Movies starring Frances Fisher
Ms. Fisher began by apprenticing at the Barter Theatre in Abingdon, Virginia. She spent 14 years based in New York City, playing leads in over 30 productions of plays by such noted writers as John Arden, Noel Coward, Emily Mann, Eugene O'Neil, Joe Orton, Sam Shepard, William Shakespeare, Jean Claude Van Italie, Eudora Welty and Tennessee Williams. She won a Drama Desk Award - Best Ensemble for the American Premier of Caryl Churchill's Three More Sleepless Nights, played in the American premier of Judith Thompson's The Crackwalker, and originated roles in Elia Kazan's The Chain, and Arthur Mill ...
show all Ms. Fisher began by apprenticing at the Barter Theatre in Abingdon, Virginia. She spent 14 years based in New York City, playing leads in over 30 productions of plays by such noted writers as John Arden, Noel Coward, Emily Mann, Eugene O'Neil, Joe Orton, Sam Shepard, William Shakespeare, Jean Claude Van Italie, Eudora Welty and Tennessee Williams. She won a Drama Desk Award - Best Ensemble for the American Premier of Caryl Churchill's Three More Sleepless Nights, played in the American premier of Judith Thompson's The Crackwalker, and originated roles in Elia Kazan's The Chain, and Arthur Miller's last play, Finishing the Picture. Besides working with Mr. Kazan and Mr. Miller, some of Ms. Fisher's more interesting theatre experiences were creating roles from two great works of literature: George Orwell's 1984 and Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Ms. Fisher is looking forward to getting back on the boards at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles in the beginning of 2006 with Anton Chekov's The Cherry Orchard. Ms. Fisher studied with Stella Adler, and became a lifetime member of the Actors Studio by actually "walking up the stairs" and auditioning for legendary acting teacher Lee Strasberg.
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The car’s the star in this boys-and-their-toys action drama that, unfortunately, has too little action to cover for the absence of plot. Nicolas Cage plays a reformed car thief who agrees to pull off an impossible job — steal 50 top-of-the-range cars in four nights — for bad guy Christopher Eccleston, in return for his brother Giovanni Ribisi’s life. Cage ropes in his old crew — including ex-flame Angelina Jolie and silent-but-deadly Vinnie Jones — for the job, but it’s over an hour before we get any stealing or crashing of any description. There’s a nice chase at the end, but the deficiencies in the storyline drive it headfirst into a cul-de-sac of unrealised tension.
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Russian filmmaker Vadim Perelman makes his feature-film debut with the psychological drama House of Sand and Fog, based on the novel by Andre Dubus III. Ben Kingsley plays Massoud Amir Behrani, an Iranian immigrant living the United States. Even though he was a high-ranking official in Iran, he works several menial jobs in order to provide his wife, Nadi (Shohreh Aghdashloo), and his son, Esmail (Jonathan Ahdout), with an apartment in California. He buys a California bungalow, thinking he can fix it up, sell it again, and make enough money to send Esmail to college. However, the house is the legal property of former drug addict Kathy (Jennifer Connelly). After losing the house in an unfair legal dispute with the county, she is left with nowhere to go. Wanting her house back, she hires a lawyer (Frances Fisher) and befriends a police officer (Ron Eldard). Neither Kathy nor Behrani have broken the law, so they find themselves involved in a difficult moral dilemma.
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This bid to recapture the spirit of those old battle-of-the-sexes comedies stars Pierce Brosnan and Julianne Moore as rival divorce lawyers who fall in love after they get married. The leads do their best, but unfortunately lack any real chemistry or the effortless ease that Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn would have brought to the roles. Overall, the film is neither as sharp nor as funny as it should be — a midway sojourn to Ireland, where Brosnan and Moore get drunkenly wed, is especially misjudged by British director Peter Howitt. The best lines go to Frances Fisher, as Moore’s mum, who has a feisty edge that the whole film would benefit from. So it’s no Adam’s Rib, but the stars are easy on the eye and it’s watchable in an undemanding way.
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