Judi Dench received the Oscar for her 8 minutes in Shakespeare in Love and Anthony Quinn for about that long an appearance in Lust for Life. William Hurt is currently nominated for a performance that was even shorter I understand (I haven’t seen the movie).
Sometimes, however, there are actors who are onscreen for an even shorter amount of time, maybe as cameos by famous stars or maybe actors you have never even heard of before, who just absolutely mesmerize or totally nail a character though they’re only onscreen for less than 5 minutes. These are the people who seem to prove that, at least when the script is good, there really are “no small parts”.
What are some performances that come to mind for you on this- i.e. if they gave an Academy Award for "really short supporting roles*, you’d nominate them?
I’m not sure how long Vincent Schiavelli was onscreen in Ghost but it can’t have been any longer than Dench and Quinn in their Oscar winner roles. I don’t think anybody who saw the movie would deny, however, that he was absolutely perfectly cast and gave depth to both the comedy and tragedy of that character he played. I hope he nabbed some awards for it somewhere but I find no evidence that he did.
I recently watched the movie version of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. An actress I’ve never heard of named Ruth Maleczech was onscreen for less than 2 minutes but I swear I’d have nominated her for an Oscar. She played Goody Osborne, a character referred to but not actually seen in the play, and yet in that two minutes you know a huge part of her life story thanks to Maleczech.
She’s a pauper and clearly mentally ill, a homeless person in tiny Salem who annoys her neighbors by her begging and her clear derangement, and one of the first brought in to stand trials for witchcraft. As a person who has seen MANY psychotic episodes (not just in my family but from the four years I worked in residential facilities for the severely mentally ill) I can say with some expertise she nailed the strange logic schizophrenia. (Her character honestly thinks that “I can dance as fast backwards as I can forwards!” is a valid defense and that “I can only say me commandments outdoor!” is something so logical it needs no further elaboration.) Her body language, expressions and everything, especially when she tells the girls to “stop your funnin’, you’re bringin’ me to harm!”, conveys such incredible pathos and yet at the same time threat (Goody Osborne isn’t somebody who just needs love and understanding, she is honestly batsh!t crazy and not necessarily a good person)- just wow. I’ve actually thought of writing the woman a fan letter even the performance was almost 10 years ago and she’s essentially unknown.
There are others that come to mind that would be applicable for this thread, but I spent so long on that one I’ll open it to the floor. What are some of your favorite 1 or 2 scene very short roles that were just performed perfectly?
