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Sir Elton John pays sweet tribute to Brian Wilson

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Sir Elton John pays sweet tribute to Brian Wilson


Sir Elton John remembers Brian Wilson at Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Ceremony

Sir Elton John just paid tribute to the late icon Brian Wilson at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony on Saturday night.

The Crocodile Rock hitmaker performed the Beach Boys’ God Only Knows as part of a tribute to the singer, who died in June aged 82, and also shared his memories of his former friend, including how terrified he was when they met for the first time in Los Angeles.

Speaking on stage at Los Angeles’ Peacock Theater, Sir Elton said: “We were scared s**tless because he was my idol. He was the one that influenced me more than anybody else when it came to writing songs on the piano. It was an evening we would never forget.”

“Meeting someone who was a true genius doesn’t happen very often,” the pianist added.

The 78-year-old star told the audience how he and Brian became friends over time and worked on each other’s records over the years.

He added: “We loved each other. I can’t think of anyone else I’d rather pay tribute than Brian Wilson and his family with this incredible song,” and then delivered a sentimental rendition of the Beach Boys classic.

When Brian passed away earlier this year, Sir Elton remembered his friend as the person who had the “biggest influence of my songwriting ever.”

“He sang Someone Saved My Life Tonight at a tribute concert in 2003, and it was an extraordinary moment for me. played on his solo records, he sang on my album, The Union, and even performed for my AIDS Foundation,” the Rocket Man singer wrote.

“I grew to love him as a person, and for me, he was the biggest influence on my songwriting ever; he was a musical genius and revolutionary. He changed the goalposts when it came to writing songs and shaped music forever. A true giant,” Sir Elton John concluded.





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Prince Harry admits he struggled watching Meghan Markle’s on-screen passion

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Prince Harry admits he struggled watching Meghan Markle’s on-screen passion


Prince Harry shares why Meghan Markle’s TV role left him uncomfortable

Prince Harry revealed his true feelings about watching Meghan Markle’s intimate scene on the hit legal series, Suits.

According to his memoir Spare, the Duke of Sussex admitted that it left him feeling deeply uncomfortable watching the Duchess’ intimate scene.

Harry confessed that seeing his then-girlfriend in a passionate on-screen moment with co-star Patrick J. Adams made him “miserable.”

Writing about his feelings, King Charles’ son penned that he wished he could wipe it from his memory.

“I’d witnessed her [Meghan] and a castmate mauling each other in some sort of office or conference room,” he wrote.

“I didn’t need to see such things live.”

Meghan, who played paralegal Rachel Zane from 2011 to 2018, filmed several romantic scenes before her romance with Harry began.

Reflecting on her time on the show years earlier, she onve called working with an attractive cast “one of the job perks.”

“I mean, how do you even answer that? No. Absolutely not. It’s one of the job perks, right?” she said in a 2015 interview. 





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Billy Bob Thornton on the return of “Landman”

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Billy Bob Thornton on the return of “Landman”


Billy Bob Thornton’s irreverence mixes with his Southern charm like a good ol’ whiskey sour. After all, he can deliver lines with a sincerity that is almost mocking. He even, with a wink and a nod, played a not-so-saintly St. Nick. Some saw that as a brave choice. He doesn’t. “A brave choice is to see someone being attacked in a park and go intervene; that’s a brave choice,” he said. “It’s not a brave choice to do some weird thing in the middle of a scene, you know what I mean?”

For his current role, he’s making choices, too, mostly just to be himself. “Well, I mean I pretty much am playing myself if I were a landman.”

In the Paramount+ show “Landman,” viewers get a peek behind the curtain of a world we really usually see. “I mean, the movie ‘Giant,’ one of my favorites, I mean, that took place in the oil business of West Texas,” he said. “I always tell people that this is kind of like ‘Giant,’ with cursing!”

Fans have been waiting a long time for “Landman”‘s second season. It debuts next Sunday.

To watch a trailer for Season 2 of “Landman” click on the video player below:


Landman Season 2 Official Trailer | Paramount+ by
Landman Official on
YouTube

According to his co-star Ali Larter, Thornton doesn’t like to rehearse. “You have to be ready to go,” she told us. “Fresh. Like, whatever happens is going to happen.”

Thornton’s hillbilly vibe isn’t a put-on – he proudly calls himself a Tex-Arkansan, the product of a lot of rural places that even the railroads passed by.

But he wouldn’t trade growing up in a small town for anything: “You know, I keep my upbringing in my back pocket all the time,” he said. “You never forget it.”

