Actors and Actresses

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    At James Earl Jones Memorial, Denzel Washington and Whoopi Goldberg Share Stories

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    At a gathering in the Broadway theater renamed to honor the star, speakers including Denzel Washington and Phylicia Rashad described Jones as an inspiration.Denzel Washington called him his “northern star.” Whoopi Goldberg said “getting to see him onstage was heaven.” Some of the most notable names in show business gathered in Times Square on Monday afternoon for a starry, and sometimes emotional, send-off for James Earl Jones, who died last year at the age of 93. He was remembered for his thunderous voice and his enviable acting chops, as well as for being a gentle guiding presence in the lives of young actors.For more than 90 minutes, at the Broadway theater that now bears his name on West 48th Street in Manhattan, a packed house laughed, cried and shared numerous personal stories that not only painted a bright picture of Jones, but cast him as an important figure who inspired fellow actors to reach their personal bests.“He was powerful, he was present, he was purposeful, he was humble,” Denzel Washington said of Jones.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesIn a short speech, Denzel Washington described Jones as having personified grace, power and dignity. Washington, who is currently starring in a Broadway revival of “Othello,” a role that Jones had made his own on Broadway more than six decades ago, said he hoped to be as good a stage actor as Jones. “He was powerful, he was present, he was purposeful, he was humble,” Washington said. “He is not only the greatest African American actor; in my opinion he is one of the greatest actors ever to be on a Broadway stage.”The actress Linda Powell recalled starring with Jones in a Broadway revival of “On Golden Pond,” which opened 20 years ago this week. She said Jones had pushed for her to be cast in the role of his daughter. “It was one of the best jobs of my life, one of the best experiences of my life, and his faith in me was a gift,” she said.Phylicia Rashad recalled seeing Jones perform when she was a young adult, and later performing as Big Mama to his Big Daddy in the 2008 Broadway revival of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Jay North, Child Star Who Played ‘Dennis the Menace,’ Dies at 73

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      Mr. North was best known for playing the towheaded Dennis Mitchell on the television series, which ran on CBS from 1959 to 1963.Jay North, who played the well-meaning, trouble-causing protagonist of the popular CBS sitcom “Dennis the Menace” from 1959 to 1963, died on Sunday at his home in Lake Butler, Fla. He was 73.His death was confirmed by Laurie Jacobson, a friend of Mr. North’s for 30 years. The cause was colorectal cancer, Ms. Jacobson said.Mr. North played the towheaded Dennis Mitchell, who roamed his neighborhood, usually clad in a striped shirt and overalls, with his friends, and often exasperated his neighbor, a retiree named George Wilson, who was played by Joseph Kearns. Herbert Anderson played Dennis’s father, and Gloria Henry played his mother.Dennis winds up causing lots of trouble, usually by accident.In one episode, a truck knocks over a street sign, and Dennis and a friend stand it up — incorrectly. Workmen then dig a gigantic hole, meant to be a pool for a different address, in Mr. Wilson’s yard.The show, which was adapted from a comic strip by Hank Ketcham, presented an idyllic, innocent vision of suburban America as the 1950s gave way to the tumultuous ’60s.But things were not easy for Mr. North behind the scenes.Many years after “Dennis the Menace” ended, Mr. North said that his acting success came at the cost of a happy childhood.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘White Lotus’ Takes On Touchy Subjects. The Southern Accent Is One of Them.

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      <!–> [–><!–> –><!–> [–> <!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –><!–> [–> <!–> –><!–> [–> <!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –><!–> Lorazepam, an anti-anxiety drug, seems to be having a moment, thanks to Ms. Ratliff’s frequent mentions, where her accent dances along the open vowels. [–> <!–>Lorazepam–> <!–> [!–> <!–>Lorazepam–> <!–> [!–> <!–>Lorazepam–> <!–> […] More

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      South Korean Actress’s Suicide Spurs Scrutiny of Ex-Boyfriend

