Preview: Michael Caine IS Fagin in a new Twist on Oliver Twist

Not going to lie: I am seriously geeked to see this one. As I have noted elsewhere: Michael Caine has received name-above-the-title billing in movies spanning seven decades. How many other actors can claim that?

What’s it all about? According to Lionsgate: “Inspired by Charles Dickens’s iconic novel Oliver Twist, this action-fueled crime-thriller set in contemporary London follows the journey of Twist (Raff Law), a gifted graffiti artist trying to find his way after the loss of his mother. Lured into a street gang headed by the paternal Fagin (Michael Caine), Twist is attracted to the lifestyle — and to Red (Sophie Simnett), an alluring member of Fagin’s crew. But when an art theft goes wrong, Twist’s moral code is tested as he’s caught between Fagin, the police, and a loose-cannon enforcer (Lena Headey).”

And remember: Caine did pretty well for himself the last time he played a character created by Charles Dickens.

Look for Twist in theaters, on digital, and On Demand July 30.

My Top Ten of 2015

To begin, as I do every year, with my standard disclaimer: This may be my list of the Top 10 Movies of 2015 – but it’s not necessary a rundown of the year’s 10 Best Movies. Because, quite frankly, I haven’t seen every single movie released anywhere in the U.S. during the past 12 months. But this most certainly is a list of my favorite films to open in U.S. theaters in 2015.

These are, of course, purely arbitrary and totally subjective choices. And I’ll freely admit that, a decade or so hence, I might look back on the following lineup and want to make additions or deletions. At this point in time, however, I can honestly state these are the 2015 releases that impressed me most. And best. So there.

In alphabetical order:

Assassination -- Choi Dong-hoon's thrilling period drama, set in 1933 Korea during the Japanese occupation, is a sensationally entertaining mash-up of historical drama, Dirty Dozen style shoot-‘em-up, Spaghetti Western-flavored flamboyance, and extended action set pieces that suggest a dream-team collaboration of Sergio Leone, John Woo and Steven Spielberg. Wowser.

Best of Enemies -- A thoroughly engrossing and surprisingly entertaining documentary about the notorious 1968 televised clash between conservative icon William F. Buckley Jr. and liberal gadfly Gore Vidal. It's fascinating as a glimpse at the not so distant past -- and provocative as an account of what arguably was an early step in the decline of political discourse on television.

The Big Short -- Adam McKay's brutally brilliant dramedy about the catastrophic 2008 financial meltdown is by turns hilarious and horrifying, amusing and infuriating. Call it the year's most essential movie, and you won't get an argument from me.

The Hateful Eight -- Quentin Tarantino's shamelessly overstated and immensely entertaining revisionist Western truly is a movie with something to offend everyone. But it's also a balls-out masterwork of robustly impolite swagger.

I Believe in Unicorns -- Filmmaker Leah Meyerhoff's debut feature is a sensitively observed and arrestingly impressionistic coming-of-age drama that feels at once deeply personal and easily accessible. But wait, there's more: Natalia Dyer gives an unforgettable performance as a fantasy-prone teen who falls for a bad boy (Peter Vack) laden with emotional baggage.

Spotlight -- The very best movie about investigative journalism since All the President's Men? Absolutely.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens -- A wonderment, pure and simple.

Steve Jobs -- Director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin elicited many comparisons to Citizen Kane with their stylistically audacious and dramatically compelling film about the complex and controversial Apple co-founder. And with good reason: Much like Orson Welles' classic, their multifaceted portrait reminds us that some people, no matter how much we discover about them, will forever remain elusively unknowable.   

Trainwreck -- Judd Apatow strikes again -- and, better still, launches Amy Schumer's movie stardom -- in a wild and crazy rom-com (which Schumer scripted) that deftly balances uproarious R-rated hilarity and stealthily endearing sincerity.

Youth -- Michael Caine very likely has other great performances left to give, because he is, after all, Michael Caine. But it is difficult (albeit not impossible) to imagine that any of those performances will be greater than the one he gives in Paolo Sorrentino's exquisitely crafted and profoundly affecting drama as Fred Ballinger, an 80-something retired composer-conductor who discovers, much to his surprise, he continues to derive fresh satisfaction from his art -- and his life. 

