Born January 2, 1968 · The Bronx, New York City, New York, USA
Birth name Cuba M. Gooding Junior
Spouse Sara Kapfer(March 13, 1994 – present) (filed for divorce, 3 children)
QUOTES:
[on his final audition for Jerry Maguire (1996)] I came in there and did everything I had to do and the rest was history. So it was never like me sitting going, “Ah, there’s Tom!” [Tom Cruise] To me, it was like that son of a bitch was holding me back from doing what I had to do.
[on his most embarrassing moment] That Oscar win, when I jumped around that damned stage!
Steven Spielberg came to me and said, ‘I want you to be in Amistad (1997) and I said, ‘It’s a slave role; show me the money. I’m so a big thing,’ and he goes, ‘I can direct you.’ and I said, ‘No, I have to pass.’ To me, at the time, I remember this interview I read (with) Christopher Reeve talking about Superman. What other role could live up to being Superman; he was Superman. I bought into that. People were telling me (of Jerry Maguire (1996)), ‘You’re black, it’s a comedy role, you’re not gonna win this thing.’ So, when I won it, it was like I had all these things in my life – ‘This is what you are, this is what you’ve become… Now represent that. I have arrived and now I have to live up to this thing.’ (I didn’t know) the next day I should have rolled up my sleeves and said, ‘OK, now let’s continue on this journey.’ Creatively, I stopped myself.
It’s hard when you see a scene where it’s raining, and we have the rain machine, and you see it for 5 minutes, but that scene takes all day to shoot, and you do it with rain, and the dry off, and go back and do it again.
Unless you are really grounded and have a true sense of reality, you can get lost in that and a lot of people do and that’s why you see so many people with successful careers but with destructive lives.
And I think from a male perspective, we have men talking about their feelings and it being okay.
LOS ANGELES, CA – MAY 05: Writer/director Gia Coppola attends the premiere of Tribeca Film’s “Palo Alto” at the Directors Guild of America on May 5, 2014 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by David Livingston/Getty Images)
Born January 1, 1987 · Los Angeles, California, USA
Birth name Giancarla Coppola
Niece of Sofia Coppola and Roman Coppola. Daughter of Gian-Carlo Coppola. He was killed in a boat crash before she was born. Granddaughter of Francis Ford Coppola and Eleanor Coppola.
I don’t want to play the girlfriend who’s there because she’s the girlfriend. And. That’s. Her. Job. I want to play women and girls who are active and strong and who have a character arc and make decisions and have a rich background.
I went to my first school dance on the set of ‘Spider-Man.’ The funny thing is, it wasn’t actually real. I didn’t choose my dress or my date or anything about it. I just showed up for work.
I have my friends who like me because I’m me and not because I’m in films, and that’s really important to me. They tell me, ‘You look terrible; don’t wear that,’ or ‘That joke wasn’t funny,’ and that’s really important: they keep me grounded.
For me, the audition is always the hardest part of the whole process. Once you get on set, once you’re in costume, you’re with the director, it’s so much easier to get in the headspace.
[on winning the Oscar for Best Actor in Gandhi (1982)] If I knew I was going to win, I would not have gone dressed as a waiter.
As an actor, there’s no autonomy, unless you’re prepared to risk the possibility of starving.
Hopefully, as I get older in the business, I make my choices more accurately, and I perhaps know from either the script or the first meeting that it isn’t going to work.
All the great writers root their characters in true human behavior.
As a singer, I might have fallen among thieves. I wonder if I’d still be alive by now.
I was lousy in school. Real screwed-up. A moron. I was antisocial and didn’t bother with the other kids. A really bad student. I didn’t have any brains. I didn’t know what I was doing there. That’s why I became an actor.
[Interviewed on Inside the Actors Studio (1994)] I once asked a Jesuit priest what was the best short prayer he knew. He said, “Fuck it,’ as in, “Fuck it; it’s in God’s hands.”
The Welsh people have a talent for acting that one does not find in the English. The English lack heart.
[December 1998] To hell with this stupid show business, this ridiculous showbiz, this futile waste of life. I look back and see a desert wasteland. All those years spent in a fake environment. Everything was a fake.
Upon playing Batman: “I’ve done an absurdly commercial cartoon and now I’m more likely to get hired for a job I couldn’t get hired for before, because I hadn’t done enough movies. It’s so rare when an actor gets hired because he’s right for the role – it just doesn’t figure into it.”
The only time it’s ever like work is when you don’t like what you’ve done.
“I was going to movies and watching TV, going to the theater a little bit. It was, like, ‘Wow, you could make a living doing this? Great! What could be better?’ There isn’t anything I could choose better.” – On why he initially choose acting as a career while still a young man.
