Because I'm even more shallow than you thought

One of my friends pointed out to me that I left Ciaran Hinds out of my list of beautiful actors. It is, indeed, a sad oversight. I must admit, though, that he does not always look as splendid as he did in Persuasion. I just saw him in Escape to Witch Mountain, in which he looked a bit like my old high school English teacher with a buzz cut. If you listen closely, you can hear his accent peeking through. Not that I mind the lilting sound of an Irish accent, but then again I don’t think Homeland Security would be hiring anyone from Northern Ireland, either. I had a peek at his IMDB entry and was startled to find that he was Herod in the Nativity Story. He was? How did I miss that? And I forgot that he was Lord Tarleton in Amazing Grace. Besides being a baddie, he didn’t look nearly as good in a wig as Ioan. It also took me a good 5 minutes to figure out how to pronounce his name using the odd phonetic notation on Wikipedia. Since he’s Irish, I can’t assume that I know how to pronounce his name by sight. For all I know it could be pronounced “Carson” or “Warren” or even “Cadwalleder.” In Gaelic the word on the page never seems to bear any resemblance to the way it sounds. Imagine the difficulty I had with Ioan Gruffudd. Welsh seems to think that if there’s one letter, there should be a duplicate, just for fun. Still, Mr. Hinds is a man with fabulous bone structure and should be celebrated. Huzzah, Mr. Hinds!

I also somehow left out Gary Oldman. Dear Husband makes fun of me when we watch the Harry Potter movies with Sirius Black, because at some point I was a bit too exuberant in my appreciation. Apparently I called Mr. Oldman “delicious.” I blame my MIL, who brought it up in the first place. Then of course there was Dracula, in which he mostly looked great, with the notable exception of his doppelganger with the weird updo. I still don’t know what that was about. But my first memory of him was in the film Prick Up Your Ears, as bad-boy playwright Joe Orton. He channeled self-centered jack-ass really well. And he threw himself into the role with great, uh, enthusiasm. You would think he was born to meet young men in public restrooms. If he captured anything like the real nature of Orton, no wonder his lover offed him. I find that movie has an odd staying power, particularly the final scene of his funeral, with the Beatles song “A Day in the Life” playing.

As it happens, Gary Oldman and Tim Roth are friends. How did I find this out? Why, by wasting time on a Tim Roth fansite. Yep, while other people were creating great art, feeding the poor, writing sermons and generally getting on with life, I was wasting time surfing a fansite. One with a nice selection of photos, I might add. Anyway, I found out about this rather odd exchange between Gary Oldman and Tim Roth, involving messages inked on their bodies. I won’t put the photos here in case someone at these magazines gets ticked at me, but you can follow this link to view them. Here’s how the site described the correspondence:

“Do Tim and Gary Oldman really write messages to each other on their body parts?
Yes, at one time they did. This is because, according to Tim, that's the best way they could communicate with each other with their busy lives. Some history: In a magazine interview, Gary Oldman was asked to name certain people who he found to be attractive, Tim Roth being one of them. Tim must have read this, because Tim wrote something on his arm (or his head?) that read something along the lines of "G.O. I think you're sexy." Oldman then on the cover of the May 1994 UK edition of Premiere wrote on his arm, "Tim Roth I think you are sexy too!" Then in the April 1995 issue of Detour, Tim wrote on his forehead, "Gary Oldman Let's Do It" … Many of these pictures can be seen on this web site.”

(fans self)

Glory be, where are my smelling salts?

(faints)