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Christopher Abbott is done with “Girls,” even if the beloved show follows the six seasons and a movie track.

The “Sanctuary” actor exclusively told IndieWire that he will not be reprising his iconic role of Charlie in the HBO series created by Lena Dunham at any point, not even for a charity table read.

“No, I don’t think so,” Abbott said.

The “Black Bear” star appeared in the first two seasons of “Girls” as Marnie’s (Allison Williams) college boyfriend before Abbott exited ahead of Season 3. He returned for one episode in Season 5. “Girls” concluded in 2017 after six seasons.

Dunham teased a possible “Girls” reboot down the line in January 2022 during the groundbreaking show’s 10-year anniversary.

“We all recognize it’s not time yet,” Dunham said. “I want it to be at a moment when the characters’ lives have really changed. Right now, everyone would just be wanting...

Based on the Anne Rice novel of the same name, 2002's Queen of the Damned stars Stuart Townsend as the iconic vampire Lestat de Lioncourt, but how was he cast? The film centers around Lestat, who becomes the lead singer of a rock band after they awaken him from decades of slumber with their music. He also awakens Akasha (played by the late Aaliyah in her final film role), the first vampire, who wants to make him her king. Meanwhile, Marguerite Moreau rounds out the Queen of the Damned cast as Talamasca researcher Jesse Reeves, who falls for with Lestat.

Despite the popularity of Rice's novels and Aaliyah's star power at the time, Queen of the Damned was a box office bomb, grossing just over $45 million against a $35 million budget (via Box Office Mojo). Rice herself disavowed the film, publicly sharing her belief that she felt the filmmakers "mutilated...

John Mellencamp has never minced words, but his new song “Hey God” is direct even by the standards of the guy whose alias is “Little Bastard.”

“Weapons and guns, are they really my rights? Laws written a long time ago,” he growls in the first verse of the ominous, Southern-gothic track. It’s a flat-out challenge to the language of the 2nd Amendment and how its intent has changed since the days it was written. “No one could imagine the sight of so many dead on the floor,” Mellencamp sings to make his point.

It was 36 years ago today that the world was left with what still stands as one of TV’s greatest cliffhangers: In the March 21, 1980 episode of primetime soap Dallas, J.R. Ewing is shot twice by an unseen assailant. Viewers were left frustratedly wondering who shot the conniving oil tycoon and whether he would survive. The whodunnit mystery had everyone guessing for a while: J.R. had a host of enemies, so there were lots of suspects. CBS created a marketing campaign around the phrase “Who shot J.R.?” T-shirts and bumper stickers printed with the phrase and “I Shot J.R.” became a common sight over the summer. During the 1980 presidential election, Republican campaigners made buttons that read “A Democrat shot J.R.,” while Jimmy Carter told people at a fundraiser in Texas, “I came to Dallas to find out confidentially who shot J.R. If any of you could let me know that,...

My sister, Julia Wilson-Dickson, who has died aged 66 after a brain haemorrhage, was an eminent voice and dialect teacher who worked with many of the brightest talents of stage and film.

She coached Robert de Niro on Frankenstein (1994), Helena Bonham Carter on Mighty Aphrodite (1995), Julianne Moore for The End of the Affair (1999), Glenn Close on Albert Nobbs (2011), and Eddie Redmayne for the performance as Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything (2014) that won him an Oscar. On stage she worked on several Peter Hall productions: with Dustin Hoffman as Shylock in The Merchant of Venice (Phoenix theatre, London, 1989), Vanessa Redgrave as Lady Torrance in Orpheus Descending (Haymarket, 1988), and Judi Dench and Anthony Hopkins in the title roles of Antony and Cleopatra (at the National Theatre, 1987).