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      The death of the actress Kim Sae-ron has plunged her former boyfriend, the superstar actor Kim Soo-hyun, into the biggest crisis of his career.When Kim Sae-ron was found dead at her home in February, she joined a growing list of South Korean entertainers who have ended their own lives. But the actress, who was 24, has generated more headlines in death than in life as her relationship with an older male superstar has come under scrutiny.The tragedy and scandal has embroiled Kim Soo-hyun, 37, one of ​South Korea’s best-known actors,​ and is packed with allegations worthy of a K-drama story line: A former child prodigy and a man 13 years her senior started dating. Not long after they broke up, the actress got into a drunk-driving incident that proved fatal to her career and suffered financial troubles, while the actor became one of the country’s richest stars. She tried but​ failed to ​stage a comeback​. Then she took her own life.The scandal also raised more serious accusations. Since Ms. Kim’s death, her family has said Mr. Kim started dating her when she was a minor, and that after they parted, a talent agency he founded had pressured her over a ​debt she was unable to repay. Mr. Kim has denied the accusations ​against him, and filed a defamation lawsuit against Ms. Kim’s family.But the scandal has already begun burning Mr. Kim’s career and highlighted the perils of ​celebrity in South Korea, where personal lives can come under unforgiving scrutiny. Stars have seen their careers ruined — or even ended their own lives — because of aggressive and sometimes malicious online rumors over everything from plastic surgeries to their romantic life.“South Koreans treat entertainers like public figures who must live up to textbooklike ethical standards,” said Bae Kug-nam, the author of several books about South Korea’s entertainment industry.That culture ​has created a deadly trap when combined with YouTubers and other influencers who have dished out sensational details of ​a star’s personal life, Mr. Bae said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Actress Candy Clark Captured Some of the Most Famous Faces. Then She Put Them in a Drawer.

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      The actress Candy Clark documented her unlikely journey through 1970s Hollywood in a series of Polaroids, now published in a memoir.Jeff Bridges taught her how to drive in his Volkswagen bus. Steven Spielberg refused to flirt with her. She successfully talked the actor Rip Torn out of assaulting the director Nicolas Roeg on a movie set. While lying on a beach in Mexico with the painter Ed Ruscha, she was grazed by a stray bullet on the thigh. Once, she pinched David Bowie’s nipples.In Los Angeles, a city built on oversize lore and swaggering legend, where does one file away stories like these? Revealing but not gossipy. Candid but not lurid. Occasionally surreal but consistently sweet.“It’s a confessional era, right?” said Candy Clark, a former actress who wears a neat blonde bob and Warby Parker glasses, sitting in a booth at the Sunset Tower Hotel in West Hollywood, Calif. It was a recent Sunday afternoon, and Ms. Clark — the one behind the wheel of Mr. Bridges’s van, the starlet who tried to flirt with Mr. Spielberg, the peacemaker, the bullet-wound victim and the nipple-twisting culprit — was nibbling on pita and hummus.Dodging a life of mundane midcentury expectations, she started a modeling career in New York and went on to become a darling of the “New Hollywood” era in the 1970s. During her five decades onscreen, she collected over 80 film and television credits, establishing herself as a ubiquitous face who played mostly free-spirited lovers and burnouts like Debbie Dunham in “American Graffiti,” the part that earned Ms. Clark an Oscar nomination. It was her second-ever acting role.“It was my arrival,” she said, recalling the nomination. “You’re just the center of the universe, and it’s really wonderful.”A young Ms. Clark with the X-70 Polaroid camera she used to take photos of her fellow actors, before many of them became mega-famous.Candy ClarkWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      In ‘Streetcar,’ Patsy Ferran Gives Blanche a Nervy New Read

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      The London-based actress has been heralded as one of the most talented of her generation. Still, she worried audiences would balk at her “very unconventional Blanche.”Patsy Ferran will not judge a book by its cover. But covers are important to her. “See?” she said, palming a copy of a Barbara Kingsolver novel at a Brooklyn branch of McNally Jackson bookstore. “Such a good cover. Aesthetics do matter.”Ferran, a London-based actress, is currently starring in Tennessee Williams’s “A Streetcar Named Desire” at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, just up the road from the store. A latecomer to reading for pleasure, Ferran picked up fiction, particularly American fiction, during the pandemic lockdowns and has yet to put it down. Currently working her way through Percival Everett’s “James,” with Samantha Harvey’s “Orbital” cued up next, she had promised herself that she wouldn’t buy any more books. But the shelves were calling.“I kind of explore cities via book shops,” she said. “That and good coffee.”In the store, Ferran, lively, shrewd and lightly self-deprecating, (“I do my own glam,” she said wryly as she shook out her hair from a woolly hat) picked up and put down several recent paperbacks, enthusing about their feel. “British paperbacks are so stiff, you have to crowbar them open, which I hate,” she said. Ferran decided that she might buy just one. Or two. Certainly not more than three.Ferran leaped onto the London “Streetcar” days before previews were set to begin after another actress had to withdraw from the role.Dina Litovsky for The New York TimesFerran, 35, made her professional debut just after her graduation from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, in a production of Noël Coward’s “Blithe Spirit.” More stage roles followed, including her first lead, as Alma in “Summer and Smoke,” also by Williams, directed by Rebecca Frecknall. “This young actor is a genuine marvel, as hilarious as she is heartbreaking,” one critic wrote of the performance. Soon she was recognized as one of the most talented stage actresses of her generation.Small and quick, with dark, curling hair, Ferran was an unusual choice for Blanche. A great American heroine, “an aging Southern belle who lives in a state of perpetual panic about her fading beauty” in Williams’s words, Blanche is typically played by willowy, languorous blondes. (Recent New York Blanches include Cate Blanchett and Gillian Anderson). Ferran knows this. She worried that audiences would dismiss her as the wrong cover for this particular book.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Gérard Depardieu Appears in Court Over Sexual Assault Allegations

