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[WARNING: Mild Road to Perdition spoiler ahead.]
Not many actresses can be described as having an acting style. Most have one or the other. Meryl Streep, for example, doesn't really have a style -- what has always made her so astonishing is that she disappears into her roles, and no two characters are alike. Meg Ryan, on the other hand, certainly has a style -- perhaps most efficiently characterized by the word "scrunchy" -- but you can't really call it acting.
Jennifer Jason Leigh, however, has both. Or, at least, she had both. It's hard to tell now, given that she rarely shows up in movies anymore. And you certainly can't judge from her strange, truncated role in Road to Perdition, in which she plays (for all of about three minutes of screen time) Tom Hanks's wife, who has little to do except look sternly at her kids, look lovingly at Hanks, and then shield her son before they both get plugged.
It's sad, and a little disconcerting, to see Leigh wasted in this way. Is this what she has to look forward to for the next twenty years? Doting wives? Mute victims? Instead of becoming her generation's Meryl Streep, is she destined to become her generation's Anne Archer?
It wasn't that long ago that she was the brightest young female talent in Hollywood, the most obvious heir to Streep and Glenn Close and other serious female actors. Leigh seared through movies like 1989's Last Exit to Brooklyn and 1993's Dorothy Parker and the Vicious Circle. She wasn't just a big talent, she was a Big Talent -- she tackled all the showy, screamy, drug-addled, tragic roles that serious actors are supposed to tackle, all the better to showcase the Bigness of their Talent.
And it was obvious that she was, in fact, talented. However -- and this is where the "acting style" comes in -- Leigh was also very mannered, and as she went along she seemed to get more and more mannered, so that at times it was hard to tell if she was acting or just doing a drunken Katharine Hepburn impersonation.
Leigh became known for a kind of clipped, staccato delivery, as though every line were being read from a telegram. ("I don't love you. Stop.") She utilized this delivery in Vicious Circle and then again in The Hudsucker Proxy -- though it worked in the latter film, because she seemed to be self-consciously parodying not only the tough-talking dames of the '30s, but earlier roles in her own career.
By the time she did Georgia, however -- another drug-addled, tragic role -- her acting had become not a tool to portray a character, but the whole show in of itself. The posters for her films might well have read, "Come See Jennifer Jason Leigh Act! Marvel At The Sheer Magnitude of Her Actoriness!"
Sadly, the staccato-fatigue period of her career also coincided with her mid-to-late thirties, a time during which many female actors find their services are no longer in such high demand. Also, Leigh didn't do herself any favours by starring in a series of costume dramas -- Vicious Circle, Hudsucker, Washington Square -- all in a row, which can be rewarding for Serious Actors but have a way of nudging you off Hollywood's radar screen.
Whatever the reason, or combination of reasons, Leigh suddenly seemed to disappear. (Actually, she was paying the rent with voice-over gigs for shows such as Spawn and Hercules, while tackling little-noticed films like eXistenZ.) And when she reappeared -- in 2001's The Anniversary Party, a movie she wrote and directed with Alan Cummings -- it was to play the part of Sally Nash, an aging screen actress who is struggling with the fact that her services are no longer in demand. It was hard to watch Leigh play the part, mostly because it was so obviously her own story she was dramatizing.
You'd hope that her role in Road to Perdition might represent a rediscovery of Leigh who, despite her idiosyncrasies, can still act circles around any of the twentysomething generation now gobbling the parts she once might have played. But Perdition is more of a discomfiting reminder that, even if Leigh were to make a comeback, there's not much for her to come back to. We, too, cringed through some of her more over-the-top performances, but we'd rather watch Georgia three more times than see her fettered in a role like that of the Silent and Tragically Snuffed Spouse.
Sadly, she might have to wait another fifteen years before juicy parts come her way again -- with any luck, she'll become the Sissy Spacek of 2015. In the mean time, we can hear that trademark staccato during reruns of Spawn, and feel sorry that we ever criticized her for being too actor-y. (Not a criticism you're likely to level at, say, Sandra Bullock.) Sure, the rat-a-tat-tat got to be a bit much, but who of the current crop would you rather watch onscreen? We'll take the drunken Katharine Hepburn over the sober Gwyneth Paltrow any time.
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