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Sidney And The Sixties: Real-time 1957-1966

Throughout the 1950s, Hollywood’s relationship with television was fraught: TV was a hated rival but also a source of cheap talent and material, as in the case of the small-scale Marty (1955), which won the Best Picture Oscar. These contradictions were well represented by the apparently “televisual” 12 Angry Men (1957), which began life as a teleplay concerning a jury with a lone holdout who must, and eventually does, convince his fellow jurors of the defendant’s innocence. Its writer, Reginald Rose, persuaded one of Hollywood’s biggest stars, Henry Fonda, to become a first-time producer of the film version. Fonda and Rose took basement-low salaries in favor of future points, and hired a TV director, Sidney Lumet, for next to nothing because Lumet wanted a first feature credit. Technically, there’s an opening bit on the courtroom steps that keeps this from being a true real-time film,...

Fans of Robert Redford, Marlon Brando, John Wayne and Jason Robards rejoice! Altitude Films are releasing Seven classic films between May 27th and June 10th and to celebrate we are offering you the chance to win them all.

Two lucky winners will each receive a bundle of classic movies including a copy of The Fugitive Kind, The Hot Rock, Arabian Nights, Desiree, The Story of GI Joe, The St Valentines Massacre and McLintock!

Here’s the rundown on the films included in this fantastic classic bundle…

Arabian Nights (1942)

Filmed in glorious Technicolor and nominated for four Academy Awards®, Arabian Nights is an action-packed adventure classic.

Starring Jon Hall and Maria Montez, Arabian Nights is a grand tale of intrigue and romance. Haroun-Al-Raschid, the Caliph of Bagdad and his half-brother Kamar are in an epic battle, competing for the throne and for the affections of a beautiful dancer, Scheherazade.

Pre-order your copy now here.

To celebrate the release of the Marlon Brando classic The Fugitive Kind on May 27th, we are offering you the chance to win one of three copies of the DVD.

Oscar® Winners Marlon Brando (On the Waterfront), Anna Magnani (The Rose Tattoo), Joanne Woodward (The Three Faces of Eve) and Maureen Stapleton (Reds) lead the stellar cast of this Southern gothic “sizzler” (Los Angeles Times) based on the Tennessee Williams play Orpheus Descending.

Thanks to “brilliant” (The Film Daily) performances, The Fugitive Kind “sets one’s senses to throbbing” (The New York Times).

Valentine “Snakeskin” Xavier (Brando) is a handsome drifter with a guitar…and a past. Taking a job as a stored clerk in Two Rivers, Mississippi, his strong and silent demeanor attracts not only the local party girl (Woodward), but also the shopkeeper’s exotic wife (Magnani).

Soon, this explosive love triangle will ignite a powder keg of...

It has been a year since Sidney Lumet passed away on April 9, 2011. Here is our retrospective on the legendary filmmaker to honor his memory. Originally published April 15, 2011.

Almost a week after the fact, we, like everyone that loves film, are still mourning the passing of the great American master Sidney Lumet, one of the true titans of cinema.

Lumet was never fancy. He never needed to be, as a master of blocking, economic camera movements and framing that empowered the emotion and or exact punctuation of a particular scene. First and foremost, as you’ve likely heard ad nauseum -- but hell, it’s true -- Lumet was a storyteller, and one that preferred his beloved New York to soundstages (though let's not romanticize it too much, he did his fair share of work on studio film sets too as most TV journeyman and early studio filmmakers did).

His directing career stretched well over 50 years,...

HollywoodNews.com: Alan Cumming, Garret Dillahunt, and Frances Fisher star in the poignant period drama Any Day Now, written, produced and directed by filmmaker Travis Fine (The Space Between). The film recently completed principal photography in Los Angeles and is currently in post-production. Produced by Kristine Hostetter Fine (The Space Between) and Chip Hourihan (Frozen River), the film is executive produced by Anne O’Shea (The Kids Are Alright) and Maxine Makover (The Space Between.

Set in the 1970s and inspired by a true story, the film chronicles a gay couple who take in a teenage boy with Down Syndrome who has been abandoned by his drug addicted mother. As the teen discovers the strong bonds of family for the first time in his life, disapproving authorities step in to tear the boy from the only stable environment he has ever known. As the gay men fight to adopt this extraordinary special needs child,...

