The Star Online: Entertainment: Movies
The Star Online: Entertainment: Movies |
| Robert Redford to appear in new 'Captain America' film Posted: 29 Mar 2013 04:57 PM PDT LOS ANGELES - Robert Redford will appear in the next "Captain America" blockbuster - and the Hollywood legend and independent movie guru insists he is not selling out. The 76-year-old Redford will play a senior leader in the secret government agency of S.H.I.E.L.D in "Captain America: The Winter Soldier," scheduled for release next year, according to the LA Times. "I told you, there's no money in those films," Redford joked when asked about the new role at an independent film event in Los Angeles this week. More seriously, Redford - who made his name in movies like "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" (1969) and "The Sting" (1973) - added: "I'm doing this film because it's different. It's a new thing for me. "And I like the idea of stepping into new territory ... I'm excited by it. I also think it's a good bunch of people who really know what they're doing," he added at an LA Times Indie Focus series screening. The new film - a sequel to 2011's "Captain America: The First Avenger" - will again star Chris Evans in the title role, along with Samuel L. Jackson and Scarlett Johansson as the Black Widow. Redford, co-founder of the Sundance Film Festival, America's biggest independant movie showcase held in the snowy Utah mountains every January, won a best director Oscar for 1980's "Ordinary People." His movies tend to be critical successes rather than commercial blockbusters. But Redford defended his decision to join the "Captain America" franchise, saying: "I think these films are really powerful. "This is the kind of film I'd love to have seen as a kid," he added. - AFP |
| Harry Potter actor Richard Griffiths dies aged 65 Posted: 29 Mar 2013 04:56 PM PDT LONDON - British actor Richard Griffiths, best known for his roles as Harry Potter's uncle and in the cult film "Withnail & I", has died aged 65, his agent said on Friday. The portly star of stage and screen, one of Britain's best loved character actors, died on Thursday from complications following heart surgery, Simon Beresford said. Griffiths will be forever remembered as Uncle Monty by fans of cult classic "Withnail & I", although he reached his biggest audience as Uncle Vernon Dursley in the Harry Potter films. Daniel Radcliffe, who played the boy wizard in the blockbuster Potter series, led the tributes to a man he said had offered him "encouragement, tutelage and humour". The two men worked together on the Harry Potter films and later in the play Equus. "Any room he walked into was made twice as funny and twice as clever just by his presence. I am proud to say I knew him," Radcliffe said in a statement. Griffiths was born on July 31, 1947 in Yorkshire in northern England, the son of a steelworker. His parents were both deaf so he had to learn sign language at an early age. He left school at 15 and worked as a porter for a while, but his boss persuaded him to go back to education, to study drama. He later joined the Royal Shakespeare Company, excelling in playing the clown. Early film credits included "Chariots of Fire", "The French Lieutenant's Woman" and "Gandhi", before he landed a starring role in the 1987 comedy "Withnail & I". Griffiths played the eccentric gay uncle of Withnail, an out-of-work, alcoholic actor played by Richard E. Grant, in a film now regarded as a British classic. Grant said in a message on Twitter: "My beloved 'Uncle Monty' Richard Griffiths died last night. Chin-Chin my dear friend." Nicholas Hytner, the director of London's National Theatre who directed Griffiths in one of his biggest stage hits, The History Boys, said he was "the life of every party". He recalled anecdotes that "would go on for hours, apparently without destination, constantly side-splitting. The only way to stop them was to tell him you were walking away". Griffiths won a Tony and an Olivier award for his role as an inspirational teacher in The History Boys, and was nominated for a Bafta for best actor for the film version. "His performance in The History Boys was quite overwhelming: a masterpiece of wit, delicacy, mischief and desolation, often simultaneously," said Hytner. As a stage actor, Griffiths demanded his audience's full attention, having twice stopped a show to order people out of the theatre after their mobile telephones rang out. He also had a successful television career, starring as a crime-solving chef in TV series "Pie In The Sky" in the 1990s, and he was awarded an OBE for services to drama in 2007. Last year Griffiths starred alongside Danny DeVito in The Sunshine Boys in London and was due to reprise the role in Los Angeles in September. In a statement, Beresford said his client had "brightened my days and enriched the life of anyone he came into contact with", and said his thoughts went out to Griffiths' wife Heather. "Richard gave acting a good name. He was a remarkable man and one of our greatest and best-loved actors. He will be greatly missed," the agent said. - AFP |
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