Links DVD at Amazon IMDB - The Insider Russell Crowe - Murphsplace JeffreyWigand - 60 Minutes interview Reviews - Metacritic Reviews - Rotten Tomatoes

Photos

---

Screencaps

---

1. --> Jan. 3, 2000, Variety, Contenders ready to battle
2. --> Nov. 4, 1999, ET Online, Interview - Christopher Plummer - 'The Insider'
3. --> Feb. 16, 2000, The Oscars: National Post Online Goes Hollywood
4. --> Dec. 17, 1999, The Christian Science Monitor, The Oscars: Interview / Christopher Plummer
5. --> Nov. 18, 1999, The Rosie O'Donnell Show, interview transcript

CHRISTOPHER PLUMMER

"It is pure coincidence that I have portrayed real and/or historic figures at one time and another during my career, but because I have a good sense of observation, a certain talent for mimicry and a fascination with detail, they attract me," says Christopher Plummer. The Canadian-born actor also claims his role as the veteran CBS "60 Minutes" journalist Mike Wallace in "The Insider""The Insider" was "the most vividly alive individual I've ever attempted. It appealed to my sense of recklessness -- the stakes were higher this time." But he also notes, "My job is not to imitate but to suggest the man in question, and I was confident I had the required skills upon which to draw from." "Insider" director Michael Mann, a fan of Plummer since seeing him as Atahualpa in the 1969 pic "The Royal Hunt of the Sun," says the vet actor creates the impression of both the "theatrical Mike Wallace and Mike Wallace the man." The helmer says that duality was essential to what he dubs the "extreme naturalism" of the film's acting style that "simulates, in a very tense, arrhythmic way, human behavior." The helmer hails Plummer as "courageous" for taking on the role of someone so well known. "He nailed it," Mann says, pointing up two or three key things Plummer homed in on to create such a believable impression: a certain way Wallace holds his head, his hand movements and, of course, the "ambush!" In a long and varied career, Plummer has often been cast as handsome men with an awkward edge (Captain von Trapp, the Duke of Wellington, Rudyard Kipling, Sherlock Holmes, among others). The actor is twice a Tony winner for his stage work, including his re-creation of flamboyant star John Barrymore. But, in a supporting actor field crowded with fine performances, the actor may be facing something new: Plummer has never been nominated for an Oscar.

Jann Carl: First of all, what drew you to this movie?

Christopher Plummer: Well, the part of Mike Wallace drew me to the movie because I thought what an outrageous part to play. Most of my life I have played a lot of famous people but most of them were dead so you have a poetic license. You could throw a little something in and still try to look and sound like them. But here is somebody who is visible to the public, and I have been watching him since the early fifties. Smoking up a storm and insulting his guests and being absolutely wonderfully evil and charming too. So he has created a great monster of a character in himself which is a delight to play.

Jann: When you first came on screen and I heard the voice, I thought you had it down, you had it down.

Christopher: It was tough because it is a culture voice but it is a very American culture voice and I am very used to English culture voice. So I had to work like hell to flatten those R's. Working with MICHAEL MANN, who is such a detailed director, is so wonderful and he made it so much easier.

Jann: How did it come about that you got the role?

Christopher: Well, I was up for it.

Jann: I mean, do you audition anymore?

Christopher: No, no, no.

Jann: So who called you, how did it happen?

Christopher: I don't know. Somebody said go meet Mike Mann cause somebody obviously told him. And I think it was probably AL [PACINO] who might have suggested it because Al had always come to see me in the theater. He has always been a delightful guy and always writes me nice letters, sort of fan letters. I couldn't believe when I first got one from Al Pacino, it was unreal. So I think he helped a great deal, but I don't know and I would rather not know about how one gets parts in movies these days. Certainly there was no one else after I met with Michael, we hit it off and the rest is history, you might say.

Jann: Did you meet with Mike Wallace before you made the film?

Christopher: I knew Mike Wallace. He interviewed me once when I played on Broadway and I had met him once before that too, and I had watched him for years. So he was already in my head. I didn't have to do an immense amount of research. I was given some footage of Mike Wallace off camera, which was very valuable, because I could see how he was away from the camera. It showed his soft side, which we don't often see because of the nature of his business and it was surprising to me and it gave yet another color to this extraordinary person.

Jann: It's no secret that Mike Wallace is sensitive about this movie. Do you think he will be offended by your portrayal of him in 'The Insider'?

Christopher: No. I don't think he could be. There is nothing in it that is salacious. It is not mocking, and it doesn't send him up in an unattractive way. It shows that he has humor, that he has a proper kind of arrogance, that he also has a soul and that he is sensitive about issues that he takes very deeply. Not just about his image but about journalism in general. And did not want to play him as a totally selfish man and I don't think I did. If he does hate it there isn't anything that I can do about it. A lot of great people have seen people portray them and loathed them, and he has every right to -- but I did my best and I don't think there is anything to be offended at.

Jann: When you have been in this business so long and done every aspect it, and you have played other people, was it a little different playing Mike Wallace?

Christopher: Yeah, as I said because he is alive and well and opinionated and looking over your shoulder. That's a little uneasy but it's challenging and very exciting.

Jann: What do you think the public's reaction will be or how they will feel about the tobacco industry after this movie comes out?

Christopher: I think it will help because it is so fashionable -- this topic. People are dropping like flies as we speak. So it is always in the public eye and it is a fashionable movie in that sense. I think it will help to scare people away from cigarettes. The nice part about the movie is that it does not lecture, it is a piece of cold entertainment, very uneasy and accurate. It is not self-righteous at all, which I think will grab people.

Jann: What about "60 Minutes," do you think opinion will change when this movie comes out and it reminds everyone about that infamous interview?

Christoper: I think they went through it with great guts and they saw it to its conclusion. I think they did a terrific job.

Jann: I think it is the whole idea that they backed of the interview when they were threatened with a lawsuit...

Christoper: Well, I can't talk about that cause I don't know enough about it. I steered clear of all those political intrigues particularly when you're having to play a character. So I have to shut my eyes and ears to that.

Jann: When people go home after seeing this film, is there something that you hope they take away from it?

Christopher: Of course I do. I think they will go away being very entertained in a different way than they are use to these days.

-- November 4, 1999
Catch ET on TV!

So Christopher Plummer didn't get nominated for his Mike Wallace-approved turn as ... Mike Wallace. 'I never count on these things,' he says

Behind his trademark sardonic smile, Christopher Plummer is a softie. He's sipping red wine in the Polo Lounge of Los Angeles' famed Beverly Hills Hotel and mourning his dwindling family of dogs. Only Briggie, the brood's mother, is still thriving at 16. Rags, her last offspring, died when Plummer was performing Barrymore on Broadway. ''I cried like a baby.''

He radiates irreverence, intensity, intelligence and wit. He gave up hard liquor in the '60s because ''it made me lose my temper. Especially vodka.''

The old-school flamboyance that rivets audiences is still there, and he looks great. ''Get my age right,'' he begs. No, not 72, as news reports insist. He's 70, born in 1929 on Dec. 13. A Friday, but that doesn't seem to have done him any harm.