"Cliff Robertson, who starred as John F Kennedy in a 1963 World War II drama and later won an Academy Award for his portrayal of a mentally disabled bakery janitor in the movie Charly, died Saturday, one day after his 88th birthday," reports Dennis McLellan in the Los Angeles Times, adding that Robertson " also played a real-life role as the whistle-blower in the check-forging scandal of then-Columbia Pictures President David Begelman that rocked Hollywood in the late 1970s… In a more than 50-year career in films, Robertson appeared in some 60 movies, including Pt 109, My Six Loves, Sunday in New York, The Best Man, The Devil's Brigade, Three Days of the Condor, Obsession and Star 80. More recently, he played Uncle Ben Parker in the Spider-Man films."

In Charly, "he played a lovable bakery worker with the Iq of a 5-year-old whose intelligence is raised to genius level by an experiment,...

New York — President John F. Kennedy had just one critique when he saw photos of the actor set to play him in a World War II drama.

The year was 1963 and actor Cliff Robertson looked convincing in his costume for "Pt-109," the first film to portray a sitting president. Kennedy had favored Robertson for the role, but one detail was off.

Robertson's hair was parted on the wrong side.

The actor dutifully trained his locks to part on the left and won praise for a role he'd remain proud of throughout his life.

Robertson, who went on to win an Oscar for his portrayal of a mentally disabled man in "Charly", died of natural causes Saturday afternoon in Stony Brook, a day after his 88th birthday, according to Evelyn Christel, his secretary of 53 years.

Robertson never elevated into the top ranks of leading men, but he remained a popular actor...

I’ve just woke up to some sad news this morning that Cliff Robertson, the classic Hollywood actor who immortalised Peter Parker’s inspirational father figure Uncle Ben in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man, passed away yesterday, just one day after his 88th birthday.

Today, September 11th 2011, was the day I was to run a few articles trying to remember those who we lost on that most dreadful of days ten years ago but now my prayers are also with Robertson’s family as I recall the amazing career he had.

Ironically, Robertson & The Twin Towers can be remembered together in one movie. In Sydney Pollack’s excellent conspiracy thriller Three Days of the Condor (1975), Robertson plays the Deputy Director of CIA New York City who is making Robert Redford’s life hell and his base is an office high-up in the World Trade Center. It’s quite amazing to go...

Marlon Brando is the first star in the 2011 edition of Turner Classic Movies' annual Summer Under the Stars series, which kicks off August 1. [Marlon Brando Movie Schedule.] Unfortunately, none of the 11 scheduled Marlon Brando movies is a TCM premiere; in fact, nearly all of them were shown on Brando Day three years ago. In other words, don't expect The Island of Dr. Moreau, Morituri, A Bedtime Story, Burn!, A Dry White Season, or The Appaloosa. And certainly no frolicking with Maria Schneider in Last Tango in Paris. That's too bad. But then again, those who would like to check out Julius Caesar for the 118th time will be able to do so. And perhaps they won't be sorry, as this great-looking Joseph L. Mankiewicz effort remains one of the best-liked film adaptations of a Shakespeare play. Those not into Shakespeare can take a look at The Fugitive Kind and A Streetcar Named Desire, both from Tennessee Williams' plays.

Vanessa Redgrave. Her work is metaphysical. I swear to God, when she drops into character, her molecules get rearranged.I had written a segment for the HBO film "If These Walls Could Talk 2." I was set to direct it, and Vanessa and the marvelous Marian Seldes were cast to play an older lesbian couple who lived in a time and place when the closet was the norm. Marian's character dies, and Vanessa must stand stoically by while her lover's relatives show up and strip the house of her things.When we first met before the shoot to talk over the script, I had no idea what I was in for. Vanessa has a reputation for being a bit unpredictable at times. During the run of "Orpheus Descending," she decided one night to make her entrance stark naked. I'm sure that the stage manager had a seizure in the booth, and her.

The last time I remember meeting Lady Johanna Constantine was in the fourth part of A Doll’s House, “Men of Good Fortune”, where Dream said: “Her kind walk amidst the flotsam of lives they have sacrificed for their own purposes, till friendless and alone they needs must make the final sacrifice.”

