{"id":162174,"date":"2026-02-05T08:30:18","date_gmt":"2026-02-05T13:30:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=162174"},"modified":"2026-02-04T09:57:04","modified_gmt":"2026-02-04T14:57:04","slug":"charlotte-rampling-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=162174","title":{"rendered":"\u201cSince the beginning, I\u2019ve said, \u2018I\u2019m not going to get involved with my image.\u2019\u201d \u2013 Charlotte Rampling"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nIt’s her birthday today. <\/p>\n

I first saw Charlotte Rampling in Angel Heart<\/i>, where she has one hauntingly weird scene: a rumpled schlubby Mickey Rourke visits her to question her. Her apartment is filled with strange artifacts, beautifully placed. The decor is a mixture of lush-bordello and shabby-chic. There is the creepy sound of the piano, the one striking notes, and the clinking of her spoon against the side of the cup. Every sound has clarity, adding to the sense of her character’s strangeness. There’s her quiet intense voice, measured, yet with dark knowledge beneath it. Her light blue eyes seem to see right through him. Charlotte Rampling is a beautiful woman, but there is an unnerving quality to her beauty. It is not come-hither beauty. It is beware-beauty. <\/p>\n

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\nI had no idea who she was. I was instantly intrigued and began keeping my eyes peeled for her. She’s my kind of actress. Fearless. Un-pin-down-able. Doesn’t seem to give a fuck. Doesn’t care at all about her beauty, except this it is one of the many useful tools in her arsenal. Throughout her career, she has resisted classification and type-casting and she also just doesn’t recognize any limitations. She does not make “careerist” choices. She hasn’t waited until she’s elderly to start making brave bold unconventional moves. She started OUT that way. (I always think of Rampling and Helen Mirren as similar: both of them started out making attention-getting controversial choices in what films they appeared in. They refused to be “someone’s girlfriend”. They never took boring roles. The pressure on beautiful young women to only do certain kinds of things is super intense. It takes … balls … to resist. Gena Rowlands. Theresa Russell. Bibi Andersson. Charlotte Rampling is one of THOSE.) <\/p>\n

Angel Heart<\/i> was striking, but when I rented 1974’s The Night Porter<\/i> (with Dirk Bogarde) I realized who I was dealing with. Charlotte Rampling made herself known to me. If you want to understand her as an actress, start here. She was in only scene in Angel Heart<\/i>. She’s in almost every scene of The Night Porter<\/i> and she is such a disturbing and dark presence you almost can’t look at her. <\/p>\n

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\nIn my wild 20s, I wanted to wear that as a Halloween costume, but cooler heads prevailed. <\/p>\n

She is one of the scariest actresses of that lucky generation who “came up” in a time when directors\/writers – often men – were creating these monster parts for women requiring great skill and courage. You don’t cuddle up to Charlotte Rampling, in the same way you don’t warm<\/i> to Gena Rowlands or Theresa Russell (eve if you love them. They scorn your love somehow. Not as humans, but their characters are so remote and self-obsessed – or even mad, and their madness warns you off). You admire, but you also step back. All can do as an audience member is sit back, shut up, stop wondering why they are so DIFFERENT from other actresses (where is the inspirational closure, where is the self-empowerment message, where is the resolution, where is the clarity?), and let yourself be overwhelmed. They are frightening titanic figures. <\/p>\n

Her performance in The Night Porter<\/i> is shocking, and I don’t shock easily. The clips are age-restricted so you have to click through. Here’s her first entrance. <\/p>\n

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