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Features
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Tucci Wears Well
At age 45, actor Stanley Tucci has a new TV series on the way and another memorable performance to fill the gap between his third and fourth directorial efforts.
Thursday, June 29, 2006
By Daniel Robert Epstein
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20th Century Fox
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The Devil Wears Prada (2006)
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Stanley Tucci is that rare character actor who was able to take control of his career by writing and directing himself in critically acclaimed films. Indeed, it wasn’t until his 1996 directorial debut, Big Night, that Hollywood took full notice of a performer first identified with early gangster roles in films such as Quick Change, Billy Bathgate and Men of Respect.
The success of Big Night helped vault Tucci to an Emmy award-winning role in the 1998 HBO movie Winchell. But after the botched release by USA Films a few years later of his third directorial effort, Joe Gould's Secret, Tucci still hasn’t found another film to direct. But in the meantime, he continues to sink his teeth into juicy character parts such as Nigel, the fashion director of the most popular fashion magazine in America in the film The Devil Wears Prada.
“I was very disheartened by the lack of release of Joe Gould's Secret,” Tucci admits during a recent interview with FilmStew. “That really put me off; I said I don’t want to do this for a while. I had invested too much and it was too emotional. So I stopped directing.”
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USA Pictures
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As Joe Mitchell in Joe Gould's Secret
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“Then, I found a couple of things I wanted to do, but they didn’t work out,” he continues. “I’ve written two movies since then, and I was going to do one this fall, but I’m going to do the television series 3 Lbs. instead. So next summer, there’s this other one that I rewrote, that a guy named Damian Dibben wrote, that I’ll do with [Prada co-star] Emily Blunt and James McAvoy. My hope is that by winter we’ll have the money, and then we’ll do it.
Much attention is being paid to Miranda Priestley, the character Meryl Streep portrays in Prada, and whether or not this latest masterful incarnation was based on real-life Vogue editor Anna Wintour (the actress has indicated she anchored the performance around recollections of various male bosses). In the case of Tucci’s personage, a man he describes as “the gay Don Rickles, ” the actor reveals he also channeled a number of real-life experiences.
“There were a few people who have that real intelligence and that amazing removal,” Tucci muses. “They’re like ice, and then you find out later that they’re really sweet. Nigel could have been like a big flaming whatever, and that’s just not appropriate. I think we’ve seen that too much and it ultimately becomes insulting and silly.”
“I think that you cannot make a caricature. It has to be a real person.”
Along with character motivation, Tucci has no problem admitting that one of the most crucial elements for a film performance are the threads. “I find costume fittings really incredibly important,” he explains. “Crucial, in fact, to creating the character.”
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Touchstone Pictures
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Big Trouble (2002)
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“If the costume doesn’t fit properly or seem truthful or looks like a costume, it’s not helpful to you and it’s not helpful to the film,” he continues. “We had to find the proper tone so you’re not going over the top, but that he’s wearing something that’s a bit different and that nobody else would wear.”
“Very few people would wear those combinations of all those elements and then have a vest and tuck the vest into their pants. Those little things make a huge difference. It helped me find who he was, because I had no time to prepare for this thing. I came in at the last minute.”
As an actor, Tucci says that when you come to a Meryl Streep film, you know right off the bat that the movie will feature a performance of substance, regardless of what the content is. But in this case, the actor also found qualities in the script that spoke to his own esthetic.
“When you have a really rich script with characters, it makes it even better,” he suggests. “I feel that this movie is the way that Hollywood movies were like when I was a kid. There’s intelligence in it, really good acting and a strong story.”
“For my character, we think he’s this monster and then he becomes a person,” adds Tucci. “To have that such a beautifully defined character arc is the goal, and then to find the subtleties and hit it over the head.”
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Dreamworks SKG
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The Terminal (2004)
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“It’s only certain times where a character like this comes along. A lot times in American movies, you have the good guy, you have the bad guy, and then there’s not really anything in between. Here you have a really full spectrum. You have a full spectrum in Meryl’s character and in this character. You’re more than thrilled when you get offered something like this, because these are the dream roles.”
Tucci explains that when it comes to “bad guys,” the challenge as a performer is to find the humanity and to make them seem real. “It’s a bit more of a challenge, because people like to see things in black and white,” he says. “I think one of the reasons why people might come to me to play “bad guys” is because I think I bring a certain humanity to them.”
“Even playing Adolf Eichmann in the HBO movie Conspiracy, you have to find the humanity because he’s not a monster,” Tucci maintains. “He’s a person, so you have to find the person and then we have to find that behavior that allowed him to execute that behavior, for lack of a better description.”
Tucci describes his new Barry Levinson TV series 3 Lbs., which focuses on brain surgeons, as a “neuro-procedural.” CBS has ordered seven episodes and, presumably, if it does anything near House or Grey’s Anatomy ratings, there will be more. Such is the life of all but the most successful actors.
“The ups and downs of it are awful, terrible,” Tucci admits. “I’ve made a lot of movies, I’ve done a lot of different things, and it’s great. I’m not complaining. However, one does get concerned. So you talk to people and you find it’s not just you, thank God.”
“You work on a few movies, then you go home and wait…,” he adds. “You’re waiting so you call your agent and say, ‘Is something going on?’ You just want your career to be as varied as possible and that’s why I started making my own movies. There you can really satisfy your creative impulses in their entirety. You don’t just have to focus on one aspect of your creative self.”
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