Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film
There is much in film folklore, if not in fact, about
directors with informal ‘‘stock companies’’ of actors with
whom they work again and again. The directors best
known for utilizing a ‘‘family’’ of actors are John Ford
(1894–1973), Ingmar Bergman (b. 1918), Mike Leigh
(b. 1943), Robert Altman (b. 1925), and Spike Lee
(b. 1957). Calling upon an established ensemble, both
in front of and behind the camera, has enabled these
directors, all of whom are very prolific, to put new
projects together quickly. Altman, with his background
in series television, learned his craft in ‘‘stock company’’
conditions. The stock companies of the non-Hollywood
or post-studio Hollywood directors serve the purpose that
production units had served in the studio system. Indeed, the stock company may have allowed Ford, who made one
independent film per year even during his studio contract
days and went completely ‘‘off the reservation’’ in midcareer, to become in effect his own studio, carrying his
own resources with him from film to film.
The director with a stock company in the truest
sense was Bergman. Liv Ullmann (b. 1938), Max von
Sydow (b. 1929), Erland Josephson (b. 1923), Gunnar
Bjornstrand (1909–1986), Ingrid Thulin (1926–2004),
Bibi Andersson (b. 1935), and Harriet Andersson
(b. 1932) all got their start with Bergman, played the
major roles in his small-scale, intimate films, and contributed in essential ways to the intensity for which
Bergman’s films are known. None of these actors is in fewer than seven Bergman films. Moreover, von Sydow’s
nine-film collaboration with Bergman produced many of
the director’s signature films, from The Seventh Seal (Det
sjunde inseglet, 1957) to Shame (Shammen, 1968), as did
Liv Ullmann’s appearance in Persona (1966), Cries and
Whispers (Viskningar och rop, 1972), and Face to Face
(Ansikte mot ansikte, 1976), as well as three Bergman
films opposite von Sydow. When some of this company,
especially Ullmann and von Sydow, became internationally known, they may have ‘‘graduated’’ from Bergman—
von Sydow, for instance, last worked with him in 1971—
but they owed much of their training and screen image to
him.
Mike Leigh is a somewhat similar case; as an independent European artisan making small-scale films,
Leigh has a unique relationship with his cast. He finds
players for his characters, researches and improvises with
them for an extended period, then goes off and writes the
script, which the cast returns to perform. A number of
actors, including Lesley Manville (b. 1956), Jim
Broadbent (b. 1949), and Timothy Spall (b. 1957), first
made their names in Leigh’s films, then became in
demand in the industry. Thus, while the names of
Broadbent and Spall are generally connected to Leigh,
they have each made only three films with him, and one
of Broadbent’s appearances, in Vera Drake (2004), was a
cameo.
This leads to an essential point about stock companies. Many actors and directors closely associated with
each other in the minds of filmgoers actually worked
together on just a handful of films. Commercial filmmaking, with its myriad schedule conflicts, makes stock
companies difficult to keep together; directors often find
that a favorite actor is not available, even if he or she
wants to be, ‘‘unavailability’’ being in general one of the
most common reasons that one actor is cast and not
another. Moreover, an actor’s work with a given director
often takes place during a limited period. For instance,
Shelley Duvall (b. 1949) is among the actors most associated with Robert Altman, but their six-film collaboration ended in 1980. Ford is also interesting in this
respect. John Carradine (1906–1988) appeared in iconic
roles in eight Ford films. However, after The Grapes of
Wrath (1940), Carradine and Ford did not work together
for eighteen years; Carradine was then cast in The Last
Hurrah (1958), The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
(1962), and Cheyenne Autumn (1964). Ford, at the end
of his career, recalled actors from his heyday, like
Carradine, Andy Devine (1905–1977), and Olive Carey
(1896–1988), wishing to include them in nostalgic but
bitter films that revised his earlier, more upbeat renditions of American myths.
Often the aura of a director lingers with certain
actors; they trail their associations with him into other
projects. This is true of many of the actors who worked
with Ford, as well as Martin Scorsese (b. 1942) veterans
like Robert De Niro (b. 1943), Harvey Keitel (b. 1939),
Joe Pesci (b. 1943), and Lorraine Bracco (b. 1955), and
also of Spike Lee cast members such as Giancarlo
Esposito (b. 1958), Roger Guenveur Smith (b. 1959),
and Bill Nunn (b. 1953). Sometimes the associations
amount to a form of typecasting. Michael Murphy
(b. 1938) began his career playing weak, insincere organization men in Robert Altman films like McCabe and
Mrs. Miller (1971) and Nashville (1975), then went on to
play similar roles for other directors. Thus Murphy was
ripe for a reunion with Altman, which occurred with the
cinema-verite´ style TV miniseries Tanner ‘88 (1988),
with Murphy perfectly cast as a struggling presidential
candidate.
Members of a director’s ‘‘stock company,’’ then,
carry that director’s work with them throughout their
careers and are more often than not remembered as
having done their best work under the director’s auspices.
John Wayne was often little more than a self-parody
away from his mentor, John Ford. De Niro’s many films away from Scorsese have been largely undistinguished.
Other close actor-director partnerships have included
Johnny Depp (b. 1963) and Tim Burton (b. 1958),
Toshiro Mifune (1920–1997) and Akira Kurosawa
(1910–1998), Marcello Mastroianni (1924–1996) and
Federico Fellini (1920–1993), Jean-Pierre Leaud
(b. 1944) and Franc¸ois Truffaut (1932–1984), and one
of the few in which the director floundered without the
actor: Marlene Dietrich and Josef von Sternberg (1894–
1969).