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The Impact Of Grace Kelly | The Great Acting Blog

An article appeared in The Independent recently, complaining that Grace Kelly doesn’t deserve to be hailed as a great movie star because of the brevity of her career: –

….her screen career lasted only six years and comprises fewer than a dozen movies. On that basis, the much- repeated claim that she was one of America’s all-time great movie stars simply doesn’t stack up.

I say that longevity of career is less important than impact. Viewers are still watching her movies and being captivated more than 50 years after they were made. There have been countless movie stars over the years, and almost all of them have been forgotten. However, there are a few who made such an impression that they transcend their own time and are for all time. This represents the true greatness of the true movie star. They possess some universal quality which can affect us on a fundamental level. They are no longer citizens, they are mythological characters looming large in our cultural iconography. James Dean, whose career only lasted three pictures, is arguably one of the most recognisable actors of all time. He defined a generation, that was his impact. But nobody is complaining he doesn’t deserve his position because his career was so short. Stars like Grace Kelly somehow seduce us with a kind of effortless magic, they cast a spell and while we are under it, the clock stops ticking. Their memory remains locked within the individuals who see their work and within the culture at large, for all time.

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51Comments
  • Talya Price (@Talya2312)/ 02.09.2013Reply

    But don’t you think James Dean made an impact? People seem to only watch his film Rebel Without a Cause. But what about 2 other films. I think that Giant was his best performance, especially the scene where he is covered in oil. I see him in the same realms as River Phoenix, who really made an impact and people are still watching his films.

  • James Devereaux actor/ 02.09.2013Reply

    Well, yes I do think he made an impact.

    But I think your point about River Phoenix is a good one. Although I’m not sure the impression which lingers is as strong.

  • Kara Peterson/ 02.09.2013Reply

    Grace Kelly is one of my favorite Icons. I couldn’t agree more with your post. 🙂

  • Richard/ 03.09.2013Reply

    james Dean was a good actor..unusual, so his death after only 3 films gives him mythological status,..i could not tell you one film Grace Kelly was in..and i watch alot of films..her icon exists because she was a beautiful woman married to a Prince..and died young

    • James Devereaux actor/ 03.09.2013Reply

      James Dean was overrated as an actor. Some of his work is preposterous. But no-one can deny the mythology.

      Grace Kelly just had the most wonderful screen presence, she’s a true movie star.

      I always loved To Catch A Thief. It’s a lesser known Hitchcock film, but Kelly has a playfulness and vulnerability that is really beguiling.

      • David Michael Cooney/ 03.09.2013Reply

        I have commented on Grace Kelly who was pretty but not a great actress.

    • JEAN FLEMING/ 20.09.2013Reply

      I agree with you.

  • Richard/ 03.09.2013Reply

    preposteours maybe..it was just acting, him acting, playing cal, playing Giant..in his own james dean way..only actor i can think of that worked with a genius director who got something out of him in all his films..only made 3 so not hard to have a good ratio…Kazan liked those sort of actors, Brando was in that mold but had genuine acting ability, the kind Mark Rylance has…that i suspect James Dean didnt have..struck a nerve in Rebel though

  • James Devereaux actor/ 03.09.2013Reply

    The point about Dean though, is that the mythology warps are view of his acting. It can never live up to the size of the myth, so we try to bend the way we see it.

    For sure Grace Kelly was good looking, but she had movie star magic as well.

  • Robert/ 03.09.2013Reply

    Hi James,
    At the risk of adding fuel to the fire, and instead of looking for working I’m on LinkedIn in the afternoon…mmmm..dedicated me…but anyway felt compelled to comment on 2 things I read. Completely disagree with the word preposterous in your judgment of James Deans’ acting, and many actors’ and actresses’ have died young leaving only a handful of films, yet the majority have been forgotten and their films lost. However, Dean needs no defender, and least of all from me but the times that he worked in and the parts he played were very important and were breaking through barriers of cultural inhibition and restriction at the time. The fifties hadn’t really started yet, they were still hungover from the forties and and its moral code and ethics. His live tv work is at times surprisingly delicate nuanced. He was well aware, more than anyone, of his limitations, and the tricks that actors’ use in order to “succeed”, and have a propensity to fall back once that success is achieved, (listen to a short interview with him on the set of Rebel Without A Cause lasting about 40 secs) but his choices again again for such a youngster of only 24 yrs ( and his whole professional career really amounted to barely four years) was astounding in their rawness, passion, and willingness to to make a fool of himself. As some of the best acting coaches will tell you, the willingness to look like an idiot and not care is the sign of a true and courageous actor. He was YOUNG! I thought I was brilliant in my twenties. Ahh the blindness of youth. We have the luxury of vhs, dvd, youtube etc, and analyse till we paralyze but at least he had a go and gave it everything regardless of how he went about it, whether he was a nice bloke or not as he went about his career doesn’t matter, he was of his time and a need for someone like that at that time, and his talent whatever one thinks of it, came at exactly the right time. No one else could have done what he did with same amount of energy. He would have moved away from the teen label in his next three films but fate had another plan for him. He knew it was ludicrous to be playing a teenager at 24, but plenty of actors play Romeo and Hamlet in their twenties an early thirties!! Why do we not hold Jean Harlow, Lon Chaney Snr, Brandon Wilde, and a whole host of other actors who died young and were perhaps more talented but are now fading in the public’s’ memory, except in cinephile’s like me, in the same regard? Energy and timing,that’s why I think.
    Re Grace Kelly, who also came out of no-wheresville, and hit the ground running in her first film, High Noon, I like the your take on her. To Catch A Thief, Country Girl, Dial M for Murder, all of a certain type but great films and performances. Rear Window was on this wkend and had to watch it for the umpteenth time. I’ve even seen it in the cinema. But there was something that I had never heard before! It was the scene where her character Lisa is about to change into “something more comfortable”. I’m not picking on this to show her in a poor light just interesting on how it stayed in the movie. She fluffs two words, the name of a character that has just walked out of the room and something else. Couldn’t believe my ears. How many times have I seen this and never “heard” it? Why would Hitchcock choose to put this in the finished edit? But what I was very impressed with was her constant follow through. She never wavered, didn’t flinch. Her concentration was total. Whether that was a fluke of her part, not noticing and getting through the take unperturbed, or complete and steely like professionalism, to not waste a foot of film on this very expensive production of Hitchcocks’. Fascinating. Another sad, loss too young, but we can count ourselves very lucky to have her ( pun warning!!) grace our tv and rep cinema screens, and see her luminous presence shine like few do. Merci Grace Kelly.

    • James Devereaux actor/ 03.09.2013Reply

      I think Dean’s cultural impact is undeniable. But I find his acting is stifled and self-conscious, and when tries to move up a gear and push it, he just so false.

      Like your comments on Grace Kelly ….. I’m of the opinion that you don’t necessarily need to be a great technical actor to be a great movie star.

      • Robert/ 17.09.2013Reply

        Well, we’re all entitled to our opinion, even if it’s a minority.

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