Runners-up, in no particular order: Brooklyn, The Lesson, All Things Must Pass, The Revenant, Slow West, Bone Tomahawk, Mad Max: Fury Road, Creed, Inside Out and The Winding Stream: The Carters, The Cashes and The Course of County Music.

Caine + Colbert = Cool

I have seen and read dozens, if not hundreds, of interviews with Michael Caine. (I have even conducted one or two of them.) And I must say: Stephen Colbert's 11/21 chat with Sir Michael ranks with one of the very best. My only complaint: Too short. Maybe they'll talk again after Sir Michael lands his Oscar nomination for Youth?

Trailer Park: Vin Diesel (and Michael Caine) in The Last Witch Hunter

"Know what I'm afraid of? Nothing." Vin Diesel probably could have delivered that line in any movie he's ever made. (Well, maybe not The Pacifier -- but almost every movie he's ever made.) Yet he has waited until The Last Witch Hunter to utter this particular announcement of his badassery. 

As you can see in the trailer, Diesel's character matches words with deeds while fearlessly demolishing all manner of supernatural foes. (Gee, I wonder if the movie is intended as the kickoff for a new franchise?) But I must admit: Since I'm kinda-sorta a Michael Caine completist, the primary appeal this movie has for me is the opportunity to see Sir Michael playing a priest. I could be mistaken -- and I'm sure I'll be corrected if I am -- but I think this may be the very first time in his 50-plus-year career that Caine has played a man of the cloth.

The Last Witch Hunter opens Oct. 23 at theaters and drive-ins everywhere.

R.I.P. Mickey Rooney (1920-2014)

In the wake of Mickey Rooney's death Sunday at age 93, much will be written -- and should be written -- about his glory days at MGM, his multiple co-star pairings with Judy Garland, and his lengthy run in the once-popular Andy Hardy franchise. But, truth to tell, I will continue to remember Rooney best for two of his finest achievements as a character actor: His brutally effective turn as the title character in Don Siegel's gritty gangster biopic Baby Face Nelson (1957), and his hilarious portrayal of a pompous retired movie star who makes the wrong people nervous when he announces plans to pen a tell-all autobiography with the help of a ghost writer (Michael Caine) in Mike Hodges' comedy-drama Pulp (1972).

R.I.P.: Bryan Forbes (1926-2013), The man who made The Wrong Box

There was a time when I could repeat verbatim dozens of lines from The Wrong Box, Bryan Forbes’ delightfully daft dark comedy about the madcap scramble for an immense inheritance by Victorians both proper and otherwise.

It helped, of course, that the movie – filled with such deft farceurs as Michael Caine, Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Ralph Richardson, John Mills and Peter Sellers – also was an all-time favorite of my mentor, the late Ralph Thomas Bell, former chairman of the journalism department at Loyola University in New Orleans. During my college years, and for several years afterwards, we often would greet each other with snippets of the 1966 comedy’s droll dialogue, more or less in the fashion of latter-day Monty Python fanatics exchanging quips about dead parrots and killer rabbits. Indeed, whenever we got together as our friendship endured long after my graduation, there was a scarcely a time when one of us didn't make the other laugh out loud simply by saying, in meticulously deadpan style: "We haven't heard the last of this." (The line makes absolutely no sense out of context -- which doubtless increased its value to us as a wonderful sort of private joke.)

Occasionally, we would get on an extended riff while recalling this scene between Peter Cook as a young man in desperate need of a death certificate -- for reasons entirely too complicated too recapitulate here -- and Peter Sellers as a disreputable doctor who's a tad too found of feline companionship. (Note the exchange at approximately the 2:40 mark, when Cook actually asks for the aforementioned certificate.)


Oddly enough, it wasn't until several years after I first saw The Wrong Box that I realized there was yet another reason why I was right to be impressed by the film: Just one year before the comedy reached theaters, director Forbes impressed audiences with the harshly gritty World War II drama King Rat, which featured George Segal in one of his career-best performances as a cynical U.S. Army corporal determined to survive by any means necessary in a Japanese prisoner of war camp. Talk about demonstrating your versatility as a filmmaker. Little wonder that, back in the day, I couldn't conceive of there being any connection between two such disparate movies.

