It's Alright For Leading Men To Cry
A new book of photography called Crying Men contains portraits of some of the most respected and accomplished male movie stars of our era, engaged in the kind of emasculating waterworks we're all taught from a very young age is better suited to those who obsesses about designer shoes and tap their feelings out into a computer. ("Later that day I got to thinking about shows of emotion etc etc...") How did photographer Sam Taylor-Wood elicit these moments of raw vulnerability from her subjects? In some cases, such as in the portrait of Hayden Christiansen above, it was as simple as reading the actor selections from a number of Jumper reviews. Others were not so easy. From the publisher's website:
[S]he shoots them in role, asking each to perform and cry for the camera and demands the actor’s investment in the process. These are no passive sitters.
True to the blurb, Daniel Craig showed up determined to be an active sitter, and after a marathon session in which he was made to relive every side-by-side humiliation foisted upon him by the bully-geniuses at CraigNotBond.com, it was in the unlikeliest of mental corners that he finally achieved eye-moistening success: recalling the time his inner 7-year-old was made to do cartwheels up and down the bar of his father's pub, singing "Skip To My Lou, My Darling."