He didn't get an Oscar nomination for his spectacular performance as Mike Wallace in The Insider, though he won the Los Angeles Critics Award and a few others. But ''I never count on these things. If we only thought about awards, we wouldn't get any work done.'' Wallace hasn't called him, but no less a source than Larry King told him the 60 Minutes veteran ''quite liked my performance. His problem was with the script.''

Plummer wants to devote the next year or so to making films. ''I've been out of the running for so long with Barrymore [for which he won a Tony]. You do theatre and the movies think you're dead. But it's much less boring to do both.''

He's finishing his memoirs, in longhand: ''I'm not of the computer age.''

And more. He'll play King Lear onstage next year for Sir Peter Hall, and he's just filmed Nuremberg, a TNT TV re-creation of one of the war crimes trials of Nazi leaders. (Plummer has won two Emmys and had five nominations for his many TV roles.)

At the prestigious World Stage Festival in April, where Harry Rasky's film bio on Plummer (for CBC) will be screened, he'll headline a gala tribute in honour of Shakespeare's birthday and promote his (and Herbert Whittaker's) pet project for a Museum of Canadian Theatre and Opera. Skeptics to the contrary, Plummer is Canadian to the core.

Plummer was born in Toronto but grew up in Montreal. ''Our whole family was such a cultured bunch'' (they included a governor-general, Lord Elgin; and a prime minister, Sir John Abbott) but by the time Christopher was born, they weren't rich.

''There were so many Abbotts [his mother's family] that there wasn't enough to go around. We were very old poor, decaying like some Chekhov play, walking around in big mansions rather seedily.''

His parents divorced when he was an infant. ''I only met my father when I was 17 and performing in Ottawa. He came backstage, and we were both nervous. I liked him, but we knew it was too late.''

He once intended to be a concert pianist but ''it was too much like hard, lonely work.'' He began acting because, ''like most actors, we want to get into someone else's skin. We're not too comfortable in our own. I was very shy as a youngster, though you wouldn't think that to look at me now. I was an only child and grew up among older people who were so assured and sophisticated. I always tried to emulate them, and that's where the mimicry and acting surfaced.''

After some stage work in both French and English, he made his Shakespeare debut in Montreal at 17, in Cymbeline for Russian director Fyodor Komisarjevsky, ''who was as irreverent as Tyrone Guthrie.'' Both took the academic starch out of the Bard.

Plummer moved to New York in 1951 and hasn't lived in Canada since, but he growls when his loyalty is questioned. He became a Companion of the Order of Canada in 1968, and ''I always have been and always will be a Canadian citizen. My family has been part of Canada's history for 250 years.''

He filmed the Canadian TV series Counterstrike mostly in Toronto (''a lovely city but still a bit too Calvinistic''), and fell in love with Nova Scotia when he shot Dolores Claiborne there (and raised funds for Wolfville's Atlantic Theatre Festival). ''It's the most beautiful and unspoiled part of North America. I'd love to have a place there if I were rich.''

He cherishes Quebec ''because of the unique atmosphere of two languages.'' He grimaces. ''The very atmosphere they're trying to kill.''

He's done many roles at the Stratford Festival, and spent two months there with Barrymore prior to the Broadway run. He might return, but not for an entire season: ''That's a killer.'' He ruminates a bit. ''I've often thought of doing Jean Anouilh's Beckett again [he won the Evening Standard's Best Actor of the Year award when he starred in the Royal Shakespeare Company production]. It's a wonderful, theatrical piece.''

He was, he admits, ''a horror'' in his early years. ''In those days I was angry all the time. When you're young, you have to be rebellious, and the '50s was the decade of drink and ribald fun. It was the golden age of theatre, and we worked so hard that we had to counteract it by anaesthetizing ourselves by drink.'' He laughs ruefully, but not quite apologetically.

He was never drunk on stage, but he came close once, arriving late and woozy on tour with famed American actress Katherine Cornell. ''She scared the pants off me. In an ice-cold rage, she told me to shape up or I'd never get work again. That's when I learned discipline. I only drink wine now. Gallons of it, of course,'' he adds, slyly.

In 1961, a job offer from Stratford-upon-Avon lured him to England. He remained there for 15 years, much of it in a Mayfair house with a grand piano, a brown Boxer and a butler named Giles. Then ''huge'' new taxes imposed in the '70s ''chased everybody away. One couldn't afford to live there, so we panicked and ran. It was crippling for the British film industry. We were down to tacky, cheap, make-do productions. It was so sad.''

He moved to the south of France, but fled again when ''the French suddenly taxed foreign residents on their world earnings. Besides, the work was coming back to America.'' So did he.

He has lived in the Connecticut countryside for the past 20 years, with Elaine, his third wife (of 30 years). ''I probably wouldn't be alive today if I just lived in the city, because I would get into such terrible trouble.'' He reads a lot, imports friends for good talk, and ''my wife makes healthy food taste terrific.'' He has one child, actress Amanda Plummer, from his first marriage to Tammy Grimes.

His only other musical besides The Sound of Music (''I've called it the Sound of Mucous, but I feel kindly towards it. It made me very well-known'') was the Broadway production of Cyrano, adapted by Anthony Burgess. That won him his first Tony.

He turned down Noel Coward's offer to do his musical version of The Prince and the Showgirl, but he's game to try another ''if the singing is at a minimum and the acting role is terrific.'' Alan Jay Lerner, ''a fan of mine, for some reason,'' wanted him for a national tour of My Fair Lady in 1956. ''I'd just seen Rex Harrison do it on Broadway, so when I auditioned I was very careful to sing where Rex talked and talk where he sang. But at 26, I was too friggin' young. Then Alan Jay offered me Lancelot in Camelot on Broadway. But [composer] Frederick Loewe said my singing voice was somewhere in the middle, no highs, no lows.''

A decade ago, when Plummer played his Broadway-bound Macbeth in Toronto, he insists he and co-star Glenda Jackson never feuded ''but the press said we did and it made for great box-office. It's an impossible role, and I've been silly enough to play it twice.''

He's played Hamlet twice, too, for Stratford (Canada) and the BBC (filmed on location at Elsinore Castle), and wishes he could again. ''You need life experience to really do justice to Hamlet. Unfortunately, Shakespeare wrote the man far too young, and sometimes he can sound like a pompous undergraduate.''

Plummer, who in 1986 was inducted in the U.S. Theater Hall of Fame, has made about 60 films. He still plays leads on stage, but mostly supporting roles on screen. ''I'm a character actor now, and I'm terribly relieved. When my name used to be above the title in the '60s and early '70s, I was always cast as an uptight, boring Brit, and I'm not like that at all!

''What I need now is a well-written, small-budget film,'' he murmurs wistfully, ''in which I can show people that I can carry a picture that might be picked up by somebody like Miramax.'' Indie producers, you heard it here first.

December 17, 1999

It was an obsessive shoot, because Michael Mann, who is a marvelous director, is really a perfectionist about filmmaking," says Christopher Plummer of the current critically acclaimed film "The Insider."

