Photo Credit: Harper’s Bazaar
As a cinephile, I have been observing the careers of boomer actors, particularly their accomplishments during awards seasons. Now that the latter is finally over, let’s zoom in on two renowned mature actors, Brad Pitt and Antonio Banderas. I was never a fan of either star when they were younger, but the growth and maturity of both men as actors over the past decade have impressed me.
I remember seeing the long-anticipated Quentin Tarantino film Once Upon A Time…In Hollywood when it debuted last July and was blown away by Brad Pitt’s performance. The best actor always makes the audience forget that he/she is acting, and Pitt’s role as Cliff Booth, the stunt double and best friend of a fictional actor named Rick Dalton, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, was the most natural I’ve recently seen on the big screen. We know very little about Booth in the movie except that he was a Vietnam War veteran, he lived in a trailer in LA, and he’s got an expressive pit bull as a pet. But we laughed at and with him when he was silly, stoned and drunk, and even though he was a bit of a loser and an alleged wife-killer, we empathized with him and cheered when he beat Bruce Lee in a casual fight scene and swooned when he took his shirt off on the roof repairing a TV antenna. I recall telling all my friends that Pitt absolutely stole the whole show and there he is now, having won his first-ever acting Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.
In his Oscar acceptance speech, Pitt thanked Geena Davis for giving him his first break in Thelma and Louise in 1991, and since then his fame has risen incessantly albeit, for the longest time, Pitt could not shed his pretty-boy-only image. His good looks were actually in his way – he was underestimated as an actor over the years in spite of his best on-camera and behind-the-scene efforts, whether as a collaborator of world-renowned architect Frank Gehry in building 150 new homes in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina hit; or how his production firm Plan B supported so many successful films such as Eat Pray Love, The Big Short, 12 Years A Slave, and Moonlight.
As The New York Times so aptly wrote, “Beauty can be a trap as much as a benediction, including for men.” Other handsome Hollywood stars such as Paul Newman won his only Oscar after seven nominations. Robert Redford, who ironically picked Pitt to play in The River Runs Through It, has been nominated only once for acting and he lost.
The 56-year-old Pitt not only looked better than his 11-year-younger co-star DiCaprio in Once Upon A Time….in Hollywood, he also proved that after close to 30 years playing a range of roles including a soldier, sailor, rich man, poor man, vampire, thief, psychopath and astronaut, he finally won his acting Oscar as what he has always been throughout his career – the coolest of all cats. As the actor ages, Pitt has also become more self-deprecating. His acceptance speech at the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Award topped it all with that kind of humour – he said that his role was “a big stretch: a guy who gets high, takes his shirt off and doesn’t get on with his wife.” For those who loved Once Upon A Time…in Hollywood like I did, you should know exactly what he meant.
The other boomer actor, who was nominated for an Oscar this year for the first time for his starring role in the Spanish film Pain and Glory, is another handsome actor Antonio Banderas. Although neither he nor the film won any Oscars, Banderas is another good example of a maturing actor who took on challenging roles as he ages and has proven himself to be more than a pretty face. Far from his Mask of Zorro days, the 59-year-old Banderas played a screenwriter and director who lived to make movies but had stopped working because he’s suffering from physical pain and pain of the soul in Pain and Glory. His character, whom Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar modelled on himself, suffered from insomnia, ulcers, reflux, tendinitis, depression and more.
I saw Banderas’s interview with Stephen Colbert just before the Academy Awards, and was touched by his awakening after his life-threatening heart attack two-and-a-half years ago. He said, “It’s one of the best things that ever happened in my life because it just gave me a perspective of who I was.” He also recounted how a nurse in the hospital told him that the heart not only pumps blood throughout your body; the heart is a warehouse for feelings and that you should expect to be sad for a few weeks or a few months following the heart attack and having stents put in. In describing his life after the cardiac arrest, Banderas said in a New York Times interview, “Since my heart attack, it’s almost like windows and doors started opening, and I started discovering other aspects of myself that I didn’t even know I had…I know that this may sound very stupid, but that cardiac event is probably one of the most beautiful things that happened in my life.” Almodovar has said that he cast Banderas in Pain and Glory because that heart attack lent the actor the ability to play pain in a very real, subtle way. I agree with the Times that it was Banderas’s most restrained performance he’s ever given which is also why it’s so natural, subtle and touching.
Brad Pitt and Antonio Banderas both started their acting careers famous for their good looks, but have since then matured into accomplished roles and recognized for their acting skills in their advancing years. So, for you boomers out there who might be thinking that life’s setbacks – two divorces and multiple addictions in Pitt’s case; and a divorce and health crisis for Banderas – could cripple you, it’s time to look at these two boomer role models and start afresh.
