General

Plummer didn’t win an Oscar—again

But he’s still the best interview in show biz

Fans of Canada’s own Christopher Plummer had to grit their teeth last night when he was edged out, as Plummer himself had predicted, in the best supporting actor category by  Christoph Waltz, for his Nazi turn in Inglorious Basterds. It’s crazy that Plummer has never won an Oscar (as he should have for his performance in 1999 as TV journalist Mike Wallace in The Insider). Still, the lack of Academy Awards doesn’t stop him from being a living monument to wit and insight. Two Oscar-week interviews find Plummer in vintage form. On Helen Mirren: “Of course I’ve always been mad about her. The sexiest Cressida ever.” On his nominated role as Tolstoy in The Last Station: “There was very little to go on, so I tackled it as a rather ribald Chekhov play.” Aside from the newspaper Q & A, he’s at his best in Shakespeare—and he’ll be back at Stratford, Ont.’s festival this summer to play Prospero in a new production of The Tempest.

Montreal Gazette

The Telegraph

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