The film, now in theaters, depicts TV network CBS suppressing a tobacco industry whistleblower's interview with "60 Minutes." "Michael is intense, and it was never relaxing," Mr. Plummer says. "But then, the subject matter was not relaxing. So it was a very good thing that he brought that tension every day to the set, which made you get in there quickly and do the scene properly.... We rehearsed quite considerably because Russell Crowe and myself had to get the voices of both Jeffrey Wigand and Mike Wallace down pretty pat. So we needed rehearsal for that."

Clearly enthusiastic about "The Insider," Plummer is now working on an equally intense TV miniseries, "Nuremberg," in his native Montreal. Based on Joseph Persico's exhaustively researched book "Nuremberg: Infamy on Trial," the series is "documentary in feeling and truer to events than Stanley Kramer's film," he says, referring to "Judgment at Nuremberg," released in 1961.

The series will be screened on Turner Network Television next spring. Max von Sydow plays Samuel Rosenman, President Roosevelt's speechwriter and confidant, with Alec Baldwin as Justice Robert Jackson, the chief prosecutor. Plummer plays Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe, the de facto chief British prosecutor. "We've had wonderful actors come and play cameos.... The longest part is [Nazi official Hermann] Goring, played by Brian Cox ["For Love of the Game," "Rushmore"] wonderfully, because he looks exactly like Goring."

Deeply tanned, dressed in a lightweight blazer and white slacks, Plummer immediately puts an interviewer at ease and talks with self-deprecating humor about his life and career.

His first love is really music. "At one very brash moment [as a youth], I thought of becoming a concert pianist. But there's too much work involved. I wouldn't possibly have the discipline.... I'm a fan of music and I work at acting."

Plummer's first role was at age 15 as Darcy in a high school production of "Pride and Prejudice." Then, at 17, he played Posthumus, in a modern-dress version of "Cymbeline," directed by the legendary Russian Theodore Komisarjevsky.

He did radio work in French and English in Montreal, working with such future stars as William Shatner. An international career beckoned and in 1953 he made his Broadway debut in "The Star Crossed Story," directed by Eva Le Gallienne.

Plummer was elected to the Theater Hall of Fame in New York in 1986 and is the recipient of many awards, including Tonys in 1974 for "Cyrano" and 1997 for "Barrymore." But he says he doesn't prefer any one medium over another. "I like them all [TV, film, and theater] and I do them all. The theater has the best language, and therefore I opt for the theater when it comes to the greatest works of literature....

"The theater is my home possibly more than the screen, although I really have done more than 80 films. I don't know how I've had the time to do all these parts," he says, laughing heartily.

"I come from a school of character actors that wants to be different," he adds, "so I'm an enigma to Hollywood. They never understand me wanting to disguise myself. They want you to be the same person in every film you make. I find that unbelievably boring. Hence, I'm not a superstar."

He returns to Stratford-upon-Avon next September as King Lear, to be directed by Sir Peter Hall. Will his daughter, Amanda, play Cordelia? "No, I think she'd make an excellent Fool. She wants to do it. I hope it will happen."

He has worked with many great actors of this century and describes Sir John Gielgud as "probably the greatest actor and man I've worked with." Lord Olivier, he says, in order "to keep his position unchallenged, resorted to all kinds of tricks of upstaging.... He had a killer instinct, and God bless him because it worked."

Among the younger actors, he "adored working with Kathy Bates and Jennifer Jason Leigh" in the film "Dolores Claiborne." He loves Nicolas Cage both as a person and as a performer. "He has a real edge. He's always taking risks. It's difficult for these young stars; they don't have a chance to fail."

For six years, he has been working on his memoirs. "My publisher [Alfred Knopf] is so patient," he says. "I've never kept a diary, but I remember so many things that it's awfully hard to narrow them. Youth is really everyone's best story.... So I've tried to tell stories about the people who have influenced my life. That's the interesting part: generous people I've learned from."

Plummer's first interview on the Rosie O'Donnell Show in 1997.

The Rosie O'Donnell Show
November 18, 1999
Transcript of Christopher Plummer interview about "The Insider"

Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer each were interviewed on the Rosie O'Donnell Show several times. Plummer's interviews for the show:
- March 21, 1997 (about "Barrymore");
- November 18, 1999 (about "The Insider");
- January 20, 2000 (Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer were interviewed about "The Sound of Music" when 35th Anniv. DVD was released.);
- December 15, 2000 (about "Dracula 2000").

---

INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT, Nov 18, 1999:
[Transcript written by a viewer in 1999:]

R: Although our next guest will always be Captain Von Trapp to me, he turned in an Oscar worthy performance as 60 Minutes veteran newsman Mike Wallace in the critically acclaimed new movie "the Insider" which I adored. Take a look Please welcome back to the show two time Tony Award winner Christopher Plummer. Well hello, Christopher Plummer, how are you? Good to see you.

C: Great to see you.

R: I was told not to bring up the fact that I am positive that you are going to win an Oscar. So I will not bring it up because I hear it makes you nervous to think that you are going to win the gold statue because you were brilliant in this movie, sir! You are absolutely brilliant. Was it difficult to play someone who everyone knows so well?

C: Sure... but I'm-- there's a kind of reckless thing about me. Although in my time I played a lot of historical figures, famous old people, most of them were dead. So it was a little odd to try and play a modern classic like Mike Wallace. And I call him a modern classic because he is larger than life, he is theatrical, and he's been in our living rooms as long as I can remember. And it was daring and a little bit walking on eggshells to play someone who's breathing down your neck, who's very much alive. But fabulous, and I think it was well-written. I don't think he ever has anything to worry about the way he was portrayed because we did give him as much dignity and respect that he deserves in the film, and I hope he does like it.

R: Now have you ever met him at all?

C: Yes, he interviewed me years ago when I did Iago on Broadway and on radio. But for a second I got to feel like what it was to be in the hotseat. And the first thing he said ...when you meet Mike Wallace off-camera he's marvelous because he makes you feel right away that he's going to let you in on all the corporate secrets. And you feel that you've known him for years. And then he brings you in and sits you down, and he begins. And the first line he says as you smile full of confidence is: "How is it that you're not a household name?"

R: That's gotta hurt right. Right in my heart, take that back.

C: But after that little thing, the shock he was absolutely charming and bright and we had a good time. That's the only time I met him I think.

R: Did he ever call you during the making of this or after?

C: He called my house and left a message on the message service saying please if you'd like to take me to lunch or show me the offices which I thought was absolutely charming. But unfortunately I was on the coast at the time making the movie so I couldn't do that, and in a funny way, generous as it was, I thought, better not because when you're playing someone you don't want them there physically in front of you. It's scary enough having to play them without that. ...Before and afterwards but not during.

R: Do you ever worry that it becomes an impression if you're too much like him?