Now, in “Thermidor”, The Sandman revisits Lady Johanna, who lives in Wych Cross, England, the place, in fact, where we first saw Dream, for that was the home of Roderick Burgess in “Sleep of the Just” and the place of Dream’s imprisonment.

Constantine, of course, is a name familiar from as far back as “Dream a Little Dream of Me”, when John Constantine helped the newly-free Sandman find his lost pouch of sand.

What do these clues mean? That there are connections throughout time and stories and dreams. They are not clues that add up to a single,...

Sidney Lumet was an impassioned director who received more than 50 Oscar nominations for films including 12 Angry Men and Dog Day Afternoon

Sidney Lumet, who died yesterday at the age of 86, was one of the most significant film directors of his time, a man dedicated to the cinema as an art form and to the pursuit of truth and social justice as a dramatic theme.

He was born in Philadelphia and raised in New York, the son of parents who worked in the Yiddish theatre. He was shaped by his experiences as a child performer and the depression, becoming known for his sympathetic handling of actors, his understanding of people in crisis, his liberal principles and his feeling for the city that was the setting for so much of his work.

Lumet made his Broadway debut at the age of 11 in 1935 in Sidney Kingsley's Dead End, a social-problem play about...

Michael C. here from Serious Film to join in the Tennessee Williams festivities. When I picked a film to write about I jumped at The Fugitive Kind because

A) I'm a big Sidney Lumet fan and

B) I was curious how a second Brando/Williams collaboration could fly so far below my radar. I got my answer and then some.

The Fugitive Kind (1960) directed by Sidney Lumet based on Tennessee Williams’ play Orpheus Descending is one of the most fascinating messes I’ve ever seen. There is no getting around the fact that it just doesn’t work, yet I think I’d recommend it more readily than a lot of successful movies I’ve seen. Of all its flaws being dull is not one of them.

Williams writing was as inescapable in the fifties as Jane Austen’s was in the nineties. After burning through his major works Hollywood...

Marcia Lewis, a Tony Award nominee for her performances in the Broadway revivals of "Grease" and "Chicago," died in the early hours of Dec. 21. She was 72. Though the cause of death has not been revealed, she was suffering from lung and brain cancer.Lewis won acclaim for her salty and sly interpretations of the nasty high school teacher Miss Lynch in the 1994 revival of "Grease" and the manipulative prison matron Mama Morton in the 1996 revival of "Chicago." She also toured in the latter production, in which she routinely stopped the show with her brassy delivery of "When You're Good to Mama" and "Class," the latter a duet between her character and Velma Kelly, the foul-mouthed murderess first played in the revival by Bebe Neuwirth.Her additional Broadway credits include "Hello, Dolly!," playing opposite both Phyllis Diller and Ethel Merman; "Annie" "Rags," for which she received a Drama Desk Award nomination...

Chicago – One of the most recent inductees into the most esteemed collection in the history of DVD is one of the most star-powered dramas of the ’60s with four Oscar-winning actors in Maureen Stapleton, Anna Magnani, Joanne Woodward, and Marlon Brando, working in collaboration with a script co-written by Tennesse Williams and directed by Sidney Lumet. That “The Fugitive Kind” doesn’t quite live up to that incredible pedigree shouldn’t be too surprising, but it’s still a good addition for classic film collectors.

Blu-Ray Rating: 3.5/5.0

Wannabe film historians who have understandably become enraptured with the best of Sidney Lumet (“12 Angry Men,” “Dog Day Afternoon,” “The Verdict,” many more) and theatre-driven film buffs who know masterpieces like “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” and “A Streetcar Named Desire” by heart should be warned that expectations for “The Fugitive Kind” must be tempered. I went in to the film expecting to find a lost classic,...