Being successful doesn’t change things. There’s a painful, lonely part of acting because you’re always waiting. The thing about being a performer is doing, and when you have to wait, it’s the same pain as when you’re starting out and have no job. You think that thing will go away, but it doesn’t. It just shifts. I remember Robert Duvall saying that being a successful actor is all about finding interesting hobbies, because if you don’t have the right hobby, you die. It’s very hard to maintain interest. Most actors don’t. They become a little clichéd. You learn how to do tricks and stuff.
Tim Matheson arrives at the 22nd annual Critics’ Choice Awards at the Barker Hangar on Sunday, Dec. 11, 2016, in Santa Monica, Calif. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)
Born December 31, 1947 · Glendale, California, USA
Jennifer Leak(September 28, 1968 – January 1971) (divorced)
QUOTES:
[on starting out in his career as a child actor] Kurt [Kurt Russell] taught me a lot. Basically, Kurt left the business for about five years. He made a lot of money as a kid, then sort of went to be a baseball player. And after that he focused on skiing … bought a house in Aspen and skied … And he didn’t care about it. My point is that you have to have a real life. I also think one has to reinvent oneself as a performer every five to seven years. I look at my career, and I was a kid actor who did cartoons, then I was a Western actor as a young man, then I was a comedy actor in movies, then a TV-movie actor, then a TV director … There are different phases … But I think one has a shelf life of about five to seven years where you’re in a series, or you play a character, or you hit in a movie — and that sort of wears out its welcome after a certain point. Then you’ve got to put it on its head, reinvent it, find a new approach, otherwise you’re just stuck being that guy who did that thing back then. So I’ve always sought out new challenges. Also, I’ve tried to have a home life and a family. I raised my kids up in Santa Barbara and got away from the city of Los Angeles so that [the environment] wasn’t so crazy for them to grow up in.
Some directors just shoot characters walking around a set, and they think that’s all they have to do. That’s not it. Howard Hawks and John Ford knew where to put the camera. They knew if the camera was here or there, it tells the story better. And, early on as an actor, I remember sometimes thinking that I’d given a good performance in certain shows, but then when I finally saw my work, it wasn’t particularly dynamic. There were flat shots, the directing wasn’t very good … But when I’d work with better directors, who’d stage my scenes differently, who use stronger camera angles, and — perhaps even though I didn’t give what I thought was the best performance — the result was more dynamic and effective. And I thought, “Ah-ah! He made me a better actor by what he did as a director.” So I think my job as a director is to help the actor give his or her best performance, as well as frame it in such a way to enhance whatever they do to create a stronger impact.
[2009, on Fletch (1985)] I got to work with one of my dear friends, Michael Ritchie, who ended up being my next-door neighbor for several years. And Chevy Chase, finally. I’d known Chevy a bit, but I’d never gotten to work with him. Chevy had been a bad boy with a drug problem, and had never really realized his potential. Fletch was the first movie he sort of straightened up on. And Michael was Harvard-educated, 6’6″, a brilliant director and political thinker. He was the guy the studio thought could handle Chevy, and keep him in check. And he could. He’d shoot the movie the way he wanted it, then do one take for Chevy. When I worked with Chevy, he’d say, “Just ad lib and try to break me up. Just insult me. Anything.” When we were doing his close-up, or when my back was to the camera, I would come up with jokes or quips or anything, to get a real reaction out of him. He was smart enough to know that was gold. So it was great fun working with him and Michael, and getting to see how the two worked together. I think Fletch and Clark Griswold were Chevy’s two best roles. He’s so incredibly talented and still vastly underused. I don’t even know what he’s doing now.
Spouses Chris Calkins(May 4, 2009 – present) Paul Dorman(June 1984 – 1991) (divorced)
QUOTES:
[about the film Tadpole (2002)] It’s more about who Oscar is that these women are falling in love with him than just his age. In that sense, it’s a little more European than we’re used to.
I’ve always loved to dance on stage. I’ve been doing ballet since I was five, and stage dancing since I was seven. Ballet has always been how I defined myself – even as a child. It’s never been just a thing to do.
I have the greatest picture of Ted [Danson]. That was a big caper: There was one person [opening] the door with a butter knife and another person kicking the door in so I could get a photo. He’s decapitated, but totally nude. And he’s really well-endowed.
Kirstie [Alley] saved me, in a way. [At the time], I had a terrible marriage, and I stayed at her house. She was wonderful – just a kind, big-hearted, filthy girl. Somehow she could be vulgar without being vulgar.
Festival Reviews 