C: Yes exactly, though the thing is you have to insert yourself at all times into the character. Our business is not to imitate... Because after all we could make up a Mike Wallace mask. I'm sure there are lots outside, I could buy one now, put it on, and try to imitate Mike Wallace. But the thing is to suggest the character you're playing and insert yourself in it. I had to be accurate in the scenes on-camera, of course, because those are there for everyone to see--they're part of history. And then once off-camera I could be as free as I wanted.

R: I was struck by the cadence, you know, you captured his cadence in the way that you spoke which is different than any other movie I've seen you in.

C: Well that's good, I'm glad you saw the difference. It's important to catch that right away. And the opening scene is very characteristic of Mike Wallace in a sort of grand mood. And that sort of set up the character very well.

R: Now have you ever worked with Al Pacino or Russell Crowe before?

C: No. I'm a big huge fan of Al Pacino's and now an enormous fan of Russell's who I think is probably the most versatile actor on the screen today. I mean, who would ever believe that he was Australian with that extraordinary performance in L.A. Confidential and also this one in which he is Mr. Wigand to the nth degree. He is absolutely perfect he transforms himself.

R: It is definitely a morality play. It's about big business tobacco and their vested interest against the common good. And one man who was brave enough to say this is what's happening and I think it's just such an inspirational story and so well done.

C: Michael Mann is.. one reviewer up in Canada actually said the best thing I think. He said that Michael Mann may be a very modern film maker but he's also a wonderfully old-fashioned storyteller. And that's rare today. He knows how to spin a yarn. And this is a good one.

R: It is, it's a very good one. I encourage everyone to go see it. Look what Christopher brought for me. It's his shoes from when he did Richard III we:re going to put them up on ebay. ... Richard V?

C: Henry V.

R: You told me Richard III!

C: Oh so what, I used them as Richard too.

R: ... You signed them on the inside. C: They smell of Richard III.

R: No smell of leather, it's nice. Now I got you a gift since you brought me one. I heard you were recently at the Polo Lounge. A friend of mine was there. He said that you were there and you sat down at the piano and you started to play and started to take requests from the crowd. Is this true or false?

C: No it's true. I do it often at the Beverly Hills Hotel. I go in and sit down at the piano hoping that I will get requests and hoping perhaps that there's a new career ahead of me when I'm too old to do this one.

R: Well this is something you can take with you. It's an M.C.-Clucky. It's a piano, and I figure next time you're on a plane you hit a button, and then it's a piano that clucks. And you can entertain the people in first class.

C: How did you know I sounded like that on the piano?

R: When I saw this I thought who else would appreciate it besides you?

C: I'm touched beyond belief!

R: I knew you would be, it's just the equivalent of these Henry III/Richard V shoes. I adore you and you're a brilliant actor, that's clucking, and go see the movie, and when you get your Oscar nomination come back to the show so I can say I told ya so. Christopher Plummer great to see you....

---

1. --> March 27, 2000, Macleans, Oscar Overbites; Canucks Speak
2. --> March 3, 2000, National Post, Put away the war paint, by Atom Egoyan
3. --> February 29, 2000, Associated Press, Oscars To Include 'Blame Canada'
4. --> February 28, 2000, National Post, 'Some Canadians were clearly snubbed' by Oscar, Egoyan says
5. --> February 25, 2000, Toronto Star, Canada to Oscar: Of course you know this means war
6. --> February 27, 2000, Toronto Star, Don't Blame Oscar, Canada
7. --> February 16, 2000, Toronto Star, Oscar snubs Canada
8. --> February 16, 2000, National Post, It's a dark moment for our entertainers: Oscar the Grouch snubs Canada's finest
9. --> January 16, 2000, Toronto Star, How to turn a supporting part into a plum role

OSCAR AND ME

Fish out of water

Forget Toy Story 2: last year's animated gem is When the Day Breaks by Montreal film-makers Wendy Tilby and Amanda Forbis. Their NFB film has garnered many awards, including a Palme D'or for short films at Cannes. On March 26, Tilby and Forbis hope to add an Oscar. For Tilby, it will be her second such trip: the first was in 1992 for her animated short, Strings. She recalls that night with the stars:

I felt like a fish out of water. When you're a maker of short animated films, the Hollywood thing is completely foreign. I wore a 1950s Grace Kelly-style dress of my mother's, rode in a limo and did a lot of people-watching. When we stepped onto the red carpet there was a crowd of photographers. They raised their cameras expectantly and then lowered them when they saw we were nobodies.

The animated-short category is awarded near the beginning. A friend of mine from the film board was nominated in the same category and when neither film won, we let out a big sigh of relief. It meant we didn't have to get up there. The show did get boring: it felt long. Although it was the year The Silence of the Lambs swept the awards, whenever someone asks what year I went, I say, 'the year Jack Palance did the one-armed push-up.' Everyone remembers that.

OSCAR OVERBITES: CANUCKS SPEAK

"The Sound of Mucus" -- Christopher Plummer pokes fun at 1965 best picture nominee in which he starred

"I'm not surprised. I know that community and I didn't expect a nomination." -- Donald Sutherland on being the only principal actor in Ordinary People to not receive a nomination in 1980

"I think there were some Canadians that were clearly snubbed, but I don't think it was a Canadian content thing. It was a surprise that Jim Carrey didn't get nominated, or Christopher Plummer, or Norman [Jewison], those were three of the front-runners." -- 1998 best director nominee Atom Egoyan on this year's nominations

The Winner Is -- and Isn't . . .

Whether honoured, snubbed or the cause of controversy, Canadians have a long history with the Academy Awards. Some examples:

Honourees

- Sydney, N.S., native Harold Russell won best supporting actor honours for his role in the classic 1946 postwar film The Best Years of Our Lives. It marked only the second time an actor won for his or her first film role. Russell, a war amputee, also received a special Oscar that year for "bringing hope and courage to fellow veterans."

- The fourth time proved a charm for Toronto-born actor Walter Huston. After being nominated and losing three times, Huston finally won in the best supporting actor category for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948).

Snubbed

- Toronto native Norman Jewison has on five different occasions directed movies nominated for best picture without ever winning best director honours himself. He was nominated, but failed to win, for In the Heat of the Night (1967), Fiddler on the Roof (1971) and Moonstruck (1987). Two other films -- A Soldier's Story (1984) and The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming! (1966) received best picture nominations -- but no director's nomination. This year, his movie The Hurricane, an early favourite, received only one nomination: Denzel Washington for best actor.

Controversy

- At the 2nd annual Oscars of 1928-1929, Toronto native Mary Pickford won best actress for Coquette. Many attributed the win to a tea party she threw for members of the academy's central board of judges. The following year, the central board was discontinued and all 300 members of the academy were allowed to vote.

- In 1994, Jennifer Tilly, who was born in Los Angeles but raised in Victoria, was the most critically bashed nominee. The L.A. Village View called her nomination for playing a mob moll in Woody Allen's Bullets over Broadway "truly galling." The nomination didn't give Tilly's career the usual boost: since then, her most high-profile role has been as the voice of Tiffany, the Bride of Chucky.