While he never worked on an oil rig, he did have his fair share of jobs where dangerous machinery decided if you came home at night or not. “Machine shops and sawmills are both not exactly the safest places to work, especially when you’re a dumb little skinny hippie kid with hair to your waist,” he said. “We always had a joke about sawmill workers, which was, do you know what this is? [He holds up three fingers.] It’s a sawmill worker ordering five beers.”

He went from sawdust to Hollywood fairy dust in a pretty unconventional way. “I only took drama ’cause I thought I gotta get a C in something, you know, because I was not good in school,” he said.

His idols were Robert Duvall, Bruce Dern, and Sam Elliott. But in Los Angeles, at a cocktail party where Thornton was working as a bus boy, famed screenwriter and director Billy Wilder told him acting wasn’t for him.

Actor Billy Bob Thornton, star of “Landman.”

CBS News


“He said, ‘Forget about it. You’re too ugly to be a leading man,'” Thornton recalled. “And he said, ‘You’re too pretty to be a character actor.’ I said, ‘What do I do?’ He said, ‘Can you write?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I do write.’ He goes, ‘Write your own stories, create your own characters, don’t stand in line with everybody else.'”

He did write his own story, and create his own character. “Sling Blade” (1996), which he wrote and directed, earned him an Academy Award for best adapted screenplay, and an Oscar nomination for best actor to boot.

Asked if he thinks he’ll go back to writing and directing, he replied, “You know, I don’t know that anybody wants to see what I have to say as a director or writer, ’cause all my stuff is based on Southern literature. And I don’t think that those stories would really be relevant to anyone right now. So, I doubt I ever do it again.”

Letting go of things he loves isn’t easy. We were stunned to find out he hasn’t felt truly care-free since the short-lived TV show “The Outsiders” – more than 30 years ago.  “I had no responsibility,” he said. “I was making $2,500 an episode. Never thought I’d see that kind of money. Then, my brother Jimmy died, and changed my life. He was my best friend.”

“So, that’s when you talk about carrying it around in your back pocket?” I asked.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

They both grew up playing in bands. To this day, Billy Bob still idolizes his brother’s musical talent. “He played every instrument, except drums,” Thornton said. “He looked like he had a disorder when he tried to play drums.”

Thornton never gave up his love of music. His band, The Boxmasters, has recorded 19 albums, and this past Summer they opened for The Who. “We’re just there to waste 45 minutes while they’re getting ready, ya’ know?” he said. “So hopefully the fans will be with us.”

He doesn’t act his age, and in hindsight we probably shouldn’t have asked about it.

“Any thoughts on turning 70?” I said.

“What did you say” Thornton replied, raising an eyebrow. “But uh, no, You know what, it’s so funny you’re scared of every milestone. But this one actually did affect me in a way that I had to, you know, have a few meetings with myself late at night.”

In the end, what Billy Bob Thornton has found is that he and so many of his older contemporaries, including his friend Sam Elliott (who is still acting with him at 81), are still defined by their good work.

“We’ve all seen each other get older,” Thornton said. “And when I see that wisdom and see the respect that people have for them, it just kind of makes everything melt away somehow. I mean, I’m in a successful band and I’m in a successful show. Every day when I wake up, I just say I’m blessed. That’s really it.”

WEB EXCLUSIVE: Watch an extended interview with Billy Bob Thornton (Video)



Extended interview: Billy Bob Thornton

27:11

     
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Story produced by David Rothman. Editor: Steven Tyler. 

     
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“Hamnet” actress Jessie Buckley on how Shakespeare changed everything for her

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“Hamnet” actress Jessie Buckley on how Shakespeare changed everything for her


She’s been called “the acting world’s best-kept secret.” But Jessie Buckley’s latest role, in the film “Hamnet,” may change that. As Rolling Stone put it, people “will be talking about Jessie Buckley’s performance for years.”

Buckley plays the wife of William Shakespeare (portrayed by fellow Irish actor Paul Mescal). Adapted from Maggie O’Farrell’s novel, it’s a fictionalized tale about the death of Shakespeare’s son, Hamnet. It imagines the tragedy inspired him to write “Hamlet.”

Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal, as Agnes and Will Shakespeare, in “Hamnet.”

Focus Features


“I just knew I had to go somewhere mentally, emotionally,” Buckley said of her work.

I said, “You have this fire inside you – that’s what we see on film.”

“I don’t know, do you?” she replied.  

“I’d say so, in what I’ve seen, you see it!”

