Revolutionary Road Movie: Leonardo DiCaprio & Kate Winslet Images + Christopher Plummer Autobiography

Revolutionary Road with Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio. Directed by Sam Mendes – Winslet’s husband and the director of the 1999 Oscar-winning Suburbia Hell effort American Beauty – the dysfunctional suburbia-set Revolutionary Road was adapted to the screen by Justin Haythe, using as his source Richard Yates’ 1961 National Book Award-finalist novel. For all it’s worth, in 2005 Time magazine listed Revolutionary Road as one of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to the early 21st century. The title refers to the street address of the suburban Connecticut couple at the novel’s core.

‘Revolutionary Road’: Leonardo DiCaprio & Kate Winslet images

Directed by Academy Award winner Sam Mendes (American Beauty, 1999), Revolutionary Road stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet as a 1950s suburban Connecticut couple, Frank and April Wheeler, whose marriage hits the skids as a result of their failed aspirations and the stifling reality of day-to-day life. Justin Haythe adapted Richard Yates’ 1961 novel.

Besides DiCaprio and Winslet, who had previously been seen together in James Cameron’s 1997 worldwide blockbuster Titanic, the Revolutionary Road cast features the following:

Best Actress Oscar winner Kathy Bates (Misery, 1990).

Michael Shannon. Kathryn Hahn. Zoe Kazan. Dylan Baker. Ty Simpkins. Max Casella. Max Baker. Jay O. Sanders.

Revolutionary Road with a shirtless Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. The two leads had been previously seen together in the 1998 worldwide blockbuster and multiple Academy Award winner Titanic, directed by James Cameron, and featuring Revolutionary Road actress Kathy Bates in a supporting role.

Leonardo DiCaprio & Kate Winslet Oscar nominations

Both Revolutionary Road leads have been shortlisted for Academy Awards.

Leonardo DiCaprio has received three nominations:

• Best Supporting Actor for Lasse Hallström’s What’s Eating Gilbert Grape (1993).
• Best Actor for Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator (2004).
• Best Actor for Edward Zwick’s Blood Diamond (2006).

Kate Winslet has been nominated five times:

• Best Supporting Actress for Ang Lee’s Sense and Sensibility (1995).
• Best Actress for James Cameron’s Titanic (1997).
• Best Supporting Actress for Richard Eyre’s Iris (2001).
• Best Actress for Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004).
• Best Actress for Todd Field’s Little Children (2006).

Revolutionary Road with Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio as post-World War II American suburbanites April and Frank Wheeler. Both actors are potential Oscar 2009 contenders; if that comes to pass, it’ll mark DiCaprio’s fourth and Winslet’s sixth nomination – or seventh, in case she’s also shortlisted as Best Supporting Actress for The Reader.

‘Revolutionary Road’ stars possible Oscar contenders

Leonardo DiCaprio and especially – according to this awards season’s buzz – Kate Winslet are possible Oscar contenders for Revolutionary Road.

Other possibilities include the film itself, director Sam Mendes, screenwriter Justin Haythe, cinematographer Roger Deakins, and Kathy Bates and Michael Shannon in the supporting categories.

Kate Winslet is also a possible Oscar contender – seemingly in the Best Supporting Actress category – for Stephen Daldry’s The Reader, featuring Ralph Fiennes.

Revolutionary Road opens in the U.S. on Dec. 26.

Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet Revolutionary Road images: DreamWorks.

Christopher Plummer autobiography: In Spite of Myself. Veteran actor best remembered for Robert Wise’s blockbuster The Sound of Music (1965), with Best Actress Oscar winner Julie Andrews (Mary Poppins, 1964) and three-time nominee Eleanor Parker (Caged, 1950; Detective Story, 1951; Interrupted Melody, 1955).

Christopher Plummer autobiography: ‘The Sound of Music’ actor pens ‘In Spite of Myself’ & discusses Marlon Brando, The Method

Veteran actor Christopher Plummer, whose autobiography In Spite of Myself came out in early December 2008, was interviewed by Jeff Stafford for the Turner Classic Movies website.

Below is a brief snippet from the interview, as Plummer answers Stafford’s question about the influence of “The Method” and “Marlon Brando’s impact on the theatre world with A Streetcar Named Desire.”

