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The attention always goes straight to her violet eyes, and why shouldn’t it? Violet eyes don’t show up every day, and when magnified on screen, they will knock you off your feet. But Elizabeth Taylor was so much more than those mesmerizing irises, and her beauty did not hold her back from delivering passionate, believable performances.

A few months ago, I was watching a flavorful early Cagney entry called “Taxi!” (1932), and in one early scene, witnessed the diminutive but feisty actor of Irish/Norwegian stock speaking Yiddish…not one or two words, mind you, but whole sentences. And I thought to myself — yet another reason to love Jimmy Cagney.

She was born Ruth Elizabeth Davis in Lowell, Massachusetts in 1908, and was, by her own admission, a Yankee.

Why, one has to ask, is it not pure megalomania whenever directors direct themselves? Simply put, this is a breed of actor (and director) who understands the vision so completely that the need to control every element, even their own performances, overrides all doubt. Of course, this could look quite a lot like megalomania, or it could simply be pure genius. Or perhaps a bit of both.  For many auteurs, it feels perfectly natural. Orson Welles started out with the Big Bang of "Citizen Kane," his first feature film — with credits for directing, producing, co-writing, and starring — crafting what many critics agree is the best movie of all time.  

Name almost any type of film and it’s likely Robert Wise made at least one of them.   Whether it's a horror movie, a science-fiction outing, a war picture, an ensemble drama, a suspense film or a musical, Wise handled it, usually in exceptional fashion. (The only area he really didn’t tackle was pure comedy.)   Yet predictably, his versatility didn’t play well with some film commentators of his time who prescribed to the “auteur” theory, which lent more significance to directors who consistently followed a signature style in their work.

Humphrey Bogart was once asked if he had any difficulty putting aside his tough image to play a romantic leading man in “Casablanca” (1942). He said it was easy. “It helps,” Bogie said, “if you’re looking into the eyes of Ingrid Bergman.”

An actor doesn’t need to be arrested on marijuana charges to become a star, but it sure didn't hurt Robert Mitchum. Of course, by the time of his 1948 pot bust, Mitchum had already received an Oscar nod for Best Supporting Actor for his role in "The Story of GI Joe" (1945), and in 1947 he'd appeared in two noir classics, "Out of the Past" and "Crossfire." But after a week in the county jail and 43 days at a Castaic, California prison farm turned Mitchum into a certified Hollywood bad boy. He fit the part well. It was Mitchum's casual reaction to the arrest that endeared him to the public. He treated the incident as a lark, amusing the press with jokes about prison life. “It's like Palm Springs,” he said. “But without the riffraff.” It's no surprise that Mitchum breezed through a short jail sentence, since tough times were nothing new to him. After spending part of his childhood in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen, he dropped out of school to ride the rails with his brother. As he crossed the country at the height of the Depression, Mitchum earned money with odd jobs like digging ditches — even boxing. This rough and tumble kid even did some time on a chain gang in Savannah, Georgia after being popped for vagrancy at age 14.

Lord Richard Attenborough, the architect of a monumental screen career that began in 1942, passed away Sunday at the age of 90. Had he only been known as an actor, we'd be marveling at the way he played everything from serial killers to Kris Kringle. But he also enjoyed a successful career as a director, culminating in 1982 when he picked up Best Director and Best Picture Oscars for "Gandhi." His passion for history led to his directing biopics of such diverse characters as Charlie Chaplin, Winston Churchill, and Apartheid activist Steve Biko. But Attenborough was hardly a drab old historian; he also lent his distinctive flair to comedies, thrillers, and war dramas. He even helmed the romantic tearjerker "Shadowlands" (1993), which happened to hit screens the same year as "Jurassic Park," the blockbuster film that introduced Attenborough to a new generation of moviegoers.   Attenborough's role as the kindly theme park owner in Steven Spielberg's blockbuster was a rarity for him. He wasn’t acting anymore at that stage, preferring to work behind the camera, but the mutual admiration between Spielberg and Attenborough brought them together for this colorful story of dinosaur cloning. Spielberg's hunch that Attenborough would be "the perfect ring master" was spot-on. How could anyone not love this bearded little man with the bright eyes, who smiled so warmly at the sight of a dinosaur egg hatching? 

It seems Peter Lorre was born to be sinister. Though small in stature (just under 5'4"), his oversized, sleepy eyes seemed to pierce right into your soul. His soft, eerie voice, though imitated countless times by comedians, never failed to chill. Lorre sometimes belittled his own talent, describing himself as "a face maker." But what a face! Lorre's creepy presence was surprisingly flexible, allowing him to appear in everything from horror films, to comedies, to film noir.