A Familiar Face
Thursday, 2. October 2008, 13:15:57
The rather intimidating Catherine Weaver
of The Sarah Connor Chronicles.
I was watching an episode of The Sarah Connor Chronicles the week
before last, the season premier of the show, when I came across a face
that seemed very familiar. I had never watched the show before that, or
looked into it on its web site or whatever, and knew pretty much nothing
about it other than the obvious fact that it was a Terminator spinoff.
The actress who had caught my attention plays the character of Catherine
Weaver on the show. She has red hair, is definitely a fox, and has this cold
and vaguely threatening air about her. In fact I find her more intimidating
than any of the evil androids on the show. Between an evil android who
can crush your skull in two seconds or a redhead giving you "that look,"
I would prefer the evil android. In any case, to present that type of
character well takes some pretty good acting ability as well. And as I
mentioned, she looked very familiar. There was just something about that
face.
So I found the show's web site and looked her up. Turns out the actress
is Shirley Manson, singer for the rock group Garbage. And in fact I had
just seen her and that group in 2007 on a segment of Soundstage.
They say that the grass is always greener on the other side of the hill.
And in fact it seems that many musicians want to try the movie thing,
and many actors or actresses are drawn to the music thing. Which isn't
all that surprising. Most actors and actresses grew up listening to music
and, like most of us, wished they were a rock and roll star or whatever.
Just as a lot of musicians grew up watching movies and television shows,
and I'm sure thought about what it might be like to be in front of the
camera.
The list of these crossover gigs would be a long one. You have people
like David Bowie and Mick Jagger being featured in the occasional movie.
Some musicians, like Frank Sinatra or Elvis Presley, became serious
actors in their own right. Johnny Depp started out as a musician also,
though he didn't have all that much of a track record as one before he
got into television and film.
And then you have the actors and actresses who have gotten into music,
or at least who have tried to. This would be another fairly long list. The
one that pops into my head first, probably because I was just looking up
some information on him a couple of weeks ago, was actor Telly Savalas.
Savalas took his famous Super-Greek persona that was developed on the
Kojack series and managed to work it into a rather successful music career
that included a couple of albums and a few songs that made the charts.
Occasionally, you have someone who inhabits both worlds simultaneously
pretty much from the start. The one I think of most in terms of this was
Judy Garland. Bing Crosby also comes to mind. It's fairly difficult to really
separate Crosby's musical career from his film career. And of course there
were others.
Since the early 80s and the rise of MTV, the music world has become
tremendously video oriented. In fact it's almost impossible for a new
artist to break in these days without doing a music video. So today,
the two worlds are linked even closer.
Well, it's certainly great seeing Shirley again on the show. Though that
doesn't mean that I wouldn't like to see Garbage come out of their "hiatus"
and do a new album.
And incidentally, I thought that there was some very interesting trivia
about Shirley listed on the Internet Movie Database. You might check it
out.
Shirley Manson in her Garbage days.
WIDGETIZE
By ellinidata, # 2. October 2008, 13:31:51
How old were you when you first noticed you had a thing for redheads? Just curious.
By PainterWoman, # 2. October 2008, 16:33:48
Besides, they're on Mondays, which is an otherwise crappy night for TV anyway.
They are great quotes. I'd have to disagree with her about the not being a "sex kitten" thing. But maybe that's just me.
With the redhead thing, maybe age five or six. A little girl down the street named Inta.
By edwardpiercy, # 2. October 2008, 17:36:35
By PainterWoman, # 2. October 2008, 19:20:40
On the other hand, it could be frigging Basque for all I know.
By edwardpiercy, # 2. October 2008, 20:58:33
P.S: Typo alert, it's Bing Crosby, not Big Crosby.
By qlue, # 2. October 2008, 23:04:47
Hey, thanks for the heads up. I appreciate it.
I would guess that it would be coming to SA. I mean, it's in English, and it's American TV -- so....
I hope you get to see it. It's pretty good.
By edwardpiercy, # 2. October 2008, 23:57:52
By qlue, # 3. October 2008, 21:08:49