that way.

I don’t either. I think of the scene in Love Streams where she gets her hand stuck in the bowling ball, and you cringe for her, but the attitude of the scene, the attitude of Cassavetes is: She’s having fun. It’s on us if we judge her for what that looks like. If we treat someone the way that guy treats Mabel, and I’ve probably done that in my life at some point –

How many times have you been Mabel, though?

I am Mabel.

I am too.

The critique is gentle with Cassavetes. Or, it shifts around, let’s say that.

Yes. There’s a lot of shifting going on with him.

I loved what you said: without these movies how would we have known that Gena Rowlands had this in her?

I wrote in the book that Cassavetes knew she was “a beautiful blonde with the soul of a Bowery bum.” Someone who loves you is going to know that about you and base films around it. Thank God.

Gena Rowlands, “Gloria”

You begin the Diane Keaton chapter a little bit critical of her.

What’s fascinating about her is that she has great talent which means she has access to emotion – deep anger and sorrow. But she’s also very neurotic and so she feels she must put all this crap on top of it. You and I always talk about “indicating.” Diane Keaton does a lot of indicating, but what’s tricky is she does her indicating on top of her talent and her gift. But when she’s angry, she forgets about all that. In Shoot the Moon, when she sits down on the stairs with her cigarette, it’s like a Bette Davis moment.

Diane Keaton, “Shoot the Moon”

I think Diane Keaton is the only person in the book who studied with Sanford Meisner. She is someone who is deeply connected to her scene partner, gets all this stimulation from them. This comes from Meisner’s repetition exercises. She burrows really deeply into a scene. She’s not someone who can be alone.

As far as directors go, Scorsese and Cassavetes were really the only standouts in the book, in terms of their impact on screen acting in this period.

Scorsese with De Niro and Cassavetes with Rowlands are the two important actor-director partnerships. But aside from that …

Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese

If you look at Anthony Hopkins in The Remains of the Day, or Maggie Smith in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, the directors don’t have anything to do with those performances. Part of that is because these actors are masters of the acting art. However, sometimes I wish the movies themselves from this period were better.

The centerpiece of the book is the Judy Davis chapter.

It’s the longest chapter in the book and it was the most difficult because I had to figure out what it was she was doing. She’s never naturalistic. She’s always aware of everything.

Judy Davis, “High Tide”

Self-consciousness kills acting but she uses self-consciousness – or consciousness of acting – in a way so that she has all the best of the older style. Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn, this is very close to what Judy Davis is doing. She’s very heightened. But there’s also this Myrtle-Mabel thing: the awareness of the characters and Judy Davis herself is aware on some level that she’s giving a performance of herself, whether she’s playing Judy Garland or Sante Kimes or Golda Meir. Judy Davis is a moralist. She’s like Maggie Smith in that way. Judy Davis is an intelligent woman and she has a reaction to life and her reaction is negative.

Are there any young actresses today who have a negative view of life?

Samantha Morton does. She’s the youngest actress in the book. But no, in general we don’t. Young actresses today – the Emma Stones, the Anne Hathaways – they’re musical theatre girls who want to be loved. I can’t stand it.

Speaking of Morton, I just watched Longford after reading your book. Her performance is so chilling.

You hear about Myra Hindley before you see her, all the children she’s murdered, and so you expect something when you see her for the first time. Morton comes out and she’s just this meek little person.

Samantha Morton, “Longford”

And the expected thing would be that the actor would begin to show that the meek thing is a put-on. Samantha Morton doesn’t do that.

She’s a true sociopath.

Yes. A true sociopath is never going to drop the act. She figures it’s smart to never drop the meek act, and in fact to have it not be an act at all, to just be meek. Then at the very end, in the last scene where she’s dying, there’s a little smile on her face when she says that evil can be a spiritual experience, too. She’s terrifying. Samantha Morton is an English actress, who came up really rough, in the foster care system. She’s like Barbara Stanwyck in that way.

Samantha Morton, “Code 46”

She doesn’t get the best parts lately. She’s had health troubles. I wish there were younger actresses who I felt I could have included. For a lot of the older people in the book their careers are close to being finished. But then again if you think about Paterno, that’s a new major Al Pacino performance, so you never know.

I first saw Patricia Clarkson in High Art. I had no idea who she was and so I thought they had just found some random German performance artist to be in the movie.

I end with Patricia Clarkson because she’s a very good example of a modern actor. She had to wait til she was 40, like Ellen Burstyn and Gena Rowlands. She works everywhere, she takes what she can get like a thief in the night. She’s stage-trained.

Patricia Clarkson, “High Art”

Can we talk about Patricia Clarkson having a reaction to life, like with Judy Davis or Maggie Smith? I think Patricia Clarkson’s reaction to life is a positive one. She feels possibility. Robert De Niro’s reaction to life is negative. Vanessa Redgrave, on the other hand, has a positive reaction to life. She wants things to be better. Meryl Streep is like that too. She’s not negative. We need both, positive and negative.

In the conclusion of the book, you’re very tough on some pretty popular current figures.

Listen. I have spent most of my adult life watching Nicole Kidman play plum part after plum part – or attempt to play plum part after plum part. She has very limited talent and she has gotten all the big parts for 30 years. I’m sick of it. When I say she has “very limited talent,” I have to define my terms. What is acting talent? It’s very simple. You have an expressive face and an expressive voice and maybe you have some stage training to bring them out. Kidman’s face and voice are very inexpressive, and she tries so desperately hard to surmount that. Cate Blanchett is enormously talented. I don’t think anyone would argue with that. She has access to any emotion. Her face can express anything. So can her voice. She does a lot of Judy Davis type work. The difference is, and it’s major: when I watch Cate Blanchett, I don’t feel like I’m watching someone who has a reaction to life, like Judy Davis does. It’s more like she’s showing off. Blanchett’s performance in Blue Jasmine: that’s a Judy Davis-type performance without the bedrock of Judy Davis herself, without Judy Davis’ reaction to life, a negative reaction which has authority. De Niro’s reaction to life has authority. Maggie Smith’s does too. If we watch them and take that in, maybe we can begin to improve.

Judy Davis, “Husbands and Wives”