Free Republic

Ingrid Bergman was one of her photographer father’s favourite subjects. She once said, “I didn’t choose acting. It chose me.” When she was two and a half years old her mother died and when she was 14 her father died. Later she said, “The theater was my mother and my father.” and “I have had my different husbands, my families. I am fond of them all and I visit them all. But deep inside me there is the feeling that I belong to show business.” She died at midnight on her birthday, August 29, in 1982. Does that mean something?

She has played the Queen and a gangster’s moll but her latest casting has sparked controversyNobody is quite what they seem. And actors? Well, for actors that’s the job. Dame Helen Mirren, as well as being herself for 76 years, has by now notably been Lady Macbeth, a London gangster’s moll, a thief’s wife, an alcoholic cop, an action hero, Prospero and also a British monarch at least four times. Now she takes on Golda Meir, the late prime minister of Israel, in a new biopic, and the casting has caused controversy. The choice of a non-Jewish actor to star...

The Golden State Gaslight Have you seen the movie 'Gaslight' which depicts gaslighting in operation? It's very instructive. You can watch it no charge at Roku: This is during the 1944 classic's ending, on the roof: Ingrid Bergman: "This night will be a long night."Joseph Cotten: "But it will end. Starting to clear. In the morning when the sun rises, sometimes it's hard to believe there ever was a night. You'll find that too."We are currently in the long psychological night but we are beginning to see the dawn. When I saw the word gaslighting I always just considered the...

The last surviving actress from the iconic movie Casablanca has died. Madeleine Lebeau played Yvonne, the jilted lover of Humphrey Bogart's Rick Blaine, in the 1942 film. Lebeau's stepson told The Hollywood Reporter that she had died aged on May 1 in Estepona, Spain aged 92, after breaking her thigh bone. The French-born actress was preceded in death by all of her credited Casablanca co-stars, including leads Bogart and Ingrid Bergman.