Celebrity Interviews -- -- amNY.com

May 11, 2008

Fast chat: Peter Gallagher

Peter Gallagher loves the old alley behind the Broadway theater where he's co-starring with Morgan Freeman and Frances McDormand in Clifford Odets' "The Country Girl." Some 30 years ago he was just starting out, appearing on this very stage in his first lead role, Danny Zuko, in "Grease." Several theaters open into the alley, and he recalls meeting legends such as Henry Fonda back there. Or Maureen Stapleton, performing then in "The Gin Game," with whom he'd kick back a few after their shows let out.

April 27, 2008

Fast chat: Colin Firth

Thirteen years have passed since Colin Firth became, as Jane Austen might put it, "universally acknowledged" as the definitive Mr. Darcy in the lionized BBC TV miniseries of Austen's "Pride and Prejudice."

April 20, 2008

Fast Chat: Linda Lavin

'Massapequa? That sounds like a wonderful old Indian name. What does it mean in English?" a character asks Linda Lavin partway through "The New Century," a new comedy at Lincoln Center. Comes Lavin's deadpan reply: "It means 'Don't touch my hair.'" Lavin's 'do is blond in the story from Paul Rudnick ("In & Out"), which finds her as an affluent Long Island matron with three radically gay children. Lavin's segment, "Pride and Joy," is the first of three pieces that intertwine in a final act. Lavin sat down with Newsday's Robert Kahn to talk about the ways wealthy Jewish women dress, geographic panaceas and the advantages of running a mom-and-pop business.

April 13, 2008

Fast Chat: Uma Thurman on "The Life Before Her Eyes"

Uma Thurman has always been a standout. Her name, the whole 6-foot-tall thing, those arresting, angular features, all guaranteed she'd get noticed. And she was - first by agents at age 15, then by director Terry Gilliam, who cast her as Venus, her first splashy film role, in "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen." Other films followed, some acclaimed ("Les Liaisons Dangereuses"), some not ("Mad Dog and Glory"). Then came Quentin Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction" - she played a sexy mob wife doing that dance with John Travolta, and earned herself an Oscar nomination. Since then she's done her share of action flicks ("Batman & Robin," "The Avengers," "Kill Bill Vols. I and II").

March 30, 2008

Fast Chat: David Schwimmer

SCHWIMMMAHHH.

March 23, 2008

Fast Chat: Sam Rockwell

Another film, another whack-job character role for Sam Rockwell. In "Snow Angels," which opened recently, the gifted, 39-year-old character actor plays a suicidal, born-again Christian trying to reconnect with his estranged wife. So what else is new? Rockwell has made a career of indelible, often bizarre screen portrayals, from game show host/CIA hit man Chuck Barris in "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind," to two-headed galactic president Zaphod Beeblebrox in "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy."

March 16, 2008

Fast Chat: James Earl Jones

When James Earl Jones takes the stage as Big Daddy in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," the Broadhurst Theatre fairly trembles. For all the fussin' and flitterin' of Maggie (Anika Noni Rose), Mae (Lisa Arrindell Anderson), Big Mama ( Phylicia Rashad), Gooper ( Giancarlo Esposito) and the liquored-up Brick (Terrence Howard), it's the old lion Big Daddy who's large and in charge.

March 9, 2008

Fast chat with Patricia Clarkson

The next time anyone mentions the alleged lack of roles for actresses of a certain age, say this name like a mantra: Patricia Clarkson.

March 2, 2008

Fast Chat: S. Epatha Merkerson

First off, it's pronounced "ee-PAY-thuh." S. Epatha Merkerson's name may be unusual, but it's familiar to "Law & Order" fans. She's played Lt. Anita Van Buren on the juggernaut series for 14 seasons.

February 24, 2008

Fast Chat: David Morse

Before there was a Dr. Kovac or Dr. Greene on "ER," before McDreamy on "Grey's Anatomy," there was Dr. Jack "Boomer" Morrison, a likable young physician played by David Morse on NBC's "St. Elsewhere." The show, which also featured a young Denzel Washington, ran for six years in the 1980s and gave Morse his big break. And headache. He wound up typecast as a softie. Morse has spent the last two decades proving them wrong.

February 17, 2008

Fast Chat: LaKisha Jones

Two years ago LaKisha Jones was working as a bank teller in Maryland. These days, the only money notes she deals with are the ones she belts out eight times a week in Broadway's "The Color Purple."

February 10, 2008

Fast chat: Freddie Highmore

Freddie Highmore is all long limbs and nervous energy - teenage electricity that doesn't quite know where to go. In "The Spiderwick Chronicles," which is based on the popular children's book series and opens Thursday, he puts that energy to good use, starring - and co-starring - as twin brothers, Jared and Simon Grace.

February 3, 2008

Fast Chat: Natasha Bedingfield

Natasha Bedingfield may not be universally known, but her song is.