“Listen, to me ‘The Method’ is usually totally misunderstood. It doesn’t mean that you have to mumble and not be heard. It means that you use it when you’re in deep trouble, when you can’t bring your imagination to work then you try and have a sense memory of your own that can help and I think that’s true of any instinctive actor. You don’t have to go to a method school to learn that. But when Marlon came to the fore and became the second – actually – very real actor, the first being Montgomery Clift … Monty and Marlon Brando were the two supremely realistic actors on the screen at that time.”

Remembering largely forgotten Robert Williams

Christopher Plummer then goes on to recall the now largely forgotten Robert Williams, who died at age 37 as a result of a ruptured appendix in November 1931, and who, according to Plummer, “was one of the most realistic comedians the screen had,” adding:

“He made Cary Grant look like he was overacting. Robert Williams was the lead opposite Jean Harlow in Platinum Blonde which was directed by Frank Capra. To watch Robert Williams act was like seeing a comic using the Method, long before the Method became famous with Marlon and Monty. So people were doing it already, that’s my point. Brando was great and I would have liked to use both my classical knowledge and Brando’s kind of wonderful imaginative reality and mix them up and that would have been the perfect mix for any artist.”

Christopher Plummer in The Man Who Would Be King. One of John Huston’s more successful post-Moulin Rouge (1952) movies, The Man Who Would Be King (1975) stars Sean Connery and Michael Caine as a couple of late 19th century British soldiers/adventurers who ultimately find themselves at odds with South-Central Asia’s “restless natives.” Christopher Plummer plays Rudyard Kipling, the author of the story on which the film is based.

Christopher Plummer movies

Christopher Plummer’s movie career spans five decades. The Toronto-born actor (on Dec. 13, 1929) made his big-screen debut at age 29 in Sidney Lumet’s 1958 drama Stage Struck, a remake of Lowell Sherman’s Morning Glory (1933), with Plummer in the old Douglas Fairbanks Jr. role and Susan Strasberg following in the footsteps of Katharine Hepburn.

Although never a major box office name, Plummer has been featured in numerous important releases, a few of which became both critical and box office hits. Most notable among these is Robert Wise’s 1965 Best Picture Academy Award winner The Sound of Music (1965), starring Plummer as Austrian Alps denizen Captain von Trapp, in addition to Julie Andrews and veteran Eleanor Parker (The Man with the Golden Arm, Home from the Hill) as the two women in his life.

Below is a trio of other major – though not necessarily successful – movies featuring Christopher Plummer:

• Anthony Mann’s costly epic The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964), a second-rate Quo Vadis (in terms of both prestige and box office), starring Sophia Loren and Stephen Boyd, and featuring Plummer as the villainous Commodus.
• John Huston’s adventure The Man Who Would Be King (1975), starring Sean Connery and Michael Caine. Plummer played Rudyard Kipling, who wrote the story on which the film was based.
• Jeannot Szwarc’s romantic fantasy Somewhere in Time (1980), starring Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour, and featuring Plummer as the controlling manager of an early 20th century actress (Seymour) who falls in love with a man from the distant future (Reeve).

Recent Christopher Plummer films

More recently, among Christopher Plummer’s most notable efforts are the following:

• Michael Mann’s socially conscious Best Picture Academy Award nominee The Insider (1999), with Al Pacino and Russell Crowe. Plummer, who at one point was considered a shoo-in Best Supporting Actor Oscar nominee (it didn’t happen) was cast as journalist/media celebrity Mike Wallace, who delivers the film’s best line: “No that’s fame. Fame has a 15-minute half-life, infamy lasts a little longer.”
• Stephen Gaghan’s Middle East-set political drama Syriana (2005), with George Clooney and Matt Damon.
• Alejandro Agresti’s romantic fantasy The Lake House (2006), starring Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves.
• Spike Lee’s thriller Inside Man (2006), with Denzel Washington, Clive Owen, and Jodie Foster.

Update: Upcoming projects include Caesar and Cleopatra, with Christopher Plummer as the first half of the title and Nikki M. James as the second half.

Christopher Plummer The Man Who Would Be King image: Allied Artists / Columbia Pictures.

“Revolutionary Road Movie: Leonardo DiCaprio & Kate Winslet Images + Christopher Plummer Autobiography” last updated in March 2018.