‘Awards Chatter’ Podcast — Christopher Plummer (‘All the Money in the World’)
“I love this profession, I really do,” says the legendary stage and screen actor Christopher Plummer as we sit down at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills to record an episode of The Hollywood Reporter‘s “Awards Chatter” podcast. “It has never been anything but great fun to me — never, even under the worst, most boring, awful circumstances. Actually, that’s even funnier — if you learn to laugh at those moments, you can really build up a good laugh for the whole of your life.”
Plummer, 88, is best known for playing Captain Von Trapp opposite Julie Andrews‘ Maria in Robert Wise‘s classic 1965 musical The Sound of Music. His other big-screen credits, over the course of 60 years in film, include Sidney Lumet‘s Stage Struck, Anthony Mann‘s The Fall of the Roman Empire, Robert Mulligan‘s Inside Daisy Clover, John Huston‘s The Man Who Would Be King, Bob Clark‘s Murder by Decree, Spike Lee‘s Malcolm X (1992), Terry Gilliam‘s 12 Monkeys (1995), Michael Mann‘s The Insider (1999), Ron Howard‘s A Beautiful Mind (2001), Terrence Malick‘s The New World, Pete Docter‘s Up, Michael Hoffman‘s The Last Station (2009), for which he received his first Oscar nomination at 81, Mike Mills‘ Beginners (2010), for which he won his first Oscar, becoming, at 82, the oldest person ever to win a competitive acting Oscar, and David Fincher‘s The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2011).
But never has Plummer experienced anything quite like what he did on his latest project, Ridley Scott‘s All the Money in the World. Indeed, Plummer, at Scott’s desperate request, went to work on the film, as J. Paul Getty, after it had already been completed with Kevin Spacey in that part. Spacey had just become engulfed in a sexual misconduct scandal, jeopardizing the movie’s future, and Scott didn’t want to take any chances. In just nine days, Plummer and Scott re-filmed all of Spacey’s work and, for his efforts, Plummer received a best supporting actor Golden Globe Award nomination. He might well receive a best supporting actor Oscar nomination, too, on Jan. 23.
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LISTEN: You can hear the entire interview below [starting at 39:00], following a conversation between host Scott Feinberg and Rachel Morrison, a 39-year-old cinematographer, about making history this season — she became the first woman ever to win the best cinematography New York Film Critics Circle Award or to be nominated for the American Society of Cinematographers’ top award, and could soon become the first woman ever to be nominated for the best cinematography Oscar.
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