Serbia 1, Germany 0: An upset only to those who assumed the former Yugoslavia would play down to its underachieving reputation. Germany uncharacteristically played stupid soccer, receiving its first red card, in any competition, since the 1992 Euros, and missed a regulation penalty kick for the first time since the 1974 World Cup.

In what may be classified in the realm of totally useless info, the Serbian goal was set up by a play set up by their star, Nicola Zigic, who happens to share the same surname as one of the Serbian war-criminal villains from Prime Suspect 6, whose name my blogmuse, Phoebe Nicholls, with brilliant condescension, performs the best deliberate mispronounciation this side of GD Spradling in Godfather II (starts about 1:40 into the video).

PhoeNixWatch: Another year, another splendid performance...from the Grey Lady herself:

The Almeida Theatre in North London, meanwhile, is boasting the finest new play seen at that address since its artistic director, Michael Attenborough, took over the running of the Islington playhouse in 2003. Consumed with climate change, love and loss, and the ways in which coincidence can make over our lives, “When the Rain Stops Falling” also inadvertently acts as a structural primer for the return to the London stage this week of “Arcadia.”To a degree exceeding Mr. Stoppard’s 1993 masterwork, the Australian writer Andrew Bovell’s comparably mournful play shuttles swiftly between time periods and continents to offer up a wounding theatrical mosaic that tells of two families — one in England, the other in Australia — across four generations and 80 years, from 1959 to 2039. (The production runs through July 4.)

(snip)

Among a finely calibrated ensemble, acting honors surely go to Phoebe Nicholls as the older version of the solitary Elizabeth, who must bid farewell first to a husband, then a son. “If you touch me, I will break,” she remarks calmly to the Australia-bound Gabriel, nursing a glass of her preferred red wine. As Ms. Nicholls speaks the line, you fully believe in a fragility that is one step away from finally going snap.

Which reminds me of a point made this week by Matt Welch over at the Reason blog, concerning the passing this week of the King of Pop. Riffing off of an old Bill James piece on the age of Phil Niekro, Welch notes:

Even more so than his fellow '58ers Madonna and Prince, Michael Jackson had a long and bizarre relationship with age. He was old enough to be in the public eye for more than four decades, young enough to live in a children's zoo. He recorded his first number-one single just two months after man first walked on the moon, yet sang like a castrato and surrounded himself with tweens. Young enough to have never developed a beer gut, old enough to have a decline phase lasting a full quarter-century. So just how old was Michael Jackson?

Michael Jackson was older than Appalachian wanderluster Mark Sanford, older than beloved Slate columnist Eliot Spitzer, and older than the 44th president of the United States. He was older than silver-haired Congressman Mike Pence, silver-bearded Nespresso pitchman George Clooney, and silver-tongued trial lawyer Erin Brockovich. Remember John Kennedy, Jr., the George magazine publisher who died in a plane crash 10 years ago? He was younger than Michael Jackson. As are Magic Johnson, Tai Babilonia, and Stan Van Gundy.

Perhaps Welch's child-like obsession with whether state government spending is exceeding the inflation rate caused him to miss other examples (as well as falsely id'ing Ms. Brockovich as a "trial lawyer"). Did you know Michael Jackson was older than Nadia Comenici? Diego Maradona? John Elway? Isiah Thomas? Gary Lineker? Wayne Gretsky? Marcus Allen? And don't get me started on Dan Marino or John McEnroe....

Joan Jett and Shawn Cassidy are of more recent vintage than the Moonwalking One. So is Welch's favorite journalist, award-winning columnist Bill Plaschke of the Los Angeles Times. Had Kurt Cobain or Princess Diana lived to see the sunset last night, they still would have been younger than Jacko. Michael Jackson was older than Mr. Blonde, Michael Madsen, as well as Nuke LaLoosh himself, Tim Robbins.

David Remnick, the Editor in Chief of the New Yorker, is younger than Michael Jackson. So are Brian Williams, Anderson Cooper, and Shepherd Smith. Same with the hosts of Meet the Press and This Week. So is Sarah Palin, and likely next-PM David Cameron.

However, Phoebe Nicholls is, was, and forever shall be, older than Michael Jackson.

A Critical Retraction:

From British theatre critic Mark Shenton: Critics are only human - we all make mistakes. And no one beats me up more for mine than me! So today it’s time to fess up, as they say Stateside, to one of mine: I’ve already admitted here to attending Waste at the Almeida (not so) fresh from a transatlantic return journey, and now I’ve discovered that I must have written my review, too, in an advanced state of jetlag, too.

