There is something going on comparable to La Nouvelle Vague ,happening right now on the West Side of Los Angeles. This WestSide New Wave is spearheaded by actor/film maker Nate Golon, Director/editor Andre Welsh, Writer/Actor Kimberly Legg, British actor Leanne Wilson and American actor, Chioke Jelani Clanton
British born and trained Leanne Wilson is an actor whose talent brings into focus the current state of acting.
Actors ask me what I am looking for in actors?,
In male actors, that is easy; Nelson Mandela once said of Sean Connery that Connery reminded him of a lethal panther. Nelson Mandala who brought down a way of life, respected the image of Sean Connery, an actor.
Male actors, who want to be leading men, should aspire to that, lethal danger.
That does not mean mastery of the F word, histrionics, ranting, raving. It means a projection of quiet lethality, which men n the audience will recognize as dangerous. It means Sean Connery or Russell Crowe or Samuel L. Jackson.
To be an American leading man, you have to project an American danger, which Glenn Ford summated in that underrated Western, THE VIOLENT MEN. “I will fight to be left alone.”
That is American leading man’s danger in a nutshell, I will fight to be left alone;in the end that is what the American militia movement is all about.
What do you look for in female actors, beauty? figure? sexiness? Yes, but also two more subtle qualities, authenticity and authority.
So many current American female actors are burdened, chained, enslaved by modernity. In their acting, they troll and troll, and troll the superficial. Drawing their frame of reference from Reality Tv, or Music Videos or Modernity itself, they are incapable of giving an authentic performance.
Their performances are all caricature of the superficial, for example, CLOTHES. I submit that SEX AND THE CITY and THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA were all about clothes. They were both superficial trolling of clothes and women. A great many modern female actors could have played those roles, but if you made a movie about clothes that was not superficial very few modern American female actors could do it.
You, the reader, want a non superficial film about women’s clothes? I give you JEZEBEL starring Bette Davis, and Henry Fonda. The movie is based on the female lead wearing a Red dress to a White Dress Ball. She does, and all hell breaks loose. There are a handful of female actors who could do that role today,Halle Berry being one. One of the others is Leanne Wilson.
Modernity is a curse to modern female actors, it colors everything they do, so that they don’t act per se, they just replicate. Meg Ryan was wonderful in SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE and YOU’VE GOT MAIL. But when she had to do a role stripped of modern sensibility and act the role without affectation, like in RESTORATION; well, as she was doing the mad woman’s dance, you wanted to get up out of the audience, step into the movie, cover her head with a blanket and spirit her away.
These are the best all time female performances by a female actor
Lee Remick in WILD RIVER, in which the sheer ferocity of her lower class, white trash love will make a man out of the Wuss bureaucrat, and get her family a respectable middle class life.
Jo Van Fleet in WILD RIVER in which she memorializes the old ways, and in the scene with the dog and the black man symbolizes why people loathe the Government, regardless of how well intended that Government.
Bette Davis in JEZEBEL, the pure life force in every woman
Joan Crawford in MILDRED PIERCE, the dignity of struggle
Olivia De Haviland in THE HEIRESS, on why women really hate men; accused of being mean, she responds, based on her experience with men, “I have learned from masters.”
Meryl Streep in SOPHIE’S CHOICE, women against the Gods.
I look for a female actor who can do one or all of these roles;I am a fan of Leanne Wilson because she can.
THE AUTHORITY OF BEING WORTHY
The best of female roles is not the ones in which she has supernatural power like BUFFY, or is empowered to no end, like the typical Holly Hunter role, or when she can do cartoon things like LARA CROFT. Our current crop of female actors want to hide behind cartoonish ”:empowerment” in which they can slap or kick the men on the screen and nothing happens to them in return.
Female actors must have the authority to stand their ground with strong male characters, without karate, or tricks, or vampire slaying abilities. Helen Mirren comes to mind. Men defer to her inner strength, not her karate ability. Holly Hunter would have you believe that a 6 foot man would not mess with her because she could knock him out. Helen Mirren asks you to believe a barbarian would not mess with her because he sees her as worthy.
The best female actor in the world today is Sigourney Weaver; she is deft at side splitting comedy as in GALAXY QUEST, powerful as RIPLEY in the ALIEN films, or vain glorious in WORKING GIRL (ten times better than THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA), and continually sexy. She has mastered the authority of being worthy, which I believe is critical to female leads.
No other young female acor has a better chance of being Sigourney Weaver than Leanne Wilson.
www.leanne-wilson.co.uk
9http://workshoptheseries.com/watch.php?s=1&ep=9
She can also be seen in STORAGE and was featured recently on NBC’s ‘Better Off Ted’ :
http://www.hulu.com/watch/119286/better-off-ted-the-long-and-winding-high-road
She is currently in talks to film a new 3D feature film.
You go girl.
LEANNE WILSON