Forbes -- who passed away Wednesday at age 86 after a lengthy illness -- boasted a resume that also included such widely admired films as Whistle Down the Wind, Seance on a Wet Afternoon and The Whisperers, and one truly bizarre concoction, the kinky crime drama Deadfall (starring Michael Caine as a cat burglar who falls for his older partner's very alluring wife), which isn't often discussed in polite company. I have very fond memories of his Long Ago, Tomorrow (a.k.a. The Raging Moon), an unabashedly sentimental and affecting bittersweet love story starring Nanette Newman (Forbes' wife) and Malcolm McDowell (in one of his rare roles as a romantic lead). I am rather less enamored of what's arguably Forbes' best-known film, The Stepford Wives (1975), though I have it on good authority that the 2004 remake (which I've never much wanted to see) makes it look like Citizen Kane.

By all accounts, Forbes enjoyed a full and fulfilling life even when he wasn't directing movies, or writing scripts for other directors. (He shot photos for the album covers of two Elton John albums -- Don't Shoot Me, I'm Only the Piano Player and Goodbye Yellow Brick Road -- and wrote some well-received novels, and two volumes of an autobiography.) I was never privileged to meet the gentleman, so I was never able to tell him just how much The Wrong Box meant to me, and to my friend Tom Bell. But never mind: I strongly suspect he was never at a loss for other people who told him him more or less the same thing.

Recalling Michael Caine recalling 9/11

From a 2002 interview: Michael Caine is, by his own admission, “a news junkie,” the kind of compulsive who’ll reflexively tune his TV to CNN during any lull in a day’s activities. Which is why, on the afternoon of Sept. 11, 2001, while he sat in his London home office, waiting for word from director Phillip Noyce about the previous evening’s New Jersey sneak preview of The Quiet American, he found himself transfixed by the aftermath of the first assault on the World Trade Center.

Then he saw the second plane’s approach.

“And my first reaction,” Caine recalls, “was, ‘Jesus, that’s quick.’ Because, you see, I thought it was one of those planes like they have in California that drop the powder on the forest fires. I thought that’s what this plane was for. And it had only been about a quarter of an hour or 18 minutes since the other plane had hit the building. So I thought, ‘Wow, They got that plane up there so fast, to drop powder on that fire.’

“But then it went straight into the tower.

“And at first, none of it registered. I felt like, OK, I’m not a moron – actually, I feel I’m quite bright. But I was sitting there, stunned, thinking something like, ‘What happened here? It didn’t drop any of that powder, did it?’ It was only about two seconds, I know, but it seemed to me like half an hour. And then I saw the flames – that big woosh! – come out of the building...”

The rest of the interview can be found here.

Michael Caine is Ebenezer Scrooge in Muppet Christmas Carol

Over the years, several people -- including, I must admit, Michael Caine himself -- have reacted with bemused skepticism when I've told them that I think Caine's performance as Ebenezer Scrooge in The Muppet Christmas Carol  not only ranks with Caine's all-time finest performances -- it's also, in my view, the best portrayal of Charles Dickens' miserly character in any movie, ever. Seriously. The beauty part of it is, unlike a lot of actors who perform opposite Muppets, Caine isn't merely trying to be a good sport -- he's being a great actor. After watching the movie again recently -- an annual tradition, I must admit -- I remain convinced: If you could somehow digitally lift this performance from Muppet Christmas Carol and drop it into a more conventional adaptation of Dickens' story -- that is, a movie in which all of Caine's co-stars would be, well, you know, human beings -- it would be every bit as effective and affecting.

R.I.P.: Sue Lloyd (1939-2011)

My sincere condolences to the friends and family of Sue Lloyd, the talented Brit actress who passed away Thursday at age 72 -- and who, at the zenith of her va-va-voom hottiness back in the 1960s, had a profound effect on me. No kidding. In The Ipcress File, she played a secret agent who vamped fellow spy Harry Palmer (Michael Caine) during what was, by '60s standards, a torridly sexy scene.

Lloyd: Do you always wear your glasses?
Caine: Yes. Except in bed.
Lloyd removes Caine's glasses. Fade to next scene.

A few weeks after I saw Ipcress File for the first time -- in 1965, during my freshman year of high school -- I had an eye exam, and was told by the examiner that I was near-sighted and would have to wear glasses. Most guys my age usually whined and complained when given that news. I think the examiner was very surprised when all I did was smile.