In my Sunday Express notice, I referred to a fine ensemble cast that includes “Will Keen as the politician and the superb, graceful Phoebe Nicholls as his long-suffering wife. ” Except, of course, that Phoebe Nicholls is playing his sister, not wife.

(snip)

But at least I am not alone: I did a quick trawl of other reviews, and discovered that the identical mistake was perpetrated by two other colleagues! In his Tribune notice, Aleks Sierz even draws the conclusion that it reveals that the play suggests that the English are not much good at love: “When his wife, Frances, finally confronts him at the end of the story, Henry shows a sublime indifference which makes you wonder why the couple haven’t gone their separate ways long ago. No, the chief erotic drive in the play - and the only thing that makes it bearable to watch- is its boys’ club politics: not sex, but power. When the men talk affairs of state, the pulse quickens. Directed stolidly by Samuel West, Waste is a perfect example of the ghastly lack of warmth between the sexes among the English upper classes during the first part of the last century.”

And in the Jewish Chronicle, John Nathan writes, “Phoebe Nicholls as Trebell’s loving but sexually uninterested wife outshines even Keen’s excellent performance.” Those two further wrongs, of course, don’t make it right that I got it so wrong, too - and of course our common mistake is now embedded for posterity in the pages of Theatre Record and/or the internet. So I apologise unreservedly and publicly to Ms Nicholls....

His blunder was apparently the result of his having fallen asleep in the middle of the play, which I assume is a common West End malady, much like heading to the exits in the seventh inning is at Dodger Stadium. And of course, some of the responsibility for that snafu has to be shouldered by Phoebe Nicholls, an actress of such refined skill and classic beauty that she possesses the power to cloud the minds of even the most hardened critic into confusing filial devotion with marital ennui. Nevertheless, I may be making a quick, post-election trip to London to see Waste, so long as I can find lodging of some sort; before I die, I have to see the Phoenician on stage at least once.

West End Girl: Phoebe Nicholls is on stage again !!!! Boo-yah !!!!

The Trial of Tony Blair: Well, I saw it, and I can't say I was overwhelmed. The actors, particularly the Blogmuse, were terrific (saying "Phoebe Nicholls was superb" is like saying "water is wet," or "the San Antonio Spurs are spirit-crushingly dull"), but the story itself left a lot to be desired. If you intend to make the case that Blair, Bush, Cheney et al., should be held accountable before a legal tribunal for the mendacity in which they took their countries to war, a case which I wholeheartedly endorse, it might make more sense not to make your "villain" the only person in the movie who acts out of a sense of principal and conviction, nor to invest everyone who advocates putting him on trial as motivated only by cynicism. I suppose the filmmakers might respond by saying that the only way a fairy tale notion that a Western leader could actually face what has traditionally been "victor's justice" is for his erstwhile allies to believe that political expediency leaves them with no other choice, but it doesn't do the cause of international law any good when its advocates are portrayed as a bunch of conniving a-holes, and the process itself as little more than a formality before a guilty verdict is imposed.

I also had the impression that a lot of the film had been cut out for its American debut, on BBC America. Like ESPN Classic, BBC America is a cable channel that is inexplicably bad; other than its news broadcasts in the early morning, and the occasional showings of "Little Britain," its programming leaves a lot to be desired. I have the impression that PBS gets dibs on all the really good programs from the U.K., while BBC America gets stuck with reruns of "Footballers' Wives," "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" or what it aired tonight, which ironically wasn't even shown on the BBC in Great Britain, but was instead on the cable off-shoot of Channel Four, a competing network. If BBC America is an attempt to convince Americans that the vast majority of British television is stale and schlocky fare, it is succeeding beyond anyone's wildest dreams.

Like a seven-year old on Xmas Eve, I impatiently await the return of Phoebe Nicholls to American TV, in a little over 24 hours. In the meantime, here's a bit of musical sherbet to cleanse the pallet:

Is nothing sacred?

Where my interests collide...the Criminal Bar of London will present a reenactment of "The Trial of Bardell v. Pickwick" at Middle Temple Hall on Sunday, April 1, 2007, featuring a number of luminaries from stage and screen, including, among others, Phoebe Nicholls !!! It costs only ₤50, but that's practically nothing when you consider that it's all for a good cause (helping impoverished law students), and that there are starving kids in China who would kill just to see the Great Phoenician Diva line-read classic Dickens for a couple hours. So those of you from Lambeth, Notting Hill, Winchester, and Suffolk, and other locales that anonymously visit my site each week, seeking info and commentary about England's most criminally underutilized actress, get off your butts and put your money where your interests lie...or if you would like to contribute to helping out an impoverished bankruptcy lawyer, then just click the button on the right-hand side of the blog, just below the "My Space" link.

