MOVIES OF THE ‘80s : ACTING : PROFIT PLAYERS

Acting in the mid-’80s is a uneasy mixture. The established movie star is probably a better all-around actor than at any time in the past: Meryl Streep, Jack Nicholson, Dustin Hoffman, Jessica Lange, Robert DeNiro, William Hurt, Vanessa Redgrave, Paul Newman, Al Pacino have range and depth and technical ability of an extraordinary level.

Many of them came from the stage. Some (Pacino, Hoffman, DeNiro, Redgrave and Glenn Close, William Hurt, Kevin Kline, and Richard Gere), return to it, to keep themselves flexible and/or when decent scripts are in short supply. A few (Hurt, Robert Duvall, Michael Caine, Harrison Ford) have begun dropping into “small” films, adjusting their salary demands and getting in exchange a richer choice of roles. Such films as “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” “Tender Mercies,” “Mona Lisa” and “Witness” have been the result.

But most of these stars simply don’t work enough. The lack of really challenging scripts is one reason. Supersalaries are another--demands, possibly made with one eye on the clock--which push the cost of movie-making into the stratosphere. Unfortunately, you don’t find great daring in scripts in that price range; companies that can pay those salaries aren’t interested in risk but in safe returns. And so good actors (Warren Beatty, Paul Newman, Robert Redford) work less and less--and acting is still a craft which must be exercised.

A few, primarily the women, the Streeps, Langes, Fields, Fondas, Redgraves, and Spaceks, just keep their heads down and keep working--probably with the same, or with a heightened sense of the calendar. And in addition to the Beattys and the Eastwoods, it is the actresses (Fonda, Field, Lange, Barbra Streisand, Goldie Hawn) who are turning producer, guiding their choices now, assuring themselves of post-camera futures.

In contrast to these we have the new “stars,” young, relatively inexperienced actors who are elevated to star status on the basis of one of two performances: the Tom Cruises, Rob Lowes, Judd Nelsons. They, most of all, suffer from current big-studio practices; careers that are over-inflated, over-exposed, over-publicized--then possibly, quite suddenly, over.

You can’t quite blame the performers. Rushed into hothouse stardom, kept working in minuscule variations of the same role, where are they supposed to learn acting? From Tiger Beat?

For all the strictures of the old studio system, the stock companies of Warner Bros., MGM, Paramount and Fox kept their young performers working. You might lack any voice in choosing your roles, you might be seen as a “type,” a good girl, bad girl, hero’s best friend, or wallflower, but you made three and four films a year--enough to learn your craft. That framework has disappeared; TV is a poor substitute, flattening even the impulse of originality into a dreariness that passes for naturalism. Where do young performers learn?

Still, from somewhere a few real actors have emerged, some stage-trained, all of them well out of the cookie-cutter mold: Matthew Broderick, Emilio Estevez, Matthew Modine, Sean Penn, Vincent Spano, Jim Belushi; Demi Moore, Mare Winningham, Elizabeth Perkins, Laura Dern, Mary Stewart Masterson, Cathy Tyson, Amanda Plummer, Helena Bonham Carter, Alfre Woodard.

Another group, not quite above-the-title stars yet, but getting there, are in the always-interesting category: John Lone, Barbara Hershey, Ed Harris, Beverly D’Angelo, Scott Glenn, Amy Madigan, Fred Ward, Joe Morton, Dianne Wiest, Raul Julia, Christine Lahti, Diane Venora, Lauren Hutton. We have also the cream of the next generation of character performers: Brian Dennehy, Harry Dean Stanton, Richard Farnsworth, Noriyuki (Pat) Morita, M. Emmett Walsh, Geraldine Page, Charles Durning, Wilford Brimley, Kenneth MacMillan. Lovely actors--and precious few roles for them, a situation that is one of the perilous facts of acting today.