Michael Caine: Don't fear the reaper

From Sir Michael Caine, words to live by: "You are going to make every moment count. I mean, you better make every moment count. Live your life now; start in the morning. You mustn’t sit around waiting to die. When it happens you should come into the cemetery on a motorbike, skid to a halt by the side of the coffin, jump in and say: 'Great. I just made it.'" Works for me.

Awesome People Hanging Out Together

Marlon Brando and Bob Hope

Charlie Chaplin and Albert Einstein

Michael Jackson, Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas

Michael Caine and Nancy Sinatra

But wait -- there's more.

Michael Caine: Suave Flirt or Dirty Old Man?

Actually, Vanessa Hudgens tells Details that she enjoyed bonding with my favorite screen actor.

Would you believe... Colin Firth as a conniving art curator? Cameron Diaz as a Texas steer roper?

Usually, an actor has to actually win an Academy Award before he can start having his pick of paycheck roles. But Colin Firth has been a Best Actor front-runner for several months now -- really, since The King's Speech started making the rounds of the festival circuit last fall -- so it comes as no surprise that he's already considered sufficiently bankable to be cast as the male lead of Gambit, an upcoming remake of the 1966 seriocomic heist flick that starred Michael Caine and Shirley MacLaine.

The original Gambit, directed by Ronald Neame (The Poseidon Adventure),  was a tricky, kicky caper in which a cocksure thief (Caine) employed an Eurasian beauty (MacLaine) to pull off a complex con involving a gullible millionaire (Herbert Lom) and a priceless antiquity. (The picture pivoted on a clever switcheroo at the midway point that, back in the day before Internet-disseminated spoilers, actually surprised audiences.) The remake, which will be directed by Michael Hoffman (Soapdish, The Last Station), reportedly deals with a London art curator (Firth) who hits upon an elaborate plan to lure a wealthy collector into buying a fake Monet painting. To pull off the scheme, the curator recruits a Texas steer roper (Cameron Diaz, shown above) to impersonate a woman whose grandfather liberated the real Monet masterwork at the end of World War II.

Are audiences ready to accept Diaz as a lasso-twirling rodeo queen? Can the producers hope to surprise contemporary ticketbuyers with the original plot twist (or some reasonable facsimile thereof)? And if the new Gambit turns out to be box-office smash, will it revive interest in a relatively obscure but fascinating documentary about the U.S. role in the post-WWII liberation of Nazi-seized artwork? Who knows?

But for those of you who are customarily averse to remakes of any any sort, consider this: The screenplay for the new Gambit was written by Joel and Ethan Coen, the filmmaking siblings who didn't fare too badly with their recent re-imagining of True Grit.

Alfie on You Tube

This has been up for well over a year now, so I'm assuming Paramount is OK with it. Well, either that, or some studio employees who should be looking out for this sort of thing are asleep at the switch. In any event, if you've ever wanted to watch the original Alfie -- either again or for the first time -- here's your chance. But don't be surprised if it's not available much longer.

Movies I want to see: London Boulevard

Take a look at this and tell me: Isn't Colin Farrell playing exactly the sort of character you might have expected Michael Caine to essay in the aftermath of 1971's Get Carter? (Hat-tip to Jeffrey Wells for showcasing the trailer.) Of course, I don't know if Farrell would be able to come across as badass as Caine does in what is, for my money, the most cold-blooded murder scene in movie history. Keep in mind that Jack Carter (Caine), a veteran hit man, has been searching for the folks responsible for killing his brother, a relatively straight-laced fellow, back in their home town. When he finally catches up with someone from the old neighborhood who had an indirect role in the slaying... Well, as Carter says: "You knew what I'd do, didn't you, Albert?"

Michael Caine speaks, and old news becomes new news

In recent days, Sir Michael Caine has ignited a firestorm of controversy by telling a British radio interviewer that, back in 1955, as his 56-year-old father lay dying of liver cancer in a London hospital, he asked his dad’s doctor to cut short his suffering.

“I was in such anguish over the pain he was in,” Caine told radio host Nick Ferrari in a taped interview that aired Saturday night, “that I said to this doctor, I said, 'Isn't there anything else you could... just give him an overdose and end this?’ Because I wanted him to go.

