Skeleton Twins is out and winning hearts and minds–and Bill Hader’s eyes and timing have everything to do with it. Film critic Dana Stevens at Slate thinks Hader and his co-star Kristen Wiig could be the next Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn. Stevens is so impressed with the chemistry between Hader and Wiig in Skeleton Twins that she wants to see the pair “team up again, Tracy-and-Hepburn style, and make a string of movies together.” The two SNL vets are probably the best brother-sister combination since Mark Ruffalo and Laua Linney played star-crossed siblings in Kenneth Lonergan’s You Can Count on Me
Wiig has already traveled the difficult path from SNL comedian to movie star. Bill Hader has just started that journey. It’s not that he’s just beginning to act in films–the former Saturday Night Live star (he joined SNL back in 2005) has acted in a bunch of popular movies: Superbad, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Knocked Up, one of those Night at the Museum flicks, Pineapple Express and more. But sometimes there’s a tipping point in an actor’s career, when he can take things in a new direction, and the Skeleton Twins has that potential. Hader’s not just out for laughs–though he gets them. He dominates the screen–even with the magnetic Wiig beside him–and displays a richness of character, of vulnerability, of humanity that purely comedic roles just don’t often afford. Spencer Tracy, btw? Nine Academy Award nominations for best actor, two wins. Tracy’s first win came when he was 37. Bill Hader is 36.
