Caught in the Act

Liv Tyler is a superstar by comparison with any of the previously mentioned talents. There's never a question of not noticing her--for almost two years now, you haven't been able to walk out of your house without her lovely, slightly horsey puss glaring out at you from magazine covers and advertising for Stealing Beauty, Heavy, Empire Records, That Thing You Do! and Inventing the Abbotts. Truth be told, Tyler is, despite her debut in Silent Fall, a very capable actress who's smart enough to know that being naturally sweet and quiet is nine-tenths of the battle. If she stays smart, which is not an even bet, she'll never do an action-movie girlfriend or neo-noir vamp role. Watch her get subtly fed up with listening to boyfriend Evan Dando strum his guitar all night long in Heavy, and you see something real happening. One of the main pop culture dramas of 1996--for the media, if not the public--was the struggle for Tyler's cherry, which Bernardo Bertolucci lustily popped, and which Tom Hanks chivalrously restored; in either case, Tyler emerged as engaging and authentic. Her performance in Inventing the Abbotts has genuine substance and depth. Crawfordian score: a triumphant 0.

So, models--yea or nay? Who cares what I think? Hollywood won't listen, not with all those fashion magazines providing all that free publicity. You, as America's ticket-buyers and gigaplex clients, are the ones who decide critical questions like, will Cindy Crawford ever get another lead role? I can tell you one thing, though: watching model movies en masse as I have for the past week is like being submerged in a sensory deprivation tank. My brain scrambled madly to fill the void. During Higher Learning _alone, I figured my taxes and hallucinated a vision of the Virgin Mary doing the Macarena. During _Fair Game, I think I won a Nobel prize. I recommend these films to anyone who needs a little mental downtime.

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Michael Atkinson interviewed Christian Bale for the March issue of Movieline.

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