Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Stanley Tucci's Crazy Casting Choices

Stanley Tucci is an extraordinarily talented actor (I find it *quite* refreshing to see that a man can achieve success in Hollywood without having a full head of hair), but I sometimes wonder about the roles he chooses to play. While he played one of the resteranteur brothers in "Big Night" and Joe Mitchell in "Joe Gould’s Secret," quite frequently, he is typecast in the roles of sinister villains. He played a hit man in The Pelican Brief, the mobster Frank Nitti in The Road to Perdition and, in Billy Bathgate, he played the infamous Charlie “Lucky” Luciano. He only had two scenes, but his presence and manner was positively bone-chilling.

I once read that Mr. Tucci had gotten sick and tired of being typecast as a mobster and that he announced he would not play any more of those roles. Ironically, shortly thereafter, he appeared in Conspiracy, which is about the infamous Wannsee Conference in early 1942. Stanley Tucci played Lieutenant Colonel Adolf Eichmann.

Since I started composing this snippet, I learned that Mr. Tucci is playing a major role in the new film "The Lovely Bones." He plays the Man Next Door...who rapes and murders a teenage girl.

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