Movie Directors/Actors Who Made TIME's 100 Most Influential People

[JamesG]

Viola Davis
by Cicely Tyson






I remember sitting in a Broadway theater absolutely mesmerized by Viola Davis' performance as Tonya in August Wilson's play King Hedley II, for which she won her first Tony and Drama Desk awards. I have been consuming a diet of her extraordinary work ever since.

Her life tells a story of personal and professional excellence. Viola, 46, has given her stage and screen characters true presence, depth and authenticity because of her uncompromising real-life character. She is a serious and soul-stirring actress, and her rich body of work represents the full range of our humanity.



As I watch Viola's career soar, I marvel at her strength, stamina and amazing spirit, which I believe comes from her faith in the Almighty. She has taken an opportunity not just to set a standard but to redefine it.

Her recent Oscar nomination for Best Actress in The Help is a beacon for other aspiring actresses. I was privileged to work on this film and humbled that Viola believes my career has been a benchmark for hers. This acknowledgment speaks to the richness of her soul and how she has carried out her life as a mother, wife and actress.

She affords me great hope for the future.











Jessica Chastain
by Gary Oldman






When the French call something formidable, they mean tremendous, terrific, awesome. These are words that came to mind when I first encountered the work of Jessica Chastain, 30, during her performance as Salome in Al Pacino's remarkable film of Oscar Wilde's play.

When I saw her I thought, "Al has made an amazing discovery!" In a sense, Al did discover her, although I have since learned that she is a properly trained, serious actress, a Juilliard graduate who has been practicing her craft for more than a decade.



Since that outstanding performance, I've watched her other outstanding performances, in The Help, The Debt and The Tree of Life. I've seen the dazzling roster of awards she has won from film critics' associations and film societies, and those awards are well deserved.

I knew when I saw Wilde Salomé that I had better learn the name, that I was watching an actress from whom we could expect great things in what, no doubt, will be a long, very successful future.

That is saying a lot, and that is why I thought of formidable: tremendous, terrific, awesome, outstanding.











Asghar Farhadi
by Richard Corliss






This winter, while Republican presidential candidates waxed belligerent about Iran's nuclear policy and Israel warned that it might pre-emptively strike the Islamic Republic, one Iranian waged a countercampaign of international understanding.

Asghar Farhadi, 40, is a filmmaker, not a diplomat, and his movie A Separation is no pacifist political tract. Yet as the picture accumulated awards, culminating in the first Oscar (for Best Foreign Language Film) ever won by an Iranian, Farhadi became a de facto spokesman for a besieged people, and his movie the face of a complex modern society.



Detailing the conflict of two Tehran couples — one middle class and secular, the other working class and religious — A Separation is both Iranian and universal. The warring husbands could as easily be an urban American liberal and a rural fundamentalist.

In a land whose hierarchy has punished such bold directors as Jafar Panahi and Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Farhadi's success at home could seem an act of craven collaboration. But exile or imprisonment is not a filmmaker's only badge of honor. Another is speaking prickly truth in pictures, for all the world to see.











Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy
by Angelina Jolie






Pakistan's first Oscar belongs to a monumental campaign that is changing the legal, social and political fate of survivors of acid-related violence.

Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy's documentary Saving Face brought Pakistan's acid-violence problem to the world stage. Today she is bringing the film's message to towns and villages in Pakistan through an educational-awareness campaign.

Her film not only gave her subjects sympathy and understanding but, more important, gave them dignity. The "victims" in Saving Face are some of the strongest, most impressive women you will ever come across. She showed us their scars, and we saw their true beauty.



Obaid-Chinoy, 33, is also shaping the dialogue on Pakistan. Saving Face depicts a Pakistan that is changing — one where ordinary people can stand up and make a difference and where marginalized communities can seek justice.

New legislation spearheaded by female parliamentarians will impose stricter sentencing on perpetrators of acid-related violence. This is a huge step forward.

Giving voice to those who cannot be heard, Obaid-Chinoy has made over a dozen award-winning films in more than 10 countries. She celebrates the strength and resilience of those fighting against seemingly insurmountable odds — and winning.

I dare anyone to watch this film and not be moved to tears and inspired into action.











Harvey Weinstein
by Johnny Depp






There are producers, and then there are producers. Harvey belongs to the latter batch. It's an elite club for those with the kind of maverick vision to bring such disparate films as Pulp Fiction, Kids, Finding Neverland and umpteen others to the screen with equal aplomb.

Over the past 25 years, American independent film has seen no better advocate than this man from Flushing, N.Y. Now 60, he remains as relevant as ever, with The Artist following in the victorious footsteps of The English Patient and The King's Speech.

More recently, Harvey lent vehement support to the documentary Bully, an important film in an age in which such a concept has almost been forgotten.



Now, no one gets to the top without the occasional scrap. While he's certainly the charming servant to film he purports to be, Harvey isn't afraid of a duke-'em-out. (I've had the pleasure of being both his ally and his enemy at various times.) He stops at nothing for what he believes in.

He can be your most frightening nightmare and your closest friend.

He is a producer.











Tilda Swinton
by Sally Potter






Tilda Swinton prioritizes being over acting, presence over character. She is interested in the whole rather than the part and is happiest at the core of a film, embodying its deepest themes with the luminous, naked face for which she is known.

In an agile, complex cinematic trajectory from Caravaggio and Michael Clayton to We Need to Talk About Kevin, she gives us unlimited space as viewers to gaze and wonder, to think and be moved. She trusts the image and, in giving herself up to its power, gives us its power.



In private, Tilda, 51, is voluble, wildly funny and affectionate. By inclination a collaborator, she likes nothing better than to be shoulder to shoulder with her companions on the long, perilous haul known as movie development. This greatly endears her to all who work with her.

Tilda's frequent stints on film juries and her knowledge of world cinema past and present give her work a breadth and openness that come from awareness of other stories, other languages, other ways of making movies. We feel the space of history around her when she works, a sense that there is more than this.

This conjuring of the quiet magnitude of human experience is what partly explains her magic. She evokes the bigger picture and occupies its center.

http://www.time.com/time/specials/pa...111975,00.html