“I have fire, but I tell you what ‘Hamnet’ gave me, which I also was looking for, was tenderness. And sometimes it’s just as strong as fire.”

She said when she started shooting the more difficult scenes, like the death of her child, she told her husband she needed to go away for two weeks. So, Buckley came to Hampstead Heath, a vast green space in London, where she’d go swimming each morning. “I just need to be in nature and start my day and wake up that way, and then go to the set and see what came out,” she said.

jessie-buckley-with-seth-doane-at-hamsptead-heath.jpg

Actress Jessie Buckley with correspondent Seth Doane at Hampstead Heath in London.

CBS News


She says “Hamnet” director Chloé Zhao (an Oscar-winner for “Nomadland”) reminded her cinema is not just escapism. “Our jobs as actors and the storytellers are to touch the most heightened expressions that are too hard to hold on our own,” Buckley said. “I get to incubate the bits of us, myself, the shadow bits.”

“What are the shadow bits of you that came out for this role?” I asked.

“I’m not telling you!” she laughed. “You have to watch it and make up your own mind.”

“The sacred flame of star quality”  

Her breakthrough role was playing a single mom just out of prison in 2018’s “Wild Rose.” Then, in 2022, Buckley got an Oscar nomination for best supporting actress in “The Lost Daughter.” Her other credits included “I’m Thinking of Ending Things,” “Beast” and “Women Talking,” and the TV series “Fargo.”

She said, “I never in a million years thought I’d make a film.”

Because? “I didn’t have a TV ’til I was 15,” she said. “And it was exotic, like, it was in Hollywood. It wasn’t in Kerry.”

In rugged County Kerry, in Ireland’s southeast, Buckley grew up in an artistic family, playing harp, clarinet and piano. She sang and did school productions. But it was the British talent show, “I’d Do Anything,” that put her on a bigger stage – and in front of Andrew Lloyd Webber. He praised her, saying, “Jessie has the sacred flame of star quality.”

She lost that competition, but quickly landed theater roles. Her first Shakespeare performance was near the spot in London where Shakespeare’s early plays were first performed, at the original Rose Playhouse, built in 1587. 

UK - William Shakespeare's The Tempest directed by Jeremy Herrin at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London.

Jessie Buckley as Miranda and Roger Allam as Prospero in a 2013 production of Shakespeare’s “The Tempest,” at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London.

robbie jack/Corbis via Getty Images


Shakespeare changed everything for her: “I think before, I felt like music was the only way to contain what was kind of wanting to come out, and then Shakespeare’s words and his worlds were so titanic that it just made me realize how powerful words could be,” she said.

Of acting opposite Mescal in “Hamnet,” Buckley said, “I absolutely adore that man. And from our very first chemistry read …”

“Chemistry read is to make sure you have chemistry?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she laughed. “I mean, it would be really depressing if I didn’t, wouldn’t it? I’d be like the only woman in the world who failed to find chemistry with Paul Mescal!”

The 35-year-old actor says she also found chemistry with Christian Bale for her next film, in which she plays the bride of Frankenstein’s monster. Directed by Maggie Gyllenhall, it’s genre- and expectation-bending.  “It’s punk, it is proper punk,” Buckley said. “I remember when I read it first, it was like being plugged into an electrical socket.”

jessie-buckley-in-the-bride-warner-bros-1280.jpg

Jessie Buckley in “The Bride!”

Warner Brothers


I said, “Maggie Gyllenhaal referred to you as kind of a wild animal.”

“Hmm. Good,” Buckley said.

“Do you think there’s a truth to that?”

“I have a lot of life in me!”

That life and vitality that we now see on film is the journey that brought Buckley to London as a teenager. At the time, she says, she was in a dark place. “I had depression and I wasn’t very well,” she said. “And I wanted a lot from life. I was really hungry for it. And I felt like there was no place for that. And I think that’s when it imploded in on me, and when I got sick and lost myself, you know?”

“How did your deal with it?”

“I got help,” she replied. “I got therapy. Singing. I mean, I honestly think it’s kind of saved me. Something wasn’t alive then, let’s just say, like it is now.”

To watch a trailer for “Hamnet” click on the video player below.


HAMNET – Official Teaser Trailer [HD] – Only in Theaters Thanksgiving by
Focus Features on
YouTube

WEB EXCLUSIVE: Watch an extended interview with Jessie Buckley (Video)



Extended interview: Jessie Buckley

34:13

For more info:

      
Story produced by Mikaela Bufano. Editor: Carol Ross. 



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