Comic actor who brought hysteria to The Producers and charm to Willy Wonka
After more than 50 years in show business, the frizzy-headed comic actor Gene Wilder, who has died aged 83, was most associated with his second film part, that of Leo Bloom, the hyperneurotic accountant in Mel Brooks’s comedy The Producers (1967). The Oscar-nominated role established Wilder’s screen persona – an initially well-balanced individual transformed by even the most minor crisis into a whining bundle of nerves.
When Wilder was in London to star in Neil Simon’s play Laughter on the 23rd Floor in 1996, the actor with the wistful smile and melancholy eyes told me that he could not play that kind of character again: “I’m probably too healthy emotionally. In those days I was afraid of my own shadow, I was afraid of life. When my life got straightened out, the parts changed.”
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After more than 50 years in show business, the frizzy-headed comic actor Gene Wilder, who has died aged 83, was most associated with his second film part, that of Leo Bloom, the hyperneurotic accountant in Mel Brooks’s comedy The Producers (1967). The Oscar-nominated role established Wilder’s screen persona – an initially well-balanced individual transformed by even the most minor crisis into a whining bundle of nerves.
When Wilder was in London to star in Neil Simon’s play Laughter on the 23rd Floor in 1996, the actor with the wistful smile and melancholy eyes told me that he could not play that kind of character again: “I’m probably too healthy emotionally. In those days I was afraid of my own shadow, I was afraid of life. When my life got straightened out, the parts changed.”
Continue reading...
- 8/29/2016
- by Ronald Bergan
- The Guardian - Film News
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