Copyright 2000 Maclean Hunter Publishing Limited

While I understand the frenzy of analysis that is generated by the announcement of the Academy Award nominations, it is crucial that we keep things in perspective. This perspective came across as decidedly skewed by your decision to headline my comments at the Script to Screen Conference with the words Oscar Insult ... Atom Egoyan Says Canada's Finest Were "Clearly Snubbed" (Feb. 28).

An insult is a gesture that is designed to hurt. While not receiving a nomination can be cause for disappointment (millions don't get nominated every year ... some aren't even aware of it!), it would be silly to perceive this as an organized attempt to make an anti-Canadian statement. The Academy does not perceive itself as a hotbed of jingoism. While I did state that some Canadians were "snubbed," I could have just as easily said "overlooked" or used the decidedly less dramatic words "not nominated."

As I tried to explain, in a satiric way, if feeling snubbed means that more Canadians will flock to the theatres and support their national cinema, then let us be snubbed with impunity! When I said I did not consider myself "part of the wounded," as positioned in the article, the sense of irony was clearly absent.

Why have we overlooked the fact that The Red Violin, produced by Toronto's Rhombus Media, is a genuinely Canadian production? The Hurricane (directed by Canadian Norman Jewison), The Insider (with supporting actor Canadian Christopher Plummer) and Man on the Moon (with lead actor Canadian Jim Carrey) are all American studio product? A Canadian feature production has been honoured this year, and we should all be proud of this fact, not to mention the nominations for animation, a category in which we have always excelled.

We have produced an amazing array of artists across many disciplines. Should Blame Canada happen to win for best song, we must put away the war paint and don ourselves with a sense of humour.

Atom Egoyan, Toronto

Canadians were snubbed by this year's Oscars, says Toronto director Atom Egoyan, who says he feels he wasn't wronged even though Felicia's Journey was among those ignored.

"It was a surprise when Jim Carrey didn't get nominated, or Christopher Plummer ... or Norman [Jewison], those were three of the front-runners. I am not part of the wounded just because I didn't anticipate it," Egoyan said in an interview yesterday.

But while some industry types believe those Canadians were deliberately excluded from the nomination list for the 72nd Academy Awards, Egoyan feels it was more of a coincidence.

"I don't think it was designed, or calculated or engineered by the Academy. I think there were some Canadians that were clearly snubbed, but I don't think it is a Canadian content thing. People think that way because one of the songs nominated is the rallying cry for that point of view," said Egoyan after an appearance at the Script to Screen conference in Toronto held by the Writers Guild of Canada and the Directors Guild of Canada.

The song he is referring to, Blame Canada, from the summer hit South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut, could win for best original song when the awards are handed out on March 26.

But while the controversy exists, Egoyan hopes Canadians will rush out to see their compatriots' films in protest. He doubts, however, that will happen.

"We all feel indignant, that we got ignored, that we are going to rush to see our own films more powerfully -- if that would happen then yes, let us feel snubbed. But is it more like that great Canadian thing that we probably didn't deserve it anyway?

"To be an American is about, if you have something, sell it. To be a Canadian is, if you've got something you wonder why you had it. If we did get those nominations we'd be examining that as well; it is part of our character -- a good part."

Truth is, Egoyan never expected a nomination for this year's Oscars because he says the film did not have "the momentum" of his last film, 1997's The Sweet Hereafter, which received two Oscar nominations.

"At a certain point you can sort of see if you are in the game or not, it is kind of mysterious as to why that happens or doesn't," added Egoyan, whose next project will be directing a play in Dublin starring John Hurt and based on Samuel Beckett's 1959 novel Krapp's Last Tape.

Egoyan said the book from his last film, The Sweet Hereafter written by Russell Banks, was more widely accepted in American circles than William Trevor's Felicia's Journey, which could also be why it was not recognized by the academy.

Egoyan, an academy member himself, also points out that not being nominated does not mean his latest movie did not get votes.

Carrey was expected to be nominated in the best actor category for his role as comedian Andy Kaufman in Man on the Moon, but the nods instead went to Denzel Washington (The Hurricane), Kevin Spacey (American Beauty), Russell Crowe (The Insider), Richard Farnsworth (The Straight Story) and Sean Penn (Sweet and Lowdown).

Plummer was said to be a likely candidate for supporting actor for his role in The Insider, and Jewison was considered a front-runner for his direction of The Hurricane.

Nominations for actor in a supporting role include Michael Caine, Tom Cruise, Michael Clarke Duncan, Jude Law and Haley Joel Osment. Best director nominations went to films American Beauty, Being John Malkovich, The Cider House Rules, The Insider and The Sixth Sense.

American Beauty, about suburban rot in America, leads this year's Oscar nominations with eight.

Illustration:

• Black & White Photo: John Lehmann, National Post / Director Atom Egoyan during a panel discussion at yesterday's Script to Screen conference in Toronto. He says his latest film didn't have "the momentum" for an Oscar nomination.

some basic facts

Norman Jewison, shown accepting the Irving Thalberg Award at last year's Oscars, wasn't nominated this year for The Hurricane, but not because he's Canadian.

Aneurotic woman in a play by the witty New York writer John Guare once accused another character of going out of his way to ignore her, and recently the phrase popped back into my mind 20 years after it first made me laugh out loud. The occasion was the explosion of Canadian paranoia over the announcement of this year's nominations by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Elsewhere in the world, media reports may have led with the news that serious dramatic films like American Beauty and The Insider were being validated with the highest symbol of Hollywood respectability, or that the awesome Miramax promotional machine failed to snare a best-picture nomination for The Talented Mr. Ripley, or that a couple of critical favourites, Topsy-Turvy and Being John Malkovich, got only token nods.

In Canada, however, all that was secondary to the big story of the day: Hollywood was going out of its way to ignore Canada. Jim Carrey, who was conspicuously unnominated last year for The Truman Show, was overlooked again for Man On The Moon. Christopher Plummer's performance as Mike Wallace in The Insider was not on the list. Director Norman Jewison wasn't honoured for his work on The Hurricane.

How could this possibly be? Well, the media implied, it was all part of a vast conspiracy to insult Canada. And the nomination of the satirical ditty ''Blame Canada" (from the cartoon movie South Park: Bigger, Longer And Uncut) was a dead giveaway. This was front-page news for the National Post, which took it as a deliberate insult from ''Oscar the Grouch."

The Toronto Star at least restricted its persecution fantasy to the Entertainment section, but under the headline ''Oscar Snubs Canada," went so far as to suggest that it was a big shock that the names Atom Egoyan (writer- director of Felicia's Journey) and Patricia Rozema (writer-director of Mansfield Park) were nowhere to be found on the list. Quelle surprise.

According to legend, Hollywood has been wary of the Canadian conspiracy for decades. In the early 1980s, there was even a spoofy TV film suggesting that there were undercover Canadians in many California swimming pools carrying out their deadly mission of subverting the movie industry with their pernicious Canadian content.