"And he said, 'Oh, no, no, no, we couldn't do that.’ And then as I was leaving, he said, 'Come back at midnight'. I came back at midnight and my father died at five past twelve. So he'd done it."

The Telegraph newspaper of Great Britain reported Saturday that, as news of Caine’s comments circulated in the British press prior to the radio broadcast, anti-euthanasia campaigners were quick to criticize the veteran actor. (In an on-line comments section, one angry Telegraph reader demanded that Caine be arrested, and his knighthood revoked.) And as the story continues to gain traction – it even appeared as a Page 2A news tidbit in Sunday’s Houston Chronicle – the firestorm doubtless will spread worldwide as Caine’s words are disseminated through bloggers, newswires and websites.

But here’s the really odd part: This is, quite literally, old news. Really: Caine wrote about his father’s suffering and death way back in 1992, in his best-selling autobiography titled What’s It All About? If you happen to have a paperback copy of the book on a shelf somewhere, take it down and turn to page 94:

“I visited my father for two days, during which time his condition deteriorated rapidly. He was in excruciating pain. I asked the doctor to increase my father’s drugs and he told me that a larger dose would kill him. I looked at him for a moment and said, ‘If this is living, can death be such a bad thing?’ He thought for a moment, then asked me to go away and come back at eleven o’clock that night. I was back there at eleven on the dot. Dad seemed to be much more comfortable now and I sat there holding his hand for an hour or two. He didn’t seem to know that I was there but occasionally he would squeeze my hand and I would squeeze back. The hospital is right opposite the Houses of Parliament, and I could see Big Ben across the river. Eventually it struck one o’clock, and as it did, my father’s eyes opened slightly and he whispered, ‘Good luck, son,’ and died.


“I told the doctor that he had gone and thanked him for all that he had done, and walked back down the corridor…”


Even though I have never – thank God – been in a position similar to Caine’s, I was deeply and profoundly affected when I read this. So much so that, ten years later, I made a special point of complimenting Caine – for his blunt-spoken honesty as well as his expertise as a wordsmith – when we briefly discussed the episode he had written about so movingly.

We were in Austin at the time, while he was on location filming Second-Hand Lions, and I was interviewing him for the New York Daily News. Mind you, we did not spend a lot of time on this subject. Indeed, I wound up not referencing it at all in the article I eventually wrote, partly because it had nothing to do with the primary focus of the piece – the story was about the upcoming release of The Quiet American, and its possible reception in post-9/11 America -- and partly because, well, his autobiography had come out a decade earlier, and I figured the story was, as I said, old news.

But now Caine, inadvertently or otherwise, has invited closer scrutiny of the incident. And by doing so, he has made himself the target of criticism by those who feel what he did – or at least encouraged – is something on the order of mercy killing. Once again, it seems, the professionally outraged will have their say.

And, yes, also once again, it seems the media will help fan the flames of the firestorm.

R.I.P.: Ronald Neame (1911-2010)

Ronald Neame enjoyed a lengthy and productive career in filmmaking by applying the sort of unassuming, old-school professionalism that, alas, often isn't fully appreciated during a professional's lifetime.

The prolific Brit -- who passed away Wednesday in Los Angeles -- began as an assistant camera operator on Blackmail (1929), Alfred Hitchcock'a first talkie, then went on to collaborate with David Lean as cinematographer, producer and/or co-scriptwriter on such '40s classics as Brief Encounter, Oliver Twist and Great Expectations. (Quite the renaissance man, he also earned an Oscar nomination for special effects work on 1942's One of Our Aircraft is Missing.) As a director, he was justly proud of his subtly masterful work on Tunes of Glory (1960) with Alec Guinness -- who also played a cantankerous Dylan Thomas-like artist in Neame's The Horse's Mouth -- and deserved more far more credit than he received for such light and bright entertainments as Gambit (a cheeky 1966 caper with Michael Caine and Shirley MacLaine that, unfortunately, people keep threatening to remake), Prudence and the Pill (1968) and Hopscotch (1980).

It was during an L.A. junket for the latter film that I had one my one and only chance to briefly chat with Neame, whom I found to be a courtly and loquacious gentlemen with a gift for dryly self-deprecating humor. Yes, he agreed, he had a lot to answer for after helping start the "disaster movie" cycle of the '70s with his enormously popular The Poseidon Adventure. But, then again, directing that movie made him financially independent, so he couldn't really find it in his heart to actually apologize for the film. (Of course, he likely was amused more than two decades later when two different sets of filmmakers couldn't do any better -- and, indeed, actually fared much worse -- with their ill-starred remakes of Poseidon as feature and TV-movie projects.)

