A Star IS REBORN
Film critics have a habit, and not an especially good one, of describing biographical performances as a kind of magic trick, a vanishing act. We marvel at the “transformative” process that turns one famous person, for two hours or so, into another. We describe their crafty, makeup-aided mimicry as “uncanny”, a kind of supernatural channeling. And we speak of actors “disappearing” into these roles, as if the true mark of a great performance is our failure to see the artist behind it. It’s a perception that pervades the industry itself, winning glittering prizes on a near-annual basis for highly recognisable actors doing their best to make themselves less so: Gary Oldman’s latex-swaddled Winston Churchill, Meryl Streep’s starched-and-pressed Maggie Thatcher, Rami Malek’s bucktoothed, lip-synching Freddie Mercury.
Yet some of the most vivid biopic turns aren’t disappearing acts at all. Think of Faye Dunaway’s once-denigrated high-camp Joan Crawford in Mommie Dearest: an extraordinary, emulsified fusion of both legends’ challenging hauteur and hard-ass glamour, no more recognisable as one than the other. Or Diana Ross playing Billie Holiday in Lady Sings the Blues, the Motown diva’s baby-doll look and Canderel voice intact, and both miles away from those of the tortured jazz goddess – and yet, somehow, they feel emotionally true to her pain. Not every actor needs to lose themselves in the person they’re playing; sometimes finding yourself in them can work just fine.
This thought repeatedly came to mind while watching a resurgent Renée Zellweger take on the daunting task of inhabiting Judy Garland in , Rupert Goold’s bittersweet late-life biopic. The performance is gutsy, funny, stirring: an against-odds coup from an actor who wouldn’t have been first on many people’s lists to play Hollywood’s greatest (and most tortured) show-woman. It is absolutely not a slavish act of impersonation, despite dazzling contributions from the costume, hair and makeup teams: Zellweger may artfully approximate Garland’s brassy, marmalade-thick timbre and glitchy-electric stage
