Great performances by child actors
Slide show: Why act your age? These young stars -- including Jodie Foster and Kirsten Dunst -- had it from day one SLIDE SHOW
Topics: Friday Night Seitz, Entertainment News
Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life,” which arrives on DVD next week, inspired divided reactions, but almost everyone agreed that it featured outstanding performances by child actors — particularly Hunter McCracken as the preadolescent version of the film’s protagonist (Sean Penn). McCracken, who had never acted in a movie before, is so unaffected that his performance seems less like a construct than a natural event, captured on film along with the film’s sunrises, waterfalls and volcanic eruptions. It’s the latest entry of a long list of great performances by child actors, the subject of tonight’s slide show.
Before we start, let’s get some caveats out of the way. First, because great acting is subjective anyhow, and great acting by children even more so, this is not an attempt to list the greatest child performances of all time, nor is it trying to be comprehensive. I didn’t “forget” to list anybody, and if one of your favorites didn’t make it on here, it just means that for whatever reason it didn’t speak to me as strongly as the ones I did cite.
Second, the parameters for inclusion here were fairly narrow. For an actor to qualify as a “child actor” in this slide show, they had to have been 7-13 years old at the time of the film’s production. I believe that a kid younger than 7 cannot be said to give a “performance” in the traditional sense, because he or she lacks the life experience and intellectual capacity to make the kinds of artistic choices that a fully professional adult (or older child) might make. I also think that actors older than 13 are teenagers, which put them in a different category for evaluation. So if you’re wondering why I didn’t list Justin Henry (who was 6 when he appeared in “Kramer vs. Kramer”), Cary Guffey (5 years old during the shooting of “Close Encounters”) or Linda Manz (15 when “Days of Heaven” was filmed in 1976) or James Dean (who played a teenager in “Rebel Without a Cause” at age 24), well, there’s your answer.
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Featured Slide Shows
The week in 10 pics
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Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
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Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
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A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
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Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
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Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
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Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
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O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
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Recent Slide Shows
Every Friday, Salon writer Matt Zoller Seitz sifts through beloved classics and obscure indies for a slide show that sheds light on the hidden connections and most fascinating moments in film and TV history.
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