F. X. Feeney

Roman Polanski's ability to wring laughter from the most degrading heartbreaks will carry the same wealth of healthy shocks in a hundred years. He creates a macabre beauty to be wooed by and wondered at. But behind the laughter and the beauty is the ghostly truth that Polanski was orphaned by the Nazis and wandered Poland alone from ages 9 to 13. Consider the isolated intensity that bridges K...

Her beauty has proved timeless - should we be surprised? Equally graceful whether moving or standing still, blessed with a balletic poise, luminous dark eyes, and an exquisite profile a queen might envy, Audrey Hepburn would no doubt have become

James Dean died at the age of 24, yet half a century later his mystique is unfaded. Had luck favored him that fatal evening, he might still be with us, an actor in the same generation as Paul Newman, Clint Eastwood, Gene Hackman, and Sean Connery. His phenomenally charismatic performances in such classics as Rebel Without a Cause and East of Eden have immortalized him as a cinematic great. Dean al...

"Forget everything you think you know about this person," Elia Kazan cautioned, in his autobiography. The icon we cherish under the name Marilyn Monroe was in truth the inspired creation of a smart, voluptuous, star struck and self-motivated fantasist named Norma Jean Mortenson. A pure product of Hollywood, she abides across time as brightly as two other self-inventors, Charlie Chaplin and Cary Gr...

How do we even describe the alienated beauty of Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood, Ichabod Crane in Sleepy Hollow, Donnie Brasco, Don Juan DeMarco, Captain Jack Sparrow and Sweeney Todd, apart from the prodigious gift of Johnny Depp? How do we even name these great characters in one sentence, except under the heading of his contrary, heat-seeking curiosity, and imagination? If he didnt exist, you would...