(Credits: Far Out / Oliver Mark)
Sun 29 March 2026 15:15, UK
If an actor consistently plays an asshole, we tend to see them as such. While the debate of separating the artist from their art rolls on, it’s more complex in the world of movies. If a performer does a good job, that character sticks. If they do a really, really good job, a character can even taint a whole career.
Back in the early 1960s, especially for women in a far more patriarchal industry, this meant personalities and performances needed to be given serious thought. One role out of place could change the entire way a certain starlet would be seen by the world, leading to many actors being scared off more controversial or wild roles.
If a role is going to stick, it means that actors have to think carefully about whether that’s the kind of figure they always want hanging off their back. Gary Oldman shared a perfect example of this once, stating that after being offered the role of Charles Manson, he turned it down. “It was too much karma around that,” he said, adding that in his eyes, it was still too soon to be diving into the historical figure and becoming known as the guy who played him.
By now, hopefully, that has eased a bit when it comes to women playing rebels or social outcasts, or even just plain weirdos. Some of the most celebrated roles from actors in recent years have existed outside of the typical ‘norms’ of good behaviour for women, like Rosamund Pike’s role as Amy Dunne in Gone Girl, or Charlize Theron’s staggering performance as Aileen Wuornos in Monster.
Emerald Fennell fills her movies with weird girls, and A24 have built a whole studio of strange, ugly performances, so women in the movie business don’t have to think too intensely about how they might be perceived off-set if they choose to go crazy on it.
However, back in the day, that was a genuine concern; back when social standards were endlessly more strict, they undeniably seeped into the kinds of roles women were offered. That’s why Anthony Hopkins was completely blown away when someone like Bette Davis, one of the day’s faces of the golden age era, took on a character far beyond what would be expected.
“She’s got daring,” he said of the star, “When I saw Baby Jane, I thought, ‘How the hell does she get away with a performance like that. It’s outrageous!’” Talking about the 1962 psychological horror, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, this was the type of movie no one would have ever expected Davis to take on, let alone dominate.
Starring alongside Joan Crawford, the actors’ career-long feud also adds to the wildness of the film, but overwhelmingly, the shock of it comes from Davis’ completely unrestrained performance as Baby Jane, an ex-child actor turned mental hospital patient who is in a rage towards her mother. She nails it, giving the character these haunting, crazy eyes and an outright unsettling insanity that no one would have expected the old Hollywood star was up to delivering.
“Yet she gets away with it because she’s got guts,” Hopkins said as Davis took on this deviant role, well outside her normal call sheet, but made it work. Rather than tainting her stardom at all, it revitalised it, reminding the world that she wasn’t just a well-known pretty face, but was a serious actor.
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