What movie are you addicted to? That's what we asked 50 celebrities to confess. What film stops 'em cold whenever they're channel-surfing in the middle of the night? Which one can they see again and again--and again?
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1. Terence Stamp (actor, The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert) "The Tyrone Power version of The Razor's Edge, If you include subject matter in the greatness of films-- Citizen Kane is a great film, but it's not about anything-- The Razor's Edge is great. It is about something: a man in search of himself."
2. Keanu Reeves (actor, Speed) "I can see 2001: A Space Odyssey a hundred times and never get bored with it. Basically, I'm a major Stanley Kubrick fan. I think he's one of the most talented directors. I can see his movies over and over again. He is so daring."
3. Sigourney Weaver (actress, Alien) "I just love Ninotchka. I love Melvyn Douglas, Greta Garbo, and all the actors in it. Such a great ensemble."
4. Sharon Stone (actress, Casino) "I love to see Disney's animated film of The Jungle Book. It had incredible actors as the voices, especially George Sanders as the villain. The jazz of that period was really unbelievable and Louis Prima, a great jazz musician, played the king monkey. Great stuff."
5. Steve Buscemi (actor, Reservoir Dogs) "It's a Wonderful Life was an addiction--I can't even watch it on television because I've watched it so many times that I need a few years off. Then I'll get back to it."
6. Kevin Costner (actor, Waterworld) "The Wizard of Oz. I always see new things. I continue to watch it, and mentally I go, 'There's nothing new in here that I'm going to see.' But I do, I consciously did that exercise 10 to 12 times. It's such a detail-oriented movie."
7. Steve Martin (actor-writer, Roxanne) "I'm a sucker for oldies like The Music Man. That always stops me when I'm changing channels. I've always loved the musical; there's something so perfect about it, so integrated, so happy. Why don't I do one? I have one problem: no singing voice."
8. Ivan Reitman (director, Dave) "Some Like It Hot I've seen an awful lot. It's funny, and it's a really well-made film."
9. Emma Thompson (actress, Junior) "Les Enfants du Paradi's is my favorite film. I never tire of it. So many memorable moments. The first close-up of Jean-Louis Barrault standing at the bar, talking to the grand actor, is one of the most beautiful moments on film."
10. Jeff Daniels (actor, Dumb and Dumber) "The Out-of-Towners with Jack Lemmon. Critics rip it. Jack Lemmon's biography barely mentions it. Lemmon does the big, believable comedy that I try to do sometimes. I just think Lemmon was one of the best at it. That picture, and also Dog Day Afternoon, because I was in college when I saw it. I saw Pacino, and I said, 'That's what I want to try to do.'"
11. Dennis Hopper (actor, Waterworld) "The first thing that comes to mind is The Magnificent Ambersons. Funny, because that was a picture Orson Welles didn't like. I love that movie. I never tire of it. He always claimed that it was ruined in the editing, but I always thought it was great."
12. Whoopi Goldberg (actress, Boys on the Side) "I love The Godfather, and I can see it anytime. It's just a great, great movie. Also, To Kill a Mockingbird."
13. Helen Mirren (actress, "Prime Suspect") "Of course Citizen Kane is a movie I can see over and over again. Once you get past the story and the character, it's fascinating to watch the camera moves."
14. Bob Hope (actor, Facts of Life) "Charlie Chaplin was my idol when I was a kid. I used to do Chaplin imitations on amateur nights. I guess The Gold Rush was my favorite; you can find new things in it every time you see it. I made four pictures with Paullette Goddard, who was married to Chaplin at the time. He always looked at all her footage."
15. John Singleton (writer-director, Boyz N the Hood) "Star Wars still fascinates me. Many imitations have followed, but none can approach it. Everything about it was original."
16. Kevin Bacon (actor, The River Wild) "I love to watch This Is Spinal Tap. Why? It kills me. It just makes me laugh. Every time I see it, I see something new. I must have seen it 10 times, and that's a lot for me."
17. John Sayles (writer-director, Passion Fish) "I never tire of Yojimbo by Akira Kurosawa. It's kind of like a Western, but it's based on a Dashiell Hammett book called Red Harvest. He set it in Samurai times instead of the time of the Continental Op detective."
18. Jeff Bridges (actor, The Fisher King) "Whenever I push the clicker and watch the tube and The Godfather comes on the screen, I say, 'Oh, I'll watch a couple of scenes.' I end up seeing the whole thing."
19. Brendan Fraser (actor, With Honors) "One of my favorite films that I watch every year is A Christmas Story. It's just such a down-home film. It's about a kid who wants a Red Ryder BB gun and all he goes through to get it. And when he gets it, he didn't really want it in the first place. It's a sweet picture."