For about a dozen years, starting with the 1950 adaptation of The Glass Menagerie, moviegoers had a tough time avoiding Tennessee Williams. His plays were already Broadway sensations back when Broadway hits had national impact. Filmmakers and audiences alike were drawn by his visions of a dewy, secret-filled American South where unfettered passions lurk just beneath the surface of the everyday, the skeletons of the past refuse to stay in the closet, and every line of dialogue arrives pregnant with symbolic meaning. Well, they were drawn most of the time. An adaptation of Orpheus Descending—a rare theatrical flop for ...

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The Fugitive Kind (Criterion Collection) My review of this one was rather long, but it's only because I hoped to convince as many of you as I can to buy it. This adaptation of Tennessee Williams's "Orpheus Descending" is fantastic, and a film that sets the mood in such a way there will be no question when you'll want to return to it, the moment will simply call for it and it will deliver. Ride with the Devil (Criterion Collection) Now this one, however, is a different story. It's difficult to nail down the target audience for Ang Lee's 1999 under-achiever (putting it lightly), but this new director's cut is likely to enthuse some and bore others. Give my review a read and hopefully it will help you decide exactly which camp you fall in. Out of Africa, Traffic...

Another Tuesday is before us, with brand new Criterion Collection titles. It appears that with each pair of the April new releases, we’re treated to films separated by several decades, in both color and black & white. This week Criterion releases the first Sidney Lumet directed film in the Collection, featuring Marlon Brando’s first appearance in the Collection as well. The Fugitive Kind, Criterion # 515, is being released as a 2-Disc DVD. We’re also getting a brand new cut of Ang Lee’s Ride With The Devil, Criterion # 514, on DVD and Blu-ray. To read Travis’ initial thoughts on these releases, check out our announcement for the April Releases here.

After we watched Ang Lee’s The Ice Storm for the podcast, I decided that I had not see enough of Lee’s films. I decided to give The Hulk another chance, after several attempts to get through the comic...

Acting students, if they're lucky, find classes that are satisfying, challenging, and fully worth the time and money. But once in a while, they wind up in a class that rises above and beyond mere satisfaction. Something about the rapport between instructor and students—and among students themselves—clicks perfectly. Everyone ends up making sweet, surprising artistic leaps forward.When you find a class like that, it's only natural to want to keep the magic going. Actors sometimes decide to take the play they've been exploring in their scene study class, secure a theater, and put the whole thing up for an audience. Usually those plans fall apart pretty quickly. A week after the last class meeting, everyone has moved on to the next endeavor. But Back Stage found actors who didn't lose the momentum—who managed to collaborate with fellow students to create fully realized productions. These performers generously...

The poster and trailer for the upcoming drama “The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond” have appeared online.

“The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond” is based on a recently rediscovered original screenplay by legendary writer Tennessee Williams (”A Streetcar Named Desire”, “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof”). Starring Bryce Dallas Howard and Chris Evans, the Paladin release will open in New York and Los Angeles in late December, with expansion to major markets following in early 2010. Academy Award-winner Ellen Burstyn, Academy Award-nominee Ann-Margret, Mamie Gummer, and Will Patton co-star in the film which was directed by award-winning short filmmaker and stage and screen actress Jodie Markell, in her feature debut.

Widely considered the most important American playwright of the post-wwii, era, Williams wrote the “Teardrop Diamond” screenplay at the height of his late-1950’s heyday, amid such classic plays, (which themselves were adapted into classic films), as “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,...

Playwright John Patrick Shanley, referring to Tennessee Williams as a "gorgeous unstoppable beast," recounted an incident in a restaurant when he, a budding writer, maybe thirty feet away from the master dramatist, could not bring himself to say hello. Such is the power of "influence" that any person in theater would stand in awe of this writer of poetry, short stories and the extraordinary body of plays for which he is best known. Shanley was among two dozen speakers who paid tribute to Tennessee Williams at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine on Thursday evening, themselves a Who's Who of American theater: Vanessa Redgrave who had originated the role of "Lady" in "Orpheus Descending" read from "Not About Nightingales," Marian Seldes who created the role of Blackie in "Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore," Sylvia Miles performed her role,...