Six Character Actresses in Search of an Offer

JOAN CUSACK

This hardly overlooked actress has had supporting roles in an impressive string of high-profile, well-liked movies, like Married to the Mob, Broadcast News and Say Anything.... And then, of course, there is her Oscar-nominated turn as the makeup-mad Staten Island secretary with an accent that could kill in Working Girl.

So there is ample proof that when Joan Cusack is given half a role, she knows how to turn it into a whole performance. Her talent has found some classy and challenging outlets, but it's still probably underrated. After all, how many people saw her most inspired and original performance, in 1990's Men Don't Leave?

With a title like Men Don't Leave (what on earth is it supposed to mean, anyway? If we know anything in the late 20th century, we know men do leave), it's hardly surprising no one went to see this movie, but it's a pity because it's very good and it's chock-full of superb performances. The one transcendent performance--better than the dependably excellent Jessica Lange's, better than terrific newcomer Chris O'Donnell's-- was Joan Cusack's. And the remarkable thing about Cusack's performance is that it is clearly launched from scripted outlines that left enormous room for interpretation and inspiration. In other words, it could have been awful. Playing the upstairs x-ray technician neighbor of apartment newcomers Lange and family, who are grieving over the death of a beloved husband/father, "older woman" Cusack aims her blithely daunting maternal/sexual instincts at Lange's yummy but sexually naive son O'Donnell, and is soon mothering and loving him in a way that is both scandalous and oddly commendable. The unperturbable, sunny aplomb that Cusack gives her character is a brilliant stroke of weirdness, fantasy fulfillment, and screen magic.

Cusack is currently in Hero, as Dustin Hoffman's ex-wife, and she's coming up opposite Robin Williams in Barry Levinson's Christmas release, Toys. Obviously she's getting good roles. Hopefully, as the roles Cusack is offered get bigger, she won't fall into the limbo that a lot of character actors flounder in, when their agents start pushing them toward second-rate leading roles instead of the kind of first-rate character parts they've made their mark in.

E.B.

AMANDA PLUMMER

A lot has happened to Amanda Plummer in the almost-a-decade between her first movie with Robin Williams, The World According to Garp, and her second, The Fisher King-- the trouble is, very little of it has occurred on the movie screen. Her acclaimed triumphs have been on the New York stage, where she's a Tony award-winning star, and on TV, where she recently won a Supporting Actress Emmy for the TV movie Miss Rose White. Moviemakers just don't seem to know what "to do" with Plummer, and, admittedly, her parents figure into this: from her mother, actress Tammy Grimes, Plummer got her unconventional looks, a great ear-to-ear grin, and that voice which sounds like wind chimes in the fog; from her father, actor Christopher Plummer, she got her strange, downright otherworldly swings--resolute stillness one second and freewheeling madcap the next, often during just one line of dialogue.

After roles you can't recall in movies you don't remember (Daniel? Made in Heaven? Cattle Annie and Little Britches? Joe Versus the Volcano?), Plummer last year got the break she had long deserved: a great role in a good movie, playing Lydia in The Fisher King. The bad news, though, is that no one noticed. As the prim, suspicious wallflower loved from afar by over-amped sprite Robin Williams, Plummer's Lydia inspired sequences of a truly grand mad passion. Just by walking through Grand Central Station, she moves commuters to begin a sweeping waltz around the concourse; at work, she receives balloons from a badly-bewigged transvestite, Michael Jeter, belting out a Mermanesque "Everything's Coming Up Videos." Despite all this hoopla, Lydia confides to Mercedes Ruehl, "I don't make an impression on people." Sadly, the line rings truer now than it did then, for it was Ruehl, not Plummer, who got an Oscar nomination (and won) when, at the very least, both deserved the honor.

If you doubt this, just go out right now and rent The Fisher King. Skip over the terrific teamwork when Plummer and Ruehl are on-screen together, and fast-forward instead--past Plummer's hilarious "playing with food" duet with Williams--the better to zero in on the five-minute sequence where Williams walks Plummer home and she foresees, aloud, an imminent one-night stand she'll inevitably regret, while Williams is trying to be heard as he's professing his undying love. This is among the most exquisitely written, directed and acted exchanges in movies, contemporary or otherwise. In this part-heartbreaking, part-crackbrained version of the Romeo and Juliet balcony scene, played here on the front stoop of Plummer's apartment building, watch as winsome, sad, hopeful Plummer and nervous, devoted, wry Williams become that rarest of pairs, an authentic screen team. Now, if only Williams will use his considerable clout to start making more movies together with Plummer, pronto. Robin, are you listening?

B.H.

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Brian Hirsch and Elaine Bailey are at work on a stage musical version of the Kennedy assassination, tentatively titled Oh Jackie!

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