20. Alec Baldwin (actor, The Shadow) "When I was younger, I saw Five Graves to Cairo 10 times. I thought it was a great movie. Why? Because it had Franchot Tone and Akim Tamiroff. Franchot Tone was a great actor, very underrated in his time."
21. Nora Ephron (writer-director, Mixed Nuts) "You know what we watch every Christmas as a ritual? Both parts of The Godfather. Most people are watching It's a Wonderful Life, and we're watching The Godfather. We can see it every single year and be constantly amazed by new things in it. A couple of years ago, I read the book again, just because I'd forgotten it."
22. Jim Carrey (actor, Batman Forever) "When I was a kid in Canada, I watched Mr. Smith Goes to Washington whenever I could. I loved Jimmy Stewart. When video started up, I'd rent the picture and watch it and take it to bed, actually with the cassette on my chest and pray that someday I'd do something like that, I could recite the filibuster speech verbatim."
23. Bruce Brown (filmmaker, The Endless Summer) "The Jerk is a picture I can watch over and over and over again. Every time I find something new to laugh at. My favorite line is when Steve Martin is in the gas station and someone is shooting at him, hitting the oil containers. He says, 'He hates these cans! Stay away from the cans!'"
24. John Lone (actor, M. Butterfly) "I don't know why, but I love Doctor Zhivago, I just adore that film. It has such a rich atmosphere, such a rich sense of place and time. Julie Christie wilt forever be remembered from that film, she was so exceptional--young, fresh and beautiful, and a great actress."
25. Lloyd Bridges (actor, Hot Shots!) I see Casablanca a lot. I see things in it that make me realize Bogie gave the impression that he wasn't a real actor. But he was. I did a picture with him, Sahara, but I didn't have much to do in it. He was wonderful."
26. Ted Danson (actor, Three Men and a Baby) "There are two answers. One is in danger of making me seem shallow, but Charade makes me feel good whenever I see it. I loved Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn--I even loved the villains. Some movies just make me feel good because they remind me of a more carefree time. The other choice is the first Godfather, which I 've watched a handful of times. It's amazing."
27. Tim Curry (actor, The Shadow) "I'd have to say Don't Look Now, a Nicolas Roeg film with Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie. I loved that film. Roeg has made several movies that played around with time. Don't Look Now exists on the border of the real and the surreal in a very. very interesting way. And it's set in the most beautiful city in the world, Venice. I think it's a truly horrific film without being knee-deep in gore."
28. Gene Hackman (actor, The Quick and the Dead) "During the past year my wife and I have been watching Jurassic Park. I think we've seen it four times. I don't quite understand why I love that film so much. "Love' is too strong a word. I find it fascinating."
29. Russell Mulcahy (director, The Shadow) "I think I saw A Clockwork Orange 14 times. I think it was a masterpiece for what it was trying to do."
30. Adam Sandier (actor, Billy Madison) "Caddyshack--that is my generation's choice of a comedy. Chevy Chase. Rodney Dangerfield, Ted Knight--they were all great. I hope someday I'll be asked to do Caddyshack III."
31. Nicolas Cage (actor, Kiss of Death) "I saw A Clockwork Orange when I was a teenager, and it had a profound impression on me. It was my introduction to violence ant) the nature of violence as a necessary emotion, which was a complex thought for a young teenager."
32. Andrew Bergman (writer-director, The Freshman) "The Godfather is a movie which I can watch any five minutes of, and I am gone for the next six hours. I have to watch both of them, the first then the second Godfather. Great films I can watch over and over again. Movies like Raging Bull--you know, movies that are the opposite of those I make."
33. Forest Whitaker (actor, The Crying Game) "I watch The Fisher King again and again: I like that film. It's mythical and spiritual as well as personal. And it has con-science, it has a heart."
34. Faye Dunaway (actress, Don Juan DeMarco) "I have seen Rules of the Game many times, and I love it. I don't quite know why. I love France. I love the notion of people coming together in that country set-ting, the chasing, the kind of broken-downness of the lives."
35. Kenneth Branagh (actor-director, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein) "Strange choice: The Great Escape. Retrospectively, I think of its time and it's very, very well-made. A great story that really engaged you, with some touching moments in it. I can do many of the scenes from it. Donald Pleasence and James Garner stealing the air-plane. Charles Bronson in the boat with James Coburn. Then that wonderful moment when Richard Attenborough and Gordon Jackson are getting on the bus, and they nearly get away with it. Then the German officer says to Gordon Jackson in English. 'Good luck.' And he says. 'Thanks.' And they caught him."