But for a while, Hollywood seemed content to let the natural superiority of Canadians emerge. Margot Kidder soared into the stratosphere as Lois Lane in several Superman movies. It was hard to find a movie at any mall in Michigan that did not feature Donald Sutherland, Kiefer Sutherland, John Candy or Plummer. Michael J. Fox and Jason Priestley became America's favourite teenagers. And in 1988, when the Edmonton Oilers traded Wayne Gretzky to the Los Angeles Kings, Canadian stock in the entertainment capital reached its historic high.

But in the past few years, Canada has become extremely unpopular in L.A. With the fall of the Soviet Union, a new candidate was needed for the role of Evil Empire, and Canada - increasingly resented for luring movie producers away from their natural habitat, as well as for its tough talk about salmon, soft lumber and split-run magazines - seemed to be auditioning for the part. There was only one thing the Academy could do: go out of its way to ignore Canada when it came to Oscar nominations.

Of course this spin ignores a few facts. Fact One: The Hurricane has been under constant attack for fudging the facts about Rubin Carter for the sake of concocting a simple-minded inspirational saga about racism and injustice - making a nomination for Jewison unlikely. Fact Two: Neither Felicia's Journey nor Mansfield Park registered on the radar screen of the public or the industry in the U.S., which is why no one in Las Vegas was quoting odds on Egoyan or Rozema.

In truth there was only one snub I found shocking. How could Hollywood's acting community ignore Plummer's unforgettable take on Wallace? Well, maybe the fact that Wallace himself was not amused scared people off.

As for Carrey, well, it's true he gave a great performance in Man On The Moon. But the film itself made the huge mistake of paying tribute to Andy Kaufman instead of trying to explain how he came to be such a weird, perverse fellow - at once unfunny, unlikeable and contemptuous of his audience. The movie took a double hit: It got poor reviews, and it tanked at the box office. Besides, all five nominees in the running for the best-actor Oscar - Kevin Spacey, Denzel Washington, Richard Farnsworth, Sean Penn and Russell Crowe - gave formidable performances.

It may be a rough break, but Carrey has lots of positive things to distract him. On the front page of the Sunday New York Times Arts & Leisure section a few weeks ago, he was singled out as the only contemporary comedian who fits the definition of ''comic genius" and belongs on the same list of all-time greats (compiled by Woody Allen) as Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Groucho Marx, Harpo Marx and W.C. Fields (all of whom were underappreciated by the Academy). Besides, Carrey has a crowded calendar. He won't get an Oscar this year, but he may make his third trip to the altar.

Last week it became obvious that on top of his other accomplishments, Carrey is shaking up the toy business. In New York at the world's biggest toy fair, he introduced a new toy - a stuffed dog named Max - based on his forthcoming movie How The Grinch Stole Christmas. It seems that in addition to his $20 million fee for playing the title role, Carrey has a piece of the merchandising action. (For more about how that deal was made, watch Robin Benger's documentary about Carrey on the CBC's Life & Times March 14.)

Carrey may not be happy about the Oscar snub, but for a guy who dropped out of school in Grade 10 to work in a factory and live out of a camper van, he's doing okay. And the worst thing he could do now is start choosing his movie roles with an Oscar acceptance speech in mind. That's how Robin Williams stopped being funny and turned into a horrifying symbol of all that's phony, maudlin and sanctimonious. Wouldn't it be awful if Carrey chose the same path? Somebody stop him.

Martin Knelman's e-mail address is martknel@idirect.com

Oscar snubs Canada By Peter Howell Carrey, Jewison, Egoyan and Rozema missing from movie nominations

MOVIE CRITIC The South Park ditty ``Blame Canada'' is up for best song, but ``Snub Canada'' seems a more appropriate refrain for this year's Oscar nominations.

As expected, the suburban tragedy American Beauty dominates the field with eight nominations, including best picture, director (Sam Mendes), actor (Kevin Spacey) and actress (Annette Bening).

The other best-picture nominees for the March 26 Academy Awards are The Cider House Rules, The Insider, The Green Mile and The Sixth Sense.

The few surprises in yesterday's announcement from Los Angeles were all mostly Canadian. Jim Carrey, Norman Jewison, Atom Egoyan and Patricia Rozema were missing from the list of contenders, prompting some fans to cry foul.

Carrey's exclusion from the best actor category was the biggest shock, since he was considered a shoo-in after recently winning a Golden Globe for his energetic portrayal of late comedian Andy Kaufman in Man On The Moon.

It's the second time Carrey has won the trend-setting Globes acting award and the second time the Oscars have ignored him. The apparent snub raised even the eyebrows of Robert Rehme, president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

``The biggest surprise for me when I read the nomination list was that Jim Carrey was shut out again,'' Rehme told reporters in Los Angeles. Carrey was also shut out in 1998 for his highly acclaimed performance in The Truman Show.

Carrey fans on the Internet were even more blunt about it.

``Okay, I don't understand what is going on,'' a fan identified only as ``Darren'' posted on the news group rec.arts.movies.current-films. ``I just hope that Mr. Carrey realizes that the general public (at least everyone I've talked to) feels he has been shafted.''

Carrey may have hurt himself with conservative Academy voters by mocking the nominations process while presenting on the Oscar telecast and at other awards shows.

Toronto-bred director Norman Jewison, whose work on The Hurricane also looked like a surefire Oscar contender, may also have been hurt by negative perceptions.

There's been much public debate recently about whether Jewison's movie took too many factual liberties in his film biography of boxer Rubin ``Hurricane'' Carter, who now lives in Toronto, although Oscar voters gave the movie's star, Denzel Washington, a best actor nod.

Bad publicity also plagued Canadian-born Christopher Plummer, whose portrayal of 60 Minutes star Mike Wallace in The Insider was hailed as Oscar-worthy by critics, but damned as unfair by Wallace, thus making it likely too hot for the Academy.

Another high-profile Canadian missing from this year's Oscar roster is Toronto's Atom Egoyan, who had reason to hope his new film, Felicia' s Journey, would reach the double-nomination heights The Sweet Hereafter achieved in 1998. Egoyan particularly wanted a best actor nod for Felicia's star Bob Hoskins, whose name was the first to appear in Oscar-touting ads in movie trade magazines.

But Egoyan expressed neither surprise nor bitterness yesterday about the Oscars. He knew this wasn't likely to be his year because Felicia' s Journey hadn't placed in any of the major year-end awards. ``It was a very, very competitive year,'' he said. ``Our main hope was with Bob (Hoskins).''

Egoyan was also disappointed that fellow Torontonian Patricia Rozema went unrecognized by Oscar for her ``really inventive'' screenplay adaptation of Jane Austen's Mansfield Park. ``She really seemed like a shoo-in,'' he said.

But Egoyan didn't view the nominations as any kind of calculated affront to Canada. Nobody complained there was too much honour for Canada in 1998, when he and fellow Canadian James Cameron dominated the Oscars, he said.

``I think maybe we've become kind of spoiled about getting so much attention. We have to remember that. I think the past few years have been really good to us.''