Oh, to be in England...The Trial of Tony Blair debuts this Monday. For the swelling legions of Phoebe Nicholls fans, it will surely be nirvana, and the early word is that it will even be worth watching the scenes she doesn't appear in. She has a line about Bush being in a coma that may surpass "Game, set and match" as the greatest line she's ever uttered. Otherwise, it's got some telling points about the responsibility (or lack thereof) that Western political leaders have for the consequences of their actions, including the fairy tale notion that we would actually allow international tribunals to judge our own actions.

The ICC, which tries Blair in the satire, got a bad rep from the Milosevic trial, which lasted for four years; needless to say, a four-year trial that ends only because the defendant died is contrary to any elemental notion of due process, and ends up being self-defeating if the goal is to illuminate the atrocities of the accused. After about six months, even the most passionate adherents of human rights and accountability are going to be more interested in what Paris Hilton or Posh Spice are wearing than who ordered what in Bosnia. But it obviously beats the travesty of the victor's justice that we just saw take place in Iraq. How we can consider ourselves civilized for applying one standard of justice to Pinochet and Milosevic, and another to Bush and Blair, who have the blood of hundreds of thousands on their hands, is beyond me.

It appears I'm not alone. From Terry Lawson of the Detroit Free Press:

Since it can safely be assumed that millions are now in possession of copies of "Cars" and "Six Feet Under: The Complete Season," this is the perfect opportunity to trade in or up for other, less obvious DVDs or sets you really want -- or in some cases, need.

My personal want list, fulfilled this year, begins with the best limited TV series ever made, "Brideshead Revisited," adapted from Evelyn Waugh's novel and originally shown here on PBS in 1982.

All 660 minutes of the drama -- about the life-altering friendship of would-be painter Charles Ryder (Jeremy Irons) and Oxford classmate Lord Sebastian Flyte (Anthony Edwards), who introduces him to a world he would have never known when he takes Charles home to meet his his family and his upper crust London crowd -- have been remastered for the "25th Anniversary Edition Collector's Edition" (FOUR STARS out of four stars, Acorn Media, $59.99).

The perfect cast includes Sirs Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud, and as Sebastian's sisters, Diana Quick and Phoebe Nichols (sic), for whom I developed life-long crushes.

Or maybe I am alone; it would stand to reason that if you truly have a life-long crush on the Phoenician, you'd be able to spell her last name correctly. It's not like the first "l" in her last name is silent.

Long live the splendor and glory of Ms. Nicholls against the depradations of the infidel !!! Kobe Akbar !!!

Blur: I can't say which excites me more: that Tony "Yo" Blair will be leaving office in a year, or that the blogmuse of this site, Phoebe Nicholls, will portray his wife in a movie set to air later this year on British television. To paraphrase "legendary record producer" Bruce Dickinson, I got a FEVER. And the only prescription is...MORE PHOEBE !!!

South Korea 1, France 1: Park ji-sung became the third Man Utd. player in as many days to play the hero, scoring in the 82nd minute as the Koreans rallied to tie Les Bleus. Thierry Henry of Arsenal had earlier put the French into the lead, notching their first goal in World Cup since the 1998 Final. More referreeing controversies occurred in the first half, when an apparent French goal was not called, and in the second half, when Zinedine Zidane received a yellow card that will keep him out of France's final group game (and may end his career), and marred the game. It will be difficult for anyone watching the game to get that ditty the Korean fans were singing out of his head.

