Magnetic personalities

Some actors have it; most don't. It's that mysterious charisma that draws us into their world and keeps us coming back for more.

By ERIC DEGGANS

© St. Petersburg Times, published July 19, 2000

[Times art: Branden Jeffords]

First, understand this: It's not about looks.

It's not about having the perfect body, sculpted by exercise or the surgeon's laser. It's not about an accident of birth that bestows blue eyes or chiseled cheeks, though that can help.

It's about charisma. Magnetism. That unspoken force that reaches through the TV, movie screen or theater house and connects us to our favorite performers, making their triumphs our heaven and their setbacks our hell.

With nominations for the 1999-2000 Emmys to be announced Thursday, I've been thinking a lot about magnetism -- who has it and who doesn't.

Audrey Hepburn had it. Jennifer Love Hewitt, who was dumb enough to try re-creating that long-ago mystique in a TV movie, doesn't.

Marlon Brando, svelte and powerful in A Streetcar Named Desire, lumpy and wizened in The Godfather, always had it. Jackie Gleason practically embodied it, even while hosting what was probably the worst game show ever on TV, 1961's You're in the Picture.

James Lipton, dean of the Actors' Studio program at New School University in New York and host of Bravo's Inside the Actors' Studio, has a few ideas about charisma and acting.

"I've realized there's something tangible, something palpable about this kind of impact," he said. "In opera, when a good singer sings, you can literally feel the vibration . . . and that's what it's like. Sometimes, someone like Glenn Close or Meryl Streep will turn and look at you, and you can quite literally feel it. And you are privileged, for moments of a time, to be drawn into it."

Ever the diplomat -- after all, he may wind up interviewing almost any actor for Bravo's show -- Lipton declines to name the names who fit that mold or don't.

Instead, he tries describing an indescribable process: the method by which great actors draw you into their world.

"Glenn Close talked about an actor's aura. How else can you explain that an actor can feel something onstage and 50 feet away, the audience is crying?" he says. "She thinks it's a metaphysical thing. . . . I simply say they possess a kind of power that other people don't."

If you want to understand the power of an actor's magnetism, often the last people to ask are actors themselves.

For these outgoing, charismatic characters, magnetism is often as natural as breathing. It's a trait I saw up close as West Wing actor Martin Sheen held court Saturday at the Television Critics Awards ceremony in Pasadena, Calif.

Asked for the key to his own on-screen magnetism -- he's one of my picks for the most engrossing stars on the small screen this year -- Sheen could only shrug and politely demur.

"Great energy, great discipline and self-effacement, and a great sense of humor . . . they can't take themselves too seriously," he finally says, listing the qualities of most great actors.

"There were about four guys in my life: Marlon Brando and George C. Scott, Jimmy Cagney and James Dean," Sheen adds. "If you watch a lot of my performances in The West Wing, you see a lot of Cagney. Smart, tough, but with a lot of heart. That's about all you can do."

Though some may struggle to define the undefinable, at Marketing Evaluations/TvQ Inc., workers pin a number on personal magnetism.

Polling about 1,800 people twice each year, they slap a value on performers' demographic appeal, also known as their "Q" rating.

As you might expect, actors with the highest Q's combine a mainstream likability with ubiquity and a significant lack of controversy; think Robin Williams, Bill Cosby, Michael J. Fox, James Earl Jones, Noah Wyle and Whoopi Goldberg.

At this level, talent is a given. But the high-Q crowd seems to enjoy a popularity separate from the fortunes or quality of any particular project.

Cosby saw two TV shows canceled from under him this year, and Fox and Williams have endured recent criticism for slumming in material far below their considerable talents. Still, their Q's remain high.

"They seem to be genuine people. . . . They're wholesome, they're not smart alecks. . . . You see the real people behind the roles they play," says Steven Levitt, president of Marketing Evaluations, which has assembled Q ratings since 1964.

"Their personality sustains, like a Tom Cruise or Dick Van Dyke," Levitt adds. "As opposed to an Angelina Jolie, with the comments about her sex life with (new husband) Billy Bob Thornton, who just turned a lot of people right off."

Still, there's a unique magnetism that transcends mere popularity. It's that peculiar nexus of fame and ability, the right person in the right role at the right time.

With all respect to whomever the Emmy academy chooses to highlight this time around, here's this humble critic's picks of the 10 most magnetic actors on TV:

1. JAMES GANDOLFINI

He's got a gut like a beer barrel and a face like a pug-nosed prizefighter. Still, Gandolfini emerged last year as the most watchable actor in recent TV memory, bringing a complex, layered life to Mob boss Tony Soprano on HBO's The Sopranos. One moment he's strangling a stoolie, the next he's on a drunken crying jag because he can't whack a pedophile who coached his daughter's soccer team. Quite simply, Gandolfini is the glue that binds HBO's Emmy-winning crime dramedy, making us root for a stone killer even when he's moments away from whacking his own mother.