There are a few things to sing about for Canada at this year's Academy Awards, in particular the best original song nomination for ``Blame Canada,'' the bawdy satirical hit from South Park: Bigger, Longer And Uncut. The song was partially inspired by allegations that Canadians have been stealing movie production from Hollywood. Could these same feelings about so-called ``runaway productions'' have infiltrated the Oscar nominations? (See lyrics in sidebar article on E1.)

There was another musical Canuck connection in the best original score nomination for The Red Violin, which was produced by Toronto' s Rhombus Media. Egoyan said he took Rhombus co-founder Niv Fichman a bottle of champagne yesterday to celebrate.

Canada also did extremely well in its strongest Oscar category, animated short film. There is maple flavouring in four out of the five nominees, including When The Day Breaks, which has already won major awards for Albertan Wendy Tilby (who was previously nominated for Strings in 1991) and her partner, Amanda Forbis.

The National Film Board production will be competing with another NFB short, My Grandmother Ironed The King's Shirt by Montreal's Torill Kove, whom Oscar is recognizing for her first film.

Another Montrealer, Paul Driessen, was nominated for his animated short, 3 Misses, which was co-produced in Holland and France and sponsored by Channel 4 in England. He's currently living in Kassel, Germany, where he's teaching film workshops.

The final nominee with Canadian ties is even further afield. Alexandre Petrov, who lives in Russia, is in the Oscar running with his animated version of Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man And The Sea, which was produced by Montreal's Pascal Blais Productions. Petrov was previously nominated for The Mermaid in 1997 and The Cow in 1989.

No matter what the Oscar nominations and snubs do for the Canadian psyche, they're very good for business.

Toronto's Alliance Atlantis Communications is boasting that the films it distributed - including Cider House Rules, Magnolia, Music Of The Heart and Topsy-Turvy - are up for a total of 22 Oscar nominations.

WITH FILES FROM THE STAR'S WIRE SERVICES.

Red Violin nominated for score Red CAPTIONS: SHUT OUT: Jim Carrey (above) was excluded from Best Actor race that includes Russell Crowe (The Insider), right. Janet McTeer (Tumbleweeds), far right, is up for Best Actress. NO SURPRISES: Kevin Spacey, Annette Bening (top) are nominated with American Beauty. Michael Caine (above), Catherine Keener get supporting nods. TORONTO STAR FILE PHOTO PATRICIA ROZEMA: Torontonian unrecognized by Oscar for her screenplay adaptation of Jane Austen's Mansfield Park.

It became grimly apparent yesterday morning, in the moments after the nominations for the 72nd Academy Awards were revealed, that upon us was perhaps the darkest moment for the Canadian entertainment industry since the comeback tour of Loverboy.

Jim Carrey, shafted. Norman Jewison, shafted. Atom Egoyan, shafted. Even Christopher Plummer, a guy who deserves an Oscar just for being so damn cool, was shafted. And then there are Canadians Matthew Perry and Neve Campbell, who were also greatly shafted, though not in fact yesterday in Beverly Hills but whenever and wherever it was that their agents convinced them to sign on for Three to Tango.

Sure, there were a trio of Oscar nods (My Grandmother Ironed the King's Shirts, When the Day Breaks and 3 Misses) in that animated short-film category during which everyone watching the awards on TV will go to take a leak and stock 0up on Cheetos. And there was an original score nomination for The Red Violin (written by an American composer, no less).

But in terms of feature-length films whose lead character is not made entirely of wood (thus excluding The Red Violin and For Love of the Game), Canadians emerged with jack-all from Oscar the Grouch.

"Oh, I am just very upset," one Canadian wrote regarding the snub of Carrey in a posting on the Internet Movie Database. "I know I shouldn't take it so seriously, but, I mean, the Academy really must have something against Jim Carrey. It's just so sad."

In the film Man on the Moon, Carrey -- touted but overlooked a year ago for his role in The Truman Show -- did a masterful job of mimicking the mannerisms and vocal inflections of the late performer, Andy Kaufman. His fellow actors, alas, concluded that Rich Little does similar impressions nine times a week in Vegas, and no one's hurling little gold statues at him.

Film critic Joel Siegel, speaking on Good Morning America, immediately speculated that Carrey had been snubbed again because in 1998 he presented at the Oscars and offended Academy members when "he talked out of his tushy."

Television viewers immediately speculated that Siegel might be the only grown man in the United States ever to employ the word "tushy."

Later, Robert Rehme, the Academy president, said that the absence of Carrey from the list of Best Actor nominees was "the biggest surprise for me" -- save, perhaps, for the fact that his co-presenter, the notoriously difficult Dustin Hoffman, didn't rant about the gig's 5:40 a.m. (Pacific) starting time and storm loudly from the set.

Carrey, at least, has the solace of losing out to a group that has among it not a single actor who will prompt viewers to blurt out, "Yeah, as if that turkey's going to win!" as the nominees are read out on Oscar night: Denzel Washington (The Hurricane), Kevin Spacey (American Beauty), Russell Crowe (The Insider), Richard Farnsworth (The Straight Story) and Sean Penn (Sweet and Lowdown).

Jewison, sadly, must come to grips with the fact his film, The Hurricane, was judged inferior by Academy members to a trio of rather sketchy Best Picture nominees.

The Canadian director's movie, about the wrongful imprisonment and eventual release of prizefighter Rubin Carter, was released in late December and immediately cited by many as a lock for Oscar glory. But then came no end of news articles calling into question the factual accuracy of the film's narrative -- and suddenly entertainment Web sites were decreeing The Hurricane's fortunes to be doomed by, as one site put it, "the clouds of controversy."

Course, it was also entirely plausible to figure the film wouldn't receive many nominations solely on account of the fact it isn't particularly great -- but that line of thinking was rendered obsolete the moment The Green Mile was announced as a Best Picture contender.

Joining The Green Mile, Stephen King's most terrifying dog since Cujo, are the obvious choices -- American Beauty and The Insider -- and the obvious plants of devious computer hackers, The Cider House Rules and The Sixth Sense, both of which were fine films, but each of which is about as deserving of Best Picture consideration as my snapshot of Charlie Sheen's thigh snapped by accident at the Sundance Film Festival.

Rehme, it should be noted, called the list of nominees "eclectic," which is as close as any Academy president would come to shouting to his members: "Are you all freakin nutso, or what?"

Despite its scant nominations, Canada won't be entirely absent from the Oscar telecast. Among those competing in the category of Best Original Song is Blame Canada, a tune from the summer hit South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut.

Seeing how the Academy showcases this number, with its cuss words and references to flatulence, may be reason enough to tune in on March 26. Here, in the interest of readying Canadians to sing along with pride, is an excerpt:

Times have changed

Our kids are getting worse

They won't obey their parents

They just want to fart and curse!

Should we blame the government?

Or blame society?

Or should we blame the images on TV?

No, blame Canada! Blame Canada!

With all that hockey hullabaloo

And that bitch Anne Murray too, Blame Canada! Blame Canada!

Could this, Jim Carrey must be wondering, be the same Academy that had such a problem with the "tushy" thing?

