Actor makes 'bad guys' human
New York Peter Boyle made a name for himself in 1970 as the angry, drunken conservative in the film "Joe," and he's still working to make unattractive characters into three-dimensional human beings.
In addition to a recurring gig as the contentious dad on "Everybody Loves Raymond," Boyle is the nasty, racist father of a family of prison guards in the new film "Monster's Ball."
"The important thing is to take these people and make them human," he told the Daily News in a story published Tuesday. "There are no 'bad guys.' You can always find some unexpected tenderness."
Boyle said he likes the stability the "Everybody Loves Raymond" job brings to his career, but doesn't like the long trips to California because he misses his wife and two teen daughters back in New York.
"When I was a struggling actor, I was very lonely," he said. "So now, it's those trips back home that keep me going."
Biographer stands by 'Dutch'
New York Edmund Morris has written a sequel to the book about Theodore Roosevelt that won him a Pulitzer Prize, yet he finds that it is his book about Ronald Reagan he is always asked about.
In an interview with The New York Times, Morris said he stands behind the unconventional narrating technique he used in "Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan," published in 1999. Morris said he knew what the reaction "was going to be like, and I would not have done it differently."
Although "Dutch" an unorthodox amalgam of history and fiction, narrated in the first-person by a fictional version of Morris himself received some favorable reviews, it was condemned by many critics who said Morris had wasted the access he was granted when he was named Reagan's official biographer in 1985.
"Frankly, I don't like talking about technique at all because I think technique should be invisible," Morris said. But he said he wanted to correct the impression "that I fictionalized Reagan's life as well as that of the narrator."
Morris' first book, "The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt," was published in 1979. His new book, "Theodore Rex," covers Roosevelt's presidency from 1901 to 1909.
Language no barrier for actress
New York Kristin Scott Thomas is a multinational star in the literal sense: She was born in England, lives in France and appears in English, French and American movies.
But one of the films she's most proud of hasn't been widely seen in any of those places. The 1994 movie known to American audiences as "An Unforgettable Summer" was shot in Romania, and Scott Thomas spoke all her lines in the native language.
"The deal was they were going to dub me. ... But in the end they didn't bother because I was able to say it with enough conviction," the 41-year-old actress told The Associated Press.
Scott Thomas is one of the stars in Robert Altman's new ensemble crime comedy, "Gosford Park."
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