“I love characters who are rebels,” said the late director genius Sidney Lumet, “because not accepting the status quo is the fundamental area of human progress. And drama, god knows.” Lumet sure did find some quality rebels for his films. He made nearly 50 movies filled with brilliant and subversive performances by stars of every style and stripe, from method actors like Marlon Brando to the classically trained Shakespearean thespian Sir Ralph Richardson. The list below is hardly comprehensive:
- Henry Fonda (12 Angry Men, Stage Struck)
- Paul Newman (The Verdict)
- Al Pacino (Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon)
- Peter Finch
- Philip Seymour Hoffman (Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead)
- Faye Dunaway (Network)
- Albert Finney (Murder on the Orient Express)
- Sean Connery
- Treat Williams (Prince of the City)
- Christopher Reeve (Death Trap)
- Richard Gere (Power)
- Marlon Brando
- James Mason (The Deadly Affair, The Sea Gull, Child’s Play)
- Katherine Hepburn (Long Day’s Journey into Night)
- Dustin Hoffman
- Vanessa Redgrave (The Sea Gull)
- Richard Burton
- Sophia Loren (That Kind of Woman)
- Rod Steiger (The Pawnbroker)
- Nick Nolte
- Omar Sharif (The Appointment)
- Anthony Perkins (Lovin’ Molly)
- Armand Assante
- Jane Fonda
- James Spader (Critical Care)
- Ralph Richardson (Long Day’s Journey into Night)
- Timothy Hutton
- Anne Bancroft
- Candace Bergen (The Group)
- River Phoenix (Running on Empty)
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Fourteen of Lumet’s films were nominated for Academy Awards in various categories. Lumet was a child actor who later cut his teeth in early television. (No wonder Lumet’s Network was perhaps his crowning achievement — one early show he directed starred a slightly different kind of rebel, newsman Walter Cronkite, as himself.) Add Cronkite to the list above and that makes 31 rebels, with plenty more if you dig deeper. PBS will broadcast the documentary By Sidney Lumet as part of its American Masters series.