36. Bernard Rose (writer-director, Immortal Beloved) "One picture I can see again and again is the original version of The Night of the Hunter. It's the only picture Charles Laughton ever directed. Robert Mitchum was terrifying, with the tattoos on his knuckles that read LOVE and HATE. Shelley Winters was good, too."
37. Anthony LaPaglia (actor, The Client) "Anything by Preston Sturges. Like Sullivan's Travels, The Palm Beach Story, The Great McGinty. His writing was so sharp, so crisp, so funny. The way he de-fined characters was just amazing-- you can see the films over and over."
38. Jon Avnet (director, Fried Green Tomatoes) "I did an interview with Bernardo Bertolucci at the American Film Institute in 1973. The last thing I saw before going to Paris was The Conformist, so I had the opportunity to see it six or eight times. I always saw new things. It's always difficult to see the things that go into the making of a scene. You look at one element and try to see element by element what the choices were. I've studied that film very carefully."
39. Danny DeVito (director, Hoffa) "'I guess you could see Citizen Kane over and over. I love watching Woody Allen's movies over and over again. And 8½--I can always watch 8½ again."
40. Tom Hulce (actor, Parenthood) "I used to travel with Tootsie, which I thought was an amazing piece of filmmaking. I always take a movie when I travel, because enjoying a good movie can put me to sleep. So I saw Tootsie about 30 times, but it was in the interest of getting a good night's sleep. It was brilliantly written, with a combination of extraordinary performances."
41. Charlie Sheen (actor, Terminal Velocity) "The first Jaws. Why? I dunno. I have a fascination for sharks. It still holds up, I've seen it 93 limes. Me and my brother |Emilio Estevez|, we quote it, we do all the monologues. Jaws--and also Apocalypse Now. We can never get enough of Apocalypse."
42. Jeroen Krabbe (actor, The Fugitive) "The Visconti film Death in Venice I can see over and over again. It's not about death; it's about life. It has incredible performances, particularly Dirk Bogarde's. It's the truth about life: you're looking for something and you can't get it. And when you get it, you die. It's true."
43. Michael Wadleigh (filmmaker, Woodstock) "Here we are, 50 years down the line, and I still think Citizen Kane is the best movie ever made. I look at that many times, and I say, the invention of the photography and the damn script! I'm interested in politics and society. What an incredible piece of a man's life with social issues and everything."
44. Timothy Dalton (actor, Licence to Kill) "I've seen The Outlaw Josey Wales six or seven times. I think it is one of the best Westerns ever made. I have always liked Clint Eastwood, but that's a different matter. I just think as a Western it is so socially creative. It's fun--I love it--but it's essentially a story of rebuilding after the Civil War. Rebuilding out of hatred, out of vengeance, rebuilding a society out of all these disparate people. They live, they survive, all these different ethics, different backgrounds, finding a way to live. That is something uplifting and shocking in what people think of as a Clint Eastwood Western."
45. Stephen Hopkins (director, Blown Away) "Harold and Maude was my favorite. I think I grew up thinking I was Harold. The movie fills me with great hope and joy every time I see it."
46. Kris Kristofferson (actor, A Star Is Born) "La Strada is a piece of art that I find absolutely believable every time I see it. The performances are wonderful, and the direction is wonderful. Things that I have done myself, I can't see more than twice."
47. Ed Asner (actor, "Lou Grant") "I can't see a movie too many times, but I guess I saw It's a Wonderful Life six or eight times. It was a beautiful fairy tale. I loved Henry Travers's work as the angel Clarence. Then I switched to The Best Years of Our Lives. I go nuts watching Fredric March, he was just so good."
48. Patrick Read Johnson (director, Baby's Day Out) "2001: A Space Odyssey was the film that made me want to become a director. I was seven when I saw it. I said to my parents, 'I'm going to direct a movie someday.' They told me to finish grade school first. Of course I didn't understand it when I was seven, but I was mesmerized by the visual aspect of it and the fact that the story-telling was done essentially with pictures, not dialogue. As I got older and saw it more and more times, I realized that it compels you to think."
49. Peter Riegert (actor, Local Hero) "I can watch Stanley Kubrick's film The Killing over and over again. The way he puts his camera, the acting, the dialogue--I just find it an intriguing story."
50. Drew Barrymore (actress, Batman Forever) "Every time I see Annie Hall, I learn another line I might have missed. It's such a brilliant movie that you can hear the punch lines over and over and still laugh."
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Bob Thomas wrote about female villains for the April Movieline.