One of the stars for France is their bald goalkeeper, Fabien Barthez. Barthez, who at one time was romantically involved with former supermodel Linda Evangelista, bears an uncanny resemblance to the late character actor, and original "Dr. Evil", Donald Pleasance, whose perhaps most famous for his recurring roles in the Halloween movies. But Pleasance earned a special place in movie lore for starring in films featuring two of my favorite actresses. In Cul de Sac (1966), directed by Roman Polanski, he played the owner of a castle who is visited by a mobster on the lam, along with his girlfriend, who is played by Francoise Dorleac. Ms. Dorleac was on the cusp of stardom when she was killed in an auto accident the following year, at the age of 25, and she was, almost impossible to believe, the prettier older sister of Catherine Deneuve. And of course, Pleasance also played the father of Smythe's World icon Phoebe Nicholls in Blade on the Feather (1980), a deliciously tawdry spy thriller in which my blogmuse, playing a spoiled young adult version of Varuca Salt, gets nekkid with co-star Tom Conti. Neither Dorleac or Nicholls really have anything to do with Fabien Barthez, Dorleac having died the year before Barthez was born, and there being no evidence that the infrequently-working Engish character actress has ever met the French goalkeeper, but as Nicholls' character would say in the above movie, "come on daddy, play the game...."

Mike Pendo, who had spent the past decade as an HIV researcher in San Francisco, died this week of a heart attack at his home. He had been my friend since the two of us attended CAL in the early-80's, although, ironically, he spent the first year of my knowing him trying to kill me (literally) for having autographed/defaced one of his posters. Mike was the next-door neighbor of my best friend from high school in the Spens-Black dorm, and it was together with him and his roommate that we watched re-runs of Brideshead Revisited and became Phoebe Nicholls fanatics. He, the aforementioned roommate, and several other people from that dorm bought a three-story house in the Castro District in the early-90's, back when that was still possible off the combined income of schoolteachers and law clerks, and he lived there for most of that decade. I didn't get to see him much when I visited the house in recent years, but every so often he would drop by, and he would always ask me whatever happened to the PhoeNix. He was a sweet, funny guy, and he was just 41.

The most frustrating type of fandom is to be an American fan of a British stage actress. If she's really good at what she does, she will spend her career doing plays at the West End, or the odd TV-movie for Channel Four, and never feel the need to go Hollywood or do anything that will make its way to my small corner of the world. While less-talented performers will come over to this country, become stars, and fade away into obscurity after their fortieth birthday, she'll be perfecting her craft, playing for the long haul.

Thus, the bittersweet discovery this week that the woman pictured at the top right corner of my website, Phoebe Nicholls, is set to appear in a play opening at the Hampstead Theatre in London, commencing in mid-June. No movies, no TV, as far as I can tell, just a performance in the one medium I have absolutely no access to, thousands of miles away. Any true fanatical interest in the work of an actor or director, whether great or mediocre, compels a desire to be a completist, to see anything and everything he's done, in order to gain a more detailed perspective of his career, to compare performances, but mainly just to indulge some idiosyncratic weirdness in oneself. Yet with Mrs. Sturridge, I can't see the one avenue in which she has most excelled; its almost like having access only to Shakespeare's sonnets, and not his plays. Sigh.

Lord, I'm pathetic....

Offerman Signs: You know the baseball season draws near when this story hits the wires...btw, the page for Phoebe Nicholls at IMDB.com has not updated in the past twelve months. Should I be concerned?

Phoenix Rises: It was delayed three weeks by the local affiliate's decision to air tributes to Broadway and the McGuire Sisters during its "Pledge Month", but PBS viewers in the greater Southern California Area were finally treated last night to the last episode of Season 2 of the British mystery, "Foyle's War", guest-starring the ne plus ultra of British character actresses, Phoebe Nicholls. Her small cult of rabidly obsessive fans were treated to a vintage performance, the trademark sneer and condescending tone being used to fine effect in playing the role of a wartime version of Jayson Blair, who pens "autobiographical" accounts of heroic feats in bombed-out London from the comfort of a country estate. When confronted by a police detective suspicious of her brazen mendacity, her deadpan response ("I think you're missing the point") was so perfectly delivered that you couldn't help but laugh. It's like watching Magic Johnson run the fast break, or Bill Clinton answering a question at a press conference: the pleasure of witnessing someone who is not only good at what they do, but who seems to be enjoying it as well.

Smythe Jumps the Shark: Since I started my blog, I've tried to steer my own course, for the most part staying away from issues that I had little interest in, and/or had little in the way of expertise. Since I'm not a reporter by profession, I tend not to be obsessed with the political bias, whether it be right or left, of the media. I don't "fisk" other writers, since that is so 9/12, and I have another blog where I can discuss sports, if I wanted to. My opinion on Iraq is simple: the Administration (particularly the Veep) exaggerated the threat from Saddam, didn't have the slightest idea what we were getting into, and hundreds of American soldiers (and, no doubt, thousands of Iraqi civilians) are now dead. Also, Saddam was a bad man, it was a good idea to keep a close watch on him, regardless of whether we went to war, and it is going to benefit the Iraqi people in the long run to be rid of him.

