October 21, 2009 02:00PM EDT
This is Stanley Tucci's Year
Stanley Tucci is having a very good year. This summer we saw him reunited with Meryl Streep, the star of his last big hit The Devil Wears Prada, for another crowdpleaser, the foodie dream Julie & Julia. Next month he's a career tribute honoree at the annual Gotham Film Awards. He'll close out 2009 with a killer role (literally) in Peter Jackson's adaptation of the best seller The Lovely Bones. This weekend he got the interview treatment on stage as part of the annual New Yorker Festival. Did he owe this honor to this career peak year or due to the fact that he's one of the only filmmakers to ever make a movie about the New Yorker itself? (His second directorial effort, Joe Gould's Secret, was about staff writer Joe Mitchell and a New Yorker profile about the eccentric Gould.)
It didn't take long for that movie to come up. "Actually, The New Yorker didn't give it a very good review," Tucci informed the crowd, jokingly pretending to take off his mic as if carrying a long-held grudge. "So that's it for me, I'm done!"
Instead he stayed for a conversation with journalist Michael Specter, which wandered from his directorial career through his family life to repeated tangents about the death of journalism and rise of Twitter. Understandably, the bulk of the interview focused on acting. As Tucci tried to describe his process of finding a character, Specter suggested that it would be hard to shake off the character when you're playing extremes like a child killer (The Lovely Bones) or a Nazi (Conspiracy).
Tucci shrugged that off, believing that juggling is the actor's job. "If you did it that way you'd be in an asylum. You have to compartmentalize." Though Tucci's answers often revealed a man who was very serious about his craft, he had a way of spinning the stories away from actorly jargon and toward accessible humor. "Most people don't compartmentalize their emotions consciously. They go to therapy and they find out that's what they're doing and they try not to do it. We try to do it."
In reply to a rave quote from a critic suggesting that he walked off with Julie & Julia, the actor deadpanned, "My mother wrote that." He was more comfortable heaping praise on frequent co-stars like Patricia Clarkson. "She and Meryl (Streep) are two of the greatest ever. They do not over-intellectualize the process of acting. They throw themselves into it fully like children. A good artist is a really smart child."
His two co-starring roles with Streep aren't just highlights for the audience. Tucci hopes to have a third round. "Anything with Meryl is fun. I actually find it hard to act with her, because I still… I just want to watch her. And then I forget my line."
Stanley Tucci is good at deflecting praise. The way this year is going, Oscar buzz and all, he'll have plenty more opportunities to do so.
Tell us your favorite Stanley Tucci film in the comments. Do you think he'll get nominated for an Oscar this year? Will it be for Julie & Julia or The Lovely Bones?
Read our feature on Julie & Julia, complete with an exclusive recipe from Nora Ephron.
October 22, 2009 07:35 AM
fapbaker said:
I first noticed Stanley Tucci in the series Murder One and I've been a fan ever since. My favorite film is probably "Big Night". Love it!
October 23, 2009 07:12 AM
Elisabeth Donnelly said:
He's really sexy in this ad. I'm just going to say it.
October 28, 2009 01:21 PM
ifp4136 said:
Big Night is my fav!! Looking forward to Shiny Bones.