Question: Why isn’t “character actress” a part of our vernacular?
A.O. Scott and Manhola Dargis answer this question in their monthly column Q&A on Film-
Q. After Stephen Tobolowsky’s great tribute in The Times to Maury Chaykin and other recently deceased character actors, I got to wondering: why isn’t “character actress” a part of our vernacular?
LeAnne Laux-Bachand
Seattle
SCOTT With all respect to the excellent and protean Mr. Tobolowsky, there are a lot of great supporting roles for women in the literature he cites — mostly handmaidens, mothers and wives, perhaps, but those putatively marginal parts are catnip to skilled character actresses, who have always been around but perhaps not given as much respect as their male counterparts. There are also, perennially, more roles for men than for women when it comes to filling out a story with co-workers, cousins, crazy neighbors, beat cops and so on.
But here are a few names to conjure with from the Hollywood past: Mercedes McCambridge, Margaret Hamilton (a k a the Wicked Witch of the West) and the great and ubiquitous Thelma Ritter. Today, off the top of my head, I’d mention Patricia Clarkson, newly minted Oscar winner Melissa Leo, the always splendid Catherine Keener, Samantha Morton. Also Anne Heche (see “Cedar Rapids”). Kathy Baker. Grace Zabriskie. Actually, there might be a lot!
It’s a tricky category, of course. All of those performers are more than capable of carrying a movie as the lead (see: “Cairo Time,” for Ms. Clarkson, “Frozen River” for Ms. Leo and “Please Give” for Ms. Keener), but I guess what defines character actors is that they impress more by craft than charisma. And also that you always want to see more of them.
DARGIS The word actor is gender-neutral, yet while actress is part of the vernacular you’re right that “character actress” isn’t, perhaps because of some unease about women and eccentricity. I started investigating the origin of the term “character actress” and didn’t get far, but I did find a charming article on New York actors and actresses in the April 1879 issue of Scribner’s Monthly. Describing classes of characters in theater, J. Brander Matthews wrote that “in a very full company there would be a pair of ‘leading men,’ a ‘light comedian,’ an ‘old man,’ a couple of ‘low comedians,’ an actor of ‘character,’ or eccentric parts, a ‘heavy man,’ — the villain of the piece, — and a ‘walking gentleman.’ There would be a pair of ‘leading ladies,’ a ‘juvenile lead,’ an ‘ingénue,’ a ‘chamber-maid,’ an ‘old woman,’ — perhaps two.”
It may be that in 1879, shortly before the invention of cinema, it wasn’t seen as desirable (necessary or possible) for actresses to play eccentrics and deviate from the norm, especially since theater was regarded as a disreputable milieu, one for so-called loose women and prostitutes. According to the historian Tino Balio, by the 1930s there were four types of performers in Hollywood: supporting players who might work only a week; stock players, the largest group; featured players, who received credit; and stars, who received everything. By then, no matter what they were called, character actors and actresses like Andy Devine and Margaret Hamilton, with their distinctive voices, unforgettable faces and genius for stealing the show, were part of the system.