There are only so many ways you can write those opinions before you glaze over the eyes of your readers, and it's so much easier to troll your views elsewhere, where they will be read by a larger audience. Some things, though, I am compelled by reputation to expound on, regardless of the general interest my readers may have. For example, I will always post about any halfway interesting night at Joxer Daly's; Smythe's World, in fact, is the de facto website for the bar, even though I'm not a regular there anymore. Political polling fascinates me, so any shift in the horse race numbers will receive my attention. Jose Offerman has been my favorite athlete since he was making several dozen errors a year at Albuquerque (I've always had a soft spot for despised athletes, like Sonny Liston and Ryan Leaf, but Offy is special, since he has always handled the malice from sportwriters and fans alike with class and dignity), so any news stories involving him will surely get noticed. And naturally, if something happens in the area of law I practice, bankruptcy, I will avail myself of the opportunity to rant.

And of course, there's Phoebe Nicholls. Ms. Nicholls, for those of you who do not have intimate knowledge of the British theatrical scene, is a mid-fiftyish English character actress. She was quite beautiful during her ingenue period back in the day, and even today she's not hard on the eyes, but her uniqueness derives from the spellbinding effect her voice has on an audience. Quite simply, it is the most captivating voice possessed by an actor since the late George Sanders; today, only John Malkovich is comparable. And like those actors, she invariably portrays rather elegant characters who deserve to be taken down a peg or two (that is, when she's not portraying another specialty of hers, that of "bereaving mother". It's safe to say that the former are a heck of a lot more fun to watch).

Almost all of her work is done on British television or on stage, and she's only acted in a handful of films (none released since 1997), so Americans rarely have the chance to see her perform. I've followed her career since her disembodied voice concluded The Elephant Man in 1980, and her most famous role was that of the youngest sister of Sebastian Flyte in Brideshead Revisited the following year. The sheer fact that she has worked regularly (and, for the most part, reviewed favorably) since then, without becoming a household name even in her home country, is a testament to a quality I generally admire in a person, a commitment to craft beyond any pecuniary benefits that may arise out of it.

Which brings me to Prime Suspect 6 [part two], which ran on your local PBS station last night. She had only two brief scenes, playing the frumpishly malevolent spook who attempts to shut down Inspector Tennison's investigation into the Serbian war criminal she's protecting. She played the part perfectly, creating one of the most sinister TV characters since The Cigarette Man, conveying more with a resigned shrug than Gwyneth Paltrow does with one of her patented line-readings. In particular, her final scene conveyed a sense of power and contempt even after she had been out-smarted by the heroine, all without uttering a word. It gets replayed again on PBS next weekend, so watch out for it if you missed it the first time. And by all means, remember the name; it wouldn't surprise me in the least if she turns out to be another Judi Dench, an actress whose fame and notoriety in this country are achieved after middle age.

UPDATE: Jose Offerman has now been cut by three teams in the last two years, and spent the entire 2006 season with the New York Mets AAA team in Tidewater. In August, 2007, he was charged with assault after he charged the mound in a minor league game with a baseball bat (he subsequently plead guilty, and agreed to probation), and was suspended indefinitely. Showing up two years later managing in the Dominican Winter League, Offerman proved the early incident was no fluke by meriting a lifetime suspension for attempting to punch an umpire.

Phoebe Nicholls has rebooted her career in recent years by excelling on the West End, starring in a number of well-received plays and winning some long-overdue awards.

*However, her American fans were recently victimized by a cruel hoax when the IMDB website listed her as performing in the TV series CSI: Miami. In fact, the producers of the show merely created a character named "Phoebe Nichols" (with only one "l", so the audience wouldn't be confused with the real-life actress), a Britney Spearsian singer who is thought to have exploded in flames at the beginning of the show, only for the deceased to have been a doppleganger. I hope my blogmuse was well-paid for the indignity.

It's about time she got some props!! From the London Guardian review: :

Let's just get it over with, shall we? Prime Suspect: The Last Witness was the very rarest sort of television, the kind that makes a critic feel justified in spending the bulk of her working life welded to an armchair, toting a remote control.

