Discover Richard Jenkins & Frank Langella
2008 was a year of older actors in Hollywood. If one looks at the Oscar nominations in the best Actor category The youngest guy is Brad Pitt who is 40+. Three of them were mostly unheard of to most mainstream audiences. Richard Jenkins, Frank Langella & Mellisa Leo. All three super-talented actors who have been toiling away doing small parts here & there. Sometimes big ones too, but always a little short of recognition & fame. And it all came together in one year for them. But this post is mostly about Jenkins & Langella, as I missed out of Frozen River in the theaters. To be fair to Jenkins, his breakout moment was few years earlier on TV in the amazing Six Feet Under.
RICHARD JENKINS – This post was was inspired after I watched THE VISITOR last night. I highly recommend this lovely film to everyone on PFC. I became a huge Jenkins fan after I discovered him in SIX FEET UNDER.
He plays the dead father with so much charm. Whenever he is not in the screen, I was missing his character. He has been playing small roles in films for so long that after Six Feet Under became a sensation I think many people started noticing Jenkins in older films. He has acted in a few Coen Brothers films. He was hilarious in Flirting with Disaster. David recast him in his other masterpiece I Heart Huckabees. So after watching 4 seasons of Six Feet Under last year to find him Nominated for Oscars for a Indie film was quite unbelievable. The movie reminded me of a lot of good New York Indie films. The way it was shot. The actors were really good esp Haaz Sleiman as Tarek & the beautiful Hiam Abbass as Tarek’s mother Mouna.
But I would strongly advise against watching the trailer or The Visitor online. I just watched it & it basically shows the whole film in almost the same order in 2 minutes. So please stay away from its trailers if you want to enjoy the film.
FRANK LANGELLA - I discovered him in 2007 in another beautiful New York indie film – Starting Out In The Evening. There must be something about films about older men in NY. I have been talking about him to everyone who would listen. Not anymore because He got an even bigger breakout film – Frost/Nixon. As far as the film is concerned I didn’t care much. It was more like a TV movie. But I’m glad that Langella is finally having him moment. Because he deserves every bit of it. To understand my love for him please watch Starting out In the Evening.
Films like Visitor & Starting out is what makes watching film so pleasurable sometimes. A simple subtle observation of a moment in someone’s life.
Tags: Frank Langella, Richard Jenkins, Six Feet Under, Starting Out in the Evening, The Visitor
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Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
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Kundan Shah
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Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
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Ashvin Kumar
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Pankaj Advani
Revathy
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Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
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Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
For me Richard Jenkins will always be Nathaniel Fisher. SFU is of one of the few fav serials of mine…I saw The Visitor after I got to know that J stars in it. He’s one of the few ators who look quite normal n boring at the outset but can unravel a real dark side on surprise….A great actor who came into the limelight only this year…
Same here Arthi.
Jenkins will always be Fisher for me.
Since then I ‘m getting my hands on everything he has worked on.
Thanks for writing this….I also saw Visitor, Frozen River & Frost/Nixon…& was blown over by these unknown actors…
Havn’t seen SFU…the only other role I remember of Jenkins was as Scarlet Johasson’s father in Cohen Bro’s The Man Who Wasn’t There…
I would like to add that in F/N the other lead Michel Sheen was also awesome….so was Misty Upham as the Indian lady in FR…
BTW The Visitor comes from the director of Station Agent, that film also contained some stellar performances by some more unknown actors…especially Peter Dinklage…
Langella as Nixon was my pick of the performances last year…much above either rourke or penn
@Rustick
Have you seen Anthony Hopkins as Nixon?