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      The French actor faces charges in a case involving two women working on the set of a movie in which he starred.The French actor Gérard Depardieu on Monday appeared before a Paris court where he faces two charges of sexually assaulting two women working on the set of a film in which he was starring.The trial will be the first time Mr. Depardieu has been forced to answer in court to accusations of groping, sexual assault and harassment, and rape that have piled up against him for years, and which he has denied.The charges in this trial came after two women on the set of “Les Volets Verts,” a movie by the French director Jean Becker that was released in 2022, filed police complaints that he had groped their genitals, buttocks and breasts. If found guilty, Mr. Depardieu faces up to five years in prison and a fine of 75,000 euros, or about $81,000.Mr. Depardieu has denied all accusations in the case being brought to trial Monday. His lawyer, Jérémie Assous, called them “totally false and unrealistic.”The trial was scheduled for last October, but was postponed after Mr. Depardieu did not appear for health reasons. Mr. Assous presented medical assessments that showed Mr. Depardieu suffered from long-term diabetes and heart problems after undergoing a quadruple bypass, and that anxiety from the trial had worsened his conditions.For many, the case represents a breakthrough for the #MeToo movement in France, which was stalled for years, particularly in the film industry.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Seeks More Sway in Picking Kennedy Center Honorees

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      When President Trump was criticized by some of the artists who were recognized at the annual Kennedy Center Honors program during his first term, he responded by boycotting the show, breaking with decades of precedent.Now, as he leads a sweeping takeover of the Kennedy Center in his second term, Mr. Trump is seeking changes that will allow him greater sway in the selection of honorees, according to two people briefed on the matter who were granted anonymity to describe confidential discussions.Mr. Trump, who is now the chairman of the Kennedy Center, is scheduled to speak at a meeting of its board on Monday afternoon, when proposed changes to the honors advisory committee will be on the agenda, according to the individuals and a copy of the agenda that was obtained by The New York Times.Since 1978, the Kennedy Center has named honorees to be recognized each year at a star-studded televised gala without interference from the White House. The center has honored a broad spectrum of artists and performers, including Lucille Ball, Dolly Parton, Clint Eastwood, Fred Astaire and the Grateful Dead.But Mr. Trump is seeking a more direct role. He replaced all the Biden appointees on the center’s once-bipartisan board, was elected chairman and installed a loyalist, Richard Grenell, as its president. The board is scheduled to meet Monday to consider a resolution, which has not been previously reported, that would give Mr. Trump more control over the selection of honorees.The resolution states that members of the committee responsible for selecting honorees “shall be appointed by the chairman of the board, and shall serve at the pleasure of the chairman,” according to a copy obtained by The Times. That would give Mr. Trump broad power to hire and fire those who help decide who will receive the honor, which recognizes people and institutions for lifetime artistic achievement. The committee will recommend a slate of honorees to the Kennedy Center’s president for approval, the resolution says.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Adrien Brody’s Gum Toss Ahead of Best Actor Speech Gave Oscars a Memorable Moment

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      Adrien Brody had one of the strangest moments of this year’s Oscars. And it wasn’t his five-minute speech.Adrien Brody was en route to the stage at the Dolby Theatre on Sunday night to collect his Oscar for best actor when it appeared to dawn on him that he had forgotten to do something — something important.So, halfway up the staircase, Mr. Brody paused and removed a piece of chewing gum from his mouth. But what to do with it? He turned to locate his girlfriend, Georgina Chapman, who stepped forward from her position in the front row as Mr. Brody readied himself to make a softball-style underhanded pitch to her.It was not a perfect toss. Ms. Chapman had to wheel to her right to catch what briefly became the most famous wad of chewed-up gum in the world. But she delighted in her feat, raising her arms in triumph as she returned to her seat just in time to see Mr. Brody accept his award from Cillian Murphy, last year’s winner in the category.Mr. Brody was not asked about the gum toss during his backstage interview after his win, so no further details were available about the type of gum it was, or how he decided against simply swallowing it.It was an unscripted moment for Mr. Brody and Ms. Chapman, whose relationship has drawn its share of tabloid attention. It also served as a bit of levity before Mr. Brody delivered a lengthy speech that focused, almost exclusively, on his hard path back to Hollywood pre-eminence thanks to his role in “The Brutalist,” for which he won the award.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More