To give you some idea of Neame's diversity: He directed Maggie Smith's Oscar-winning turn in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969), Judy Garland's final film performance in I Could Go on Singing (1963), and Albert Finney's portrayal of a singing Dickensian skinflint in Scrooge (1970). He also directed A Man Could Get Killed (1966), a semi-spoofy adventure flick best remembered as the movie that introduced the song "Strangers in the Night," and Meteor (1979), a campy sci-fi drama that pitted Sean Connery and Natalie Wood against a big hunk of rock on a collision course with Earth. He was a true journeyman, and his best movies entertained millions. And many of his not-so-good movies were at the very least diverting. That's the sort of track record that defines old-school professionalism.

Oscar slumming

I'm not sure that I'd rank some of the films mentioned here among "The Worst Cinematic Crap Ever Made" -- Cleopatra Jones, for example, is a genuine camp classic -- but, yeah, the deservedly hard-to-find (and even harder to watch) Inchon is a textbook example of Le Bad Cinema. Makes you wonder what some of this year's Oscar winners will be stuck in a decade or so from now. (Of course, Sandra Bullock already has a Golden Razzie award to her discredit, so...)

TIFF review: Harry Brown

It’s tempting, and not entirely inaccurate, to describe Harry Brown as a geriatric Death Wish, though many wags more likely will blurb it as Michael Caine’s Gran Torino. Either way you look at it, this bleakly gripping and sporadically exciting drama about a retired soldier who takes aim at young hoodlums (and their not-so-young enablers) in his London public-housing apartment complex could generate respectable theatrical coin and impressive homevideo action. And while it should skew toward older audiences, many younger ticketbuyers may be curious to see some serious ass-kicking by the actor they know best as Batman’s butler. You can read my Variety review here.

R.I.P.: Karl Malden (1912-2009)

As Robert Berkvist of the New York Times astutely notes, Karl Malden "was perhaps the ideal Everyman. He realized early on that he lacked the physical attributes of a leading man; he often joked about his blunt features, particularly his crooked, bulbous nose, which he had broken several times while playing basketball in school. But he was, he once said, determined 'to be No. 1 in the No. 2 parts I was destined to get.'"

In achieving that goal, A.O. Scott adds, Malden "defined what it meant to be a character actor" as he "specialized in being uneasy, playing men who are variously worried, angry, disappointed and defeated. Like many other actors who distinguish themselves in supporting roles and whose charisma consists of a kind of intensified ordinariness, he has often been referred to as an everyman. That doesn’t seem quite right, though. In his best movie roles, mainly in films directed by Eliza Kazan" -- including A Streetcar Named Desire, for which he earned an Oscar as, naturally, Best Supporting Actor -- "Mr. Malden is specifically the other man, the guy defined partly by his lack of certain attributes abundantly present in the protagonist. The other man is never ruthless, or dangerous, or dashing, or cool. His regret may be that he could never have been a contender, but he makes up for it with a stoical sincerity that is all the more affecting for being so easy to discount."

Like many other character actors who have garnered fame and acclaim in movies, Malden didn't achieve full-blown stardom until he turned to television -- as a hard-boiled but good-hearted veteran cop in The Streets of San Francisco (where he served, on camera and off, as a mentor to co-star Michael Douglas), a blunt-spoken steel-mill worker and family man in the unjustly overlooked Skag, and, of course, the sharp-dressed pitchman for traveler's checks and credit cards you should never leave home without. But no matter the size of the role, or the medium in which he played it, Malden invariably came across as effortlessly and absolutely convincing. Even when he went over the top in two '60s spy-guy extravaganzas -- Murderer's Row (1966), which cast him as a wild-eyed Dr. Evil type opposite Dean Martin's Matt Helm, and Billion Dollar Brain (1967), where he played the embezzling underling of a zealously right-wing Texas zillionaire thwarted by Michael Caine's Harry Palmer -- he somehow managed to maintain a modicum of credibility. That, too, is a hallmark of a natural-born character actor.