Today marks the 80th birthday (80th!) of cinema legend Max von Sydow. This year, a fan site points out, retrospective celebrations of his work seem highly probable. I bring this birthday up because my interview with him a year and half ago is still one of my favorite events from my Film Experience journey. He was so interesting to talk to. Consider the diversity of his resume: The Exorcist, The Seventh Seal, Awakenings, The Virgin Spring, Flash Gordon, Three Days of the Condor, Judge Dredd, Hannah and Her Sisters. He's worked with everyone from Ingmar Bergman to Steven Spielberg. If I could have tied him up for hours with more questions, I would have, believe me. His next film is Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island (previously discussed) and then we might see him in the WW II resistance fighter drama, Truth & Treason. He's not in the trailer so we assume he plays one of the characters as an older man in an epilogue.
On the other end of the age spectrum is von Sydow's upcoming co-star in that picture, Haley Joel Osment. He turns 21 today. He was once everyone's favorite tiny medium (The Sixth Sense) and little android (A.I. Artificial Intelligence) but we haven't seen him for years. Growing up is always difficult for child stars. Their faces change or don't change enough. There's that brief awkward phase or whole long stretches of it. We haven't seen Osment much recently but he does have two films in the works, the aforementioned Truth & Treason and an indie comedy called Montana Amazon in which he co-stars with Olympia Dukakis.Maybe he isn't ambitious about having a big film career as an adult but if he is I figure both M. Night Shyamalan and Steven Spielberg ought to offer him something good to help him with the transitioning. They way I see it they both owe him --think of how much weaker both of those films immediately become with anything less than a preternaturally gifted child actor in their demanding roles.
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