Illustration:
• Color Photo: Jim McIsaac, Bruce Bennett Studios / Jim Carrey and his girlfriend, Renee Zellweger, watch the Rangers lose to their crosstown rivals, the New York Islanders, at Madison Square Garden on the weekend. Days later, Carrey and other famous Canadians would lose to crosstown Hollywood rivals. Carrey was snubbed by Oscar judges for his performance in Man on the Moon.
• Color Photo: Norman Jewison, ... Color Photo: ... Atom Egoyan and ... Color Photo: ... Christopher Plummer also got the cold shoulder.

Idnumber: 200002160276
Edition: National
Story Type: News
Note: For more coverage, see pages B1, B2 and B3.
Length: 897 words
Keywords: FILM INDUSTRY; CANADIANS; AWARDS
Name: Jim Carrey; Norman Jewison; Atom Egoyan; Christopher Plummer
Illustration Type: CP

How to turn a supporting part into a plum role Christopher Plummer has made his fortune from small but delicious screen characters At next Sunday's Golden Globe Awards, there will be a conspicuous omission when they read the list of nominees in the category of best performance by an actor in a supporting role in a movie released in 1999. The name Christopher Plummer will not be mentioned, despite the fact that his performance in The Insider is one of the high points of a long and amazing career.

Indeed, Plummer's deliciously stylish work in the role of Mike Wallace is one of the reasons that Michael Mann's complex and unnerving saga - about how 60 Minutes almost backed away from confronting the tobacco industry - ranks as Hollywood's strongest movie of the year. Yet even after appearing in 60 movies in four decades, Plummer at the age of 70 is still primarily known as a classical theatre actor rather than a movie actor, a fact underlined most recently when he won his second Tony award in 1997 for playing the title role in Barrymore.

Perhaps that's because on the stage, Plummer (who was born in Toronto and raised in Montreal) has always been very much a leading man, playing some of the most challenging roles ever written, whereas on screen he has more often taken secondary roles. But in the tradition of John Barrymore, Laurence Olivier and Peter O'Toole, he has consistently brought something to movies that is becoming increasingly rare - the showy, flamboyant technique of theatrical acting in the old grand manner.

On occasion, Plummer has been accused of being too theatrical - at times he has been irritating or over the top or unconvinving in a role - but he has hardly ever been accused of being dull or boring. In one of his early movies, The Royal Hunt Of The Sun, in the role of the Inca king, his work was an extended hissy fit; highjacking solemn material, he turned it into a entertaining, high-camp vaudeville turn. He relishes playing flamboyant monsters, such as the preening, stylishly sadistic robber in The Silent Partner (filmed at Toronto' s Eaton Centre).

In non-villain roles, he has made a specialty of projecting aristocratic arrogance, playing Sherlock Holmes as a Victorian dandy in Murder By Decree, and Rudyard Kipling as a bemused fop in John Huston's wonderful version of The Man Who Would Be King.

Even in the role that gave him his largest exposure, Baron Von Trapp in The Sound of Music, he was a welcome breath of foul air in a morass of artificial sweetener, arching his eyebrows fiendishly enough to undermine the goody-goody tone of the material. Plummer referred to it jokingly as The Sound Of Mucous; he knew it was this heartwarming tearjerker, rather than his triumphant Shakespearean performances on stage, that made him famous enough to get the best table at any restaurant he wanted to patronize.

Plummer took that embarrassing breakthrough in his stride. Throughout his career, he was clever enough, and disciplined enough, to keep returning to the theatre even when he was in demand for lucrative movie and TV work. Consequently he has managed for years to pull off the ultimate actor's fantasy - earning his fortune on the screen and his esteem on the stage.

In the early 1980s he played Iago in a production of Othello that began at Straford, Connecticut, and eventually went to Broadway. In Plummer's hands, Iago became a much more interesting character than Othello - a smart, exuberant dandy who runs rings around his slow- witted master, played by James Earl Jones.

In his most recent return to the stage - playing Barrymore both on Broadway and a road tour - Plummer delivered the kind of exuberant lion-in-winter acting turn that people talk about for decades, transcending a hackneyed script.

On screen, among his other accomplishments, Plummer has mastered the art of playing real-life characters familiar to the audience without falling into the trap of doing celebrity impressions. Last year as FDR in the HBO cable TV movie Winchell, he brought an entertaining spark to the proceedings. And in The Insider, playing one of the nerviest and most successful interviewers in television history, Plummer seizes the chance to get under the skin of a fascinating egomaniac. Having spent much of his life building his own private legend as a hard-drinking, impossibly difficult wild man fighting his own demons, Plummer is perfectly qualified for the job.

It's a measure of Plummer's skill that we never lose interest in his character even though the script marginalizes his character. It' s Wallace's producer, Lowell Bergman - Al Pacino in full self-righteous, speechmaking form - who is depicted as an old-fashioned hero fighting a great moral crusade, in this case to blow the whistle on the tobacco company Brown and Williamson. Yet Pacino's showboating seems hollow compared to the work of Russell Crowe as the fired tobacco executive Jeffrey Wigand whose life is changed forever by his decision to be interviewed by Mike Wallace on 60 Minutes.

Paunchy and seething with internal conflict, Crowe gives a harrowing account of a man compromised and pulled in so many different directions he seems the perfect tragic man of our times. And Plummer's swaggering Mike Wallace provides a perfect foil to Crowe's performance, from the moment in the opening scene when we glimpse him as a media star so temperamental he needs to show even an Islamic terrorist who's the boss.

Later on he's equally formidable in combat with his own producers, and with a woman (played by Gina Gershon) who represents the bad part of CBS - the corporate side that advises caving in to the threats of Brown and Williamson. Plummer makes it entirely believable that Wallace could switch sides in the middle of a ferocious struggle without ever for a moment admitting he has the slightest doubt that he knows best.

This is a tricky role, since Mike Wallace is seen by 30 million people very week. But Plummer manages to suggest Wallace's personality without settling for mimicry. And he provides insight into the character of Wallace, who at one point favoured bowing to the threats, and later fought to put the Wigand interview on air.

In Plummer's hands, Wallace emerges a cocksure master of spin who always comes out looking like a winner but is somehow incapable of grasping the moral significance of what has happened, and what price has been paid for the sake of making him look good. It's an unforgettable portrait, and a textbook case of how much can be made of a supporting role.

Maybe the Hollywood Foreign Press Association was not impressed, but Plummer's performance in The Insider has already been honoured by several groups, including the National Society of Film Critics. And it's unlikely the Hollywood community has forgotten the stir Plummer created when he brought Barrymore to Los Angeles for three weeks in the fall of 1998. The impact of that appearance is likely to be reflected on Feb. 8 when Oscar nominations are announced. And if Plummer happens to win his first Academy Award in March, it will be proof that L.A. is, above all, a town that appreciates an actor who adores the spotlight and knows just what to do with it.

Martin Knelman's e-mail address is martknel@idirect.com

CAPTIONS: MULTIPLE PERSONALITIES: Christopher Plummer has played such parts as Iago on stage in Othello, top left, Baron Von Trapp in The Sound Of Music, above, and Mike Wallace in The Insider, left.