Laurence Oliver once observed, apropos of Method actors who dig deep into personal experience for the motivation of their characters, that he had never been conscious of any motivation in his own work apart from the desire to show off. Christopher Plummer and William Shatner, casting aside Canadianness, set out to become show-offs of great amplitude. But only Plummer, wretched toward his family, fickle with his women and as malicious as he insists he is—the title of his memoir is In Spite of Myself—is also a show-off possessed of insight and decisive artistic power.
Shatner, on the other hand, is as nice a man as—well, as Captain James T. Kirk. The biographies are a study in contrast. While Plummer laments the dumbing down of popular culture and retreats whenever possible from lucrative movies to the classical stage, according to Up Till Now: The...
Ray Conlogue is a former arts writer for The Globe and Mail and author of The Longing for Homeland in Canada and Quebec (Mercury Press, 1996), an analysis of the cultural and historical dimensions of Quebec’s independence movement, as well as being a translator, teacher and author of a young adult novel.
Advertisement
Advertisement