January 27, 2008

Fast Chat: Ewan McGregor

Ewan McGregor's been busy. He's got a handful of films coming out, starting with Woody Allen's latest, "Cassandra's Dream," which opened last week, starring McGregor and Colin Farrell as working-class brothers faced with a moral puzzler: Could you kill a total stranger if someone you respect asked you to? (Cash will be thrown in for good measure.)

January 20, 2008

Fast chat: Marion Cotillard

To observe that a French actress is beautiful is ordinarily an exercise in the incredibly obvious. But given Marion Cotillard's titanic and tortured performance in "La Vie en Rose" - in which she twists, bends and mutilates her physique to recreate the legendary chanteuse Edith Piaf - the transformation is unforgettable. Lithe, buoyant and with eyes so blue they put the Pacific to shame, Cotillard had just won a best actress Golden Globe when John Anderson caught up with her at the Chateau Marmont in Hollywood.

January 13, 2008

Fast Chat: LeAnn Rimes

No one has ever denied LeAnn Rimes' talent as a singer: Her soaring voice has wowed audiences since she was just 13, when she made her debut with the hit album "Blue" and earned a best new artist Grammy in the process.

January 6, 2008

Fast Chat: Fyvush Finkel

Yiddish theater, like vaudeville and burlesque, flourished in the 20th century B.T. (Before Television). Using a language common to immigrant Jews, it created such stars as Molly Picon, Meshilem Weisenfreund - later known as movie star Paul Muni - and Fyvush Finkel, who in 1965 graduated to "uptown" theater in the legendary Broadway musical "Fiddler on the Roof," eventually playing the lead role of Tevye. Later came movies and TV, including a 1994 Emmy Award for playing crafty attorney Douglas Wambaugh in the David E. Kelley series "Picket Fences."

December 23, 2007

Fast Chat: Blake Lively

Wide-eyed teens excitedly watch as "Gossip Girl" star Blake Lively films a scene with co-star Penn Badgley.

December 20, 2007

Q & A with Denzel Washington

Christmas came early for Denzel Washington. First, accolades, a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor and plenty of Oscar buzz for his performance in "American Gangster." Now there's "The Great Debaters," a drama inspired by a real-life, underdog debate team from a small college in the Jim Crow South of the 1930s. Washington directs and stars as debate coach Melvin B. Tolson. The film, which nabbed a Golden Globe nomination for Best Picture, opens Tuesday.

December 16, 2007

Fast Chat: Khalid Abdalla

For his first-ever movie appearance, 27-year-old Khalid Abdalla took a role that wouldn't exactly endear him to audiences: Zaid Jarrah, the 9/11 terrorist who piloted the plane in last year's gripping real-time drama "United 93." Critics applauded his subtle performance as a zealot who may have last-minute doubts about his mission. For a follow-up, the London-based actor is set to win over hearts as well as minds in "The Kite Runner," an adaptation of Khaled Hosseini's beloved novel about the childhood friendship of two Afghan boys and their divergent adult lives. (The film opened Friday.) Abdalla plays the grown-up Amir, who journeys back to his homeland from the U.S. Tom Beer spoke with Abdalla in Manhattan.

December 9, 2007

Fast chat: Jason Statham

He's balding, not exactly blessed with heartthrob looks, and has a thick Cockney accent. Yet over the past several years, 35-year-old Jason Statham has become an international action film star. The former world-class diver, street salesman and fashion model first broke into the public consciousness as one of the criminal lowlifes in director Guy Ritchie's "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels," reteamed with Ritchie for "Snatch," then blew away the bang-bang crowd as the star of "The Transporter" films.

December 2, 2007

Fast Chat: Phylicia Rashad

The mom Phylicia Rashad plays in William Shakespeare's "Cymbeline" is a far cry from her Clair Huxtable on TV's "The Cosby Show." For one thing, she plots the death of her husband and stepdaughter so that her strutting-fool son can ascend to the throne of England. "Cymbeline" opens Sunday at Lincoln Center's Vivian Beaumont Theatre.

November 25, 2007

Fast Chat: Amy Ryan

She chalks it up to coincidence, but whatever the cause, actress Amy Ryan is everywhere. As the drug-abusing mother in Ben Affleck's "Gone Baby Gone" or Ethan Hawke's vindictive ex in "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead" to what she admits is a very minor role in "Dan in Real Life," her presence is being felt, especially at that happy time of the year when the holiday season is eclipsed by the awards season (at least in Hollywood). John Anderson talked with Ryan about her rising profile.

August 5, 2007

Fast Chat: Frank Oz

Filmmaker and onetime Muppet-master Frank Oz wants everyone to know that his new comedy, "Death at a Funeral," is rated R. So was "The Score" (2001), his most recent film other than the PG-13 misfire "The Stepford Wives" (2004), so it's odd that he tells you this twice. But, hey, this is Cookie Monster! Miss Piggy! Grover! Bert! YODA!! He helped get you, me and our kids through childhood - and someday their kids, too. If he wants us to tell people about the rating, well, what can we say but, "Rated R this new film is."

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