Week after week there is still far more good stuff on television than you might imagine but, obviously, there is a great deal less that is truly great - just as well, really, because spouting a geyser of hot praise does not become a critic. I can, for example, rustle you up at least four virtually unqualified 'brilliant's in relation to Prime Suspect (for the acting, directing, writing, photography) but where's the fun in that? Like the family silver, the usual adjectival suspects tarnish very quickly, even if you only need to get them out once or twice a year.

(snip)

And perhaps finest of all was Phoebe Nichols [sic] as a chillingly callous and superior spook. She had a very classy speech (in which she told Tennison to back off from her investigation of a suspected Bosnian war criminal because he was under the protection of the British Government) the delivery of which made her subsequent comeuppance even more emotionally satisying.

What would have really made my day is if the reviewer had managed to get her last name right; that's Nicholls, with two l's. In any event, it airs in this country next April.

Her legion of devoted fans will no doubt be overjoyed at this news: English character actress Phoebe Nicholls will be returning to American TV screens later this year, in Prime Suspect 6. Phoe-Nix and Helen Mirren, together at last: what a time to be alive !!!

Bay Area residents should be alerted to the fact that the greatest character actress you've never heard of, Phoebe Nicholls, makes a rare TV appearance Friday on your PBS station at 10:00 p.m. The woman behind the world's most perfect English accent plays a greedy sister who goes out of her mind in "May and June". For everyone else, you'll just have to rent Persuasion for a glimpse of the only thespian besides John Malkovich (and maybe Crispin Glover as well) who can singlehandedly change the complexion of a film by just appearing in a few scenes.


UPDATE [11/16/2007]: "May and June" has recently been released on DVD, as part of a package of British TV films based on the short stories of Ruth Rendell. Although the set is worth buying just for "May and June," you can, thanks to the technological breakthrough that is Netflix, simply rent the appropriate disc (ie., Disc 3) and watch it at your leisure. Think of it as a combination of All About Eve and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, if those films had been written and directed by Rod Serling or Alfred Hitchcock.

It's very difficult to figure out after seeing "May and June" why Phoebe Nicholls never made it to the next level, why her name hasn't become as ubiquitous in reference to "great acting" as Helen Mirren or Meryl Streep. She shows here that she can carry a film by herself, and her performance is a master class of acting, turning what could have been a campy rehash of sibling rivalry cliches into something mythic. Nevertheless, her roles thereafter have all been of the supporting nature, and have pretty much been confined to British TV. She deserves better luck.
In "May & June", Nicholls portrays a woman who has always played second fiddle to her prettier, younger sister, but who collapses emotionally when she loses her fiance to her sibling. Twenty years later, having never married or achieved much in her life other than surviving, she attends the funeral of her ex-fiance, and meets her sister, now unbelievably wealthy but alone, and she is invited to move in with her as an act of reconciliation.

But it's clear that she has never gotten over the loss of her true love or the betrayal years before, which she has chosen to blame entirely on her sister. When she finds out that her sister's marriage had, in fact, been rocky, and that she had taken a lover during the final days of her husband's life, she follows a course of action that ultimately leads to a devastating finale.

Without spoiling the ending, which you probably won't see coming, let's just say that it wouldn't work unless you completely empathized with the character played by Ms. Nicholls. Her final descent into madness is especially poignant, because we know that the character had been a decent, generous person at one point (she met her fiance, a solicitor, while she was working for a children's foster home), and that her capacity to love, and even forgive, her sister, existed. But her soul is already well on the way to being poisoned by jealousy, greed and remorse. The decision she makes is understandable, if no less appalling, and her "triumph" is an empty one.

In the hands of a lesser actress, we would have only seen the madness behind the eyes, rather than have that quality only hinted at. Even our greatest actresses (ie., Bette Davis in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, Glenn Close in Fatal Atraction, Faye Dunnaway in anything since Network) have succumbed to the temptation of camping it up when portraying mentally-troubled women. Such films can be fun to watch, but the viewer will not be impacted in the slightest when the credits roll.

To pull it off correctly requires a tremendous emotional sensitivity, a self-awareness that is quite rare, and often very difficult to manage, as the biography of Billie Holiday might attest. In fact, one of Ms. Nicholls' co-stars from an earlier movie once compared her to a "soul singer," a person of "great warmth" but for whom it was painful to work at her livelihood. A woman like that will probably never become a "star," since to have such qualities necessarily means not having the narcissism and egocentricism that are required to willingly allow one to settle for less, if it means getting a well-paying role in a Hollywood star-vehicle. But having that sort of sensitivity has meant she's been one hell of an actress over the years, and I'm one fan who has never been disappointed.