2. SELA WARD

Sure, she's drop-dead, sear-your-eyeballs beautiful. But that's not why Ward's turn as Lily Manning in ABC's divorce drama Once and Again holds our attention (well, not the main reason). It's because Lily -- teetering between a tissue-thin emotional fragility and the steely strength it takes to start over -- embodies the soul of this heartfelt series. Playing a fortysomething divorced mom who has found love with a divorced dad, Ward never uses her beauty as a shortcut. Instead, through the overused gimmick of talking to the camera, we meet a woman who is insecure and fearful, yet open and daring all at once. No wonder Billy Campbell's Rick Sammler can't get enough of her; thanks to Ward's effortless work, we're all in the same boat.

3. STEVE HARRIS

Forget about Dylan McDermott's pouty-faced pretty boy routine or Camryn Manheim's overhyped fat-is-great shtick. Harris' incendiary Eugene Young is The Practice's secret weapon. Smart enough to feel badly about defending criminals and good enough to win anyway, Harris' Young electrifies any courtroom scene he's in. Unfortunately, creator David E. Kelley has watered down his character from the early days, when Eugene was clearly the firm's best litigator. And Eugene still too often resorts to pushing people around, reinforcing lots of stereotypes about muscular black men. But Harris makes the most of his moments, using a sneering lip curl or steely gaze to speak volumes.

4. FRANKIE MUNIZ

Most kid-centered adult comedies fail for one reason: Child actors rarely act, relying instead on a repertoire of cute expressions and amusing vocal inflections (What'choo talking 'bout, Willis?). Not so with Malcolm in the Middle's Muniz, a 14-year-old who swaggers through this series with the comic timing and attitude of a star twice his age. As normal as a teenage TV celebrity can be, Muniz swears he doesn't even understand some the barbs creator Linwood Boomer hands him. Still, he manages to turn every wisecrack into solid, sidesplitting gold.

5. MARTIN SHEEN

With all due respect to Tom Cruise, making American TV audiences believe in a smart, principled president two years past Monica Lewinsky seems the real mission impossible. But, somehow, Sheen turned The West Wing's President Josiah Bartlet, an economist with a taste for rare books and an aversion to political nonsense, into the Clinton That Could Have Been. Of course, Sheen's Bartlet gets to sidestep reality, sticking by a chief of staff whose drug-using past would have forced a political bloodletting in anything close to real life. Still, Sheen's charming portrayal of a smart, down-to-earth leader fighting the good fight is the engine powering creator Aaron Sorkin's slick political vehicle.

6. KHANDI ALEXANDER

She has been wasted in too many movies and TV shows to count, including a slot in the NewsRadio cast that seemed little more than a token (she played a radio show producer, but the janitor got more lines). She shines occasionally as Dr. Peter Benton's sister on ER, but it wasn't until HBO's The Corner debuted this year that Alexander exploded, this time as a drug-addicted mom struggling against her own worst instincts. Too bad this expert actor of color had to resort to yet another junkie role -- on cable, no less -- to get the kind of respect she has deserved for a long while.

7. SAM WATERSTON

For an eternity, Sam Waterston made his name in earnest good guy roles. (Remember his earnest good guy dad in NBC's civil rights drama I'll Fly Away?) But it wasn't until Waterston sank his teeth into Law and Order's relentless Assistant District Attorney Jack McCoy that couch potatoes saw the flinty resolve behind all those goody-two-shoes parts. Like all compelling heroes, McCoy is flawed: He has romanced subordinates, bent the law and allowed personal demons to affect his professional life. Still, Waterston plays him as a bold, uncompromising figure who will stop at little to satisfy his personal sense of justice. Just the kind of prosecutor most of us want on the government's side of the courtroom.

8. MICHAEL J. FOX

Even before Parkinson's disease prompted him to leave Spin City, Fox was a TV treasure. Beloved by audiences drawn to his easy charm and good guy attitude, it almost didn't matter that Spin and his breakthrough sitcom, Family Ties, were mediocre TV shows easily overshadowed by his performances. But a look at old episodes shows the deft physicality and split-second comic timing of a natural. Which makes his departure from television, just as his Parkinson's tremors seem to grow too pronounced to hide, especially tragic.

9. JULIANNA MARGULIES

Her effortless portrayal of ER's nurse Carol Hathaway belies Margulies' considerable achievement in navigating her character's incredible personal journey. Progressing from heartsick suicide case to strong, independent single mom in six years, Hathaway would have been a jokey caricature in lesser hands. Instead, she emerged as the show's levelheaded spiritual center, particularly after the departure of superstar George Clooney for movieland. Don't be surprised if producers find replacing Margulies next season tougher than life without Clooney.

10. DENNIS FRANZ

NYPD Blue may be sliding slowly toward mediocrity, but Franz's brawny, emotionally fragile Andy Sipowicz remains the show's most compelling -- and troubling -- asset. Watching Sipowicz hurl curses at God from a hospital chapel during his son's illness late last season was compelling, textured acting. But at his core, Sipowicz remains a bad-tempered, borderline racist cop as likely to beat a confession out of a suspect as outsmart him. At times, it feels a bit odd to see an actor as skilled as Franz using his talents to make us all care about a guy like this.

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