The Lives of Leading Men

John Douglas Thompson in Chicago. Photograph by Deana Lawson.
John Douglas Thompson in Chicago. Photograph by Deana Lawson.

In Truman Capote’s Profile of Marlon Brando, published in 1957, he writes of “the chameleon ease” with which Brando transforms himself into the character of Stanley Kowalski in “A Streetcar Named Desire.” This particular talent for metamorphosis is a central characteristic of all of the actors featured in this week’s archive collection. Over the past few months, we’ve highlighted selections of New Yorker stories on writers, filmmakers, actresses, and chefs. This week, we’ve pulled together a collection of six classic pieces about leading men, from Brando and Cary Grant to Sean Penn and Ben Stiller.

The Duke in His Domain” (1957): Truman Capote profiles Marlon Brando during the filming of Joshua Logan’s “Sayonora,” in Kyoto, Japan. “I was never sure about acting,” Brando says. “Then, when I was in ‘Streetcar,’ and it had been running a couple of months, one night—dimly, dimly—I began to hear this roar. It was like I’d been asleep, and I woke up here sitting on a pile of candy.”

The Man from Dream City” (1975): Pauline Kael on Cary Grant’s legacy and the popularity of screwball comedies in Hollywood. “Men as far apart as John F. Kennedy and Lucky Luciano thought that he should star in their life story,” Kael writes. “Who but Cary Grant could be a fantasy self-image for a President and a gangster chief?”

Somebody Has to Be in Control” (2008): Ian Parker on the effort behind George Clooney’s affable charm. Clooney, Parker writes, “is the fellow at the end of the bar, who, on a scale running from Jimmy Stewart to Jack Nicholson, has found an enviable midpoint of courteous roguishness.”

Citizen Penn” (2006): John Lahr traces Sean Penn’s path from “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” to “All the King’s Men.” Penn, Lahr observes, “is an entrepreneur of his own edge—a roiling combination of rage, buoyancy, tenderness, and hurt.”

Stage Secret” (2012): Alec Wilkinson on John Douglas Thompson, who has been called the best classical actor in America. “You can have a moral judgment,” Thompson says, “but you have to ask, ‘Does your character judge himself?’ If he doesn’t, you can’t, otherwise you play what your judgments are.”

Funny Is Money” (2012): Tad Friend profiles Ben Stiller and his latest passion project, an adaptation of James Thurber’s “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.” Stiller, Judd Apatow tells Friend, “is ground zero for everything in modern comedy.”

“The Master” (2014): Anthony Lane looks back on the career of Philip Seymour Hoffman. “Like many of his peers, not least Brando, he demonstrated that life itself, when lived to the hilt, acquired a flourish of the theatrical.”

We hope that you enjoy these pieces, as well as the stories we’ve already shared in previous collections, and that you’ll follow us on Facebook and Twitter, where our contributors continue to recommend their favorite articles from the archive.