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Wallace Shawn, of course, would not normally merit a Fame Audit. He's really more of a Hey! It's That Guy!, it's true. This is not a disparagement on the quality of his work, but simply an acknowledgement of the niche he's come to fill.
Wallace Shawn, movie actor, is a straight-down-the-middle character type: the buggy eyes, the fishy lips, the thuffering-thuccotash, sibilant lisp. Wallace Shawn is best known to most people over thirty as the "Incontheivable!" guy in The Princess Bride, and best known to people under thirty as a teacher from Clueless. Wallace Shawn is the leading living candidate to play Sylvester in a live action Tweety Bird film. Wallace Shawn can currently be seen in the forgettable The Haunted Mansion, having just appeared in the forgettable Duplex. Beyond that, there's not much to say about Wallace Shawn, movie actor.
But Wallace Shawn, the man, is far more interesting. Shawn is an award-winning playwright. He is the son of The New Yorker's legendary editor, the famously eccentric William Shawn. His brother is the composer Allen Shawn. He's part of a Manhattan demimonde that feels straight out of a Woody Allen movie, largely because it includes Woody Allen.
And that's precisely the reason we've plucked him from the H!ITG! ranks and singled him out here.
Because it's not who Wallace Shawn is, but rather what he represents. He's one of a very few actors who are actually far more interesting in real life than any of their onscreen characters. Sure, he gives us all the joy we normally associate with great character actors. (Incontheivable!) But he's like a candy with an unexpected toy inside. No, not because he represents a choking hazard. Rather, because the more you learn about him, the more interesting he becomes. And how many other movie-star types, famous or not, can you say that about?
There are number of other character actors who've lived similar double lives: Ben Stein, the onscreen personification of high-school tedium in Ferris Bueller also wrote speeches for Nixon. Ricky Jay, the familiar, jowly bit player, also happens to be one of the world's greatest sleight-of-hand magicians. Fred Thompson, now of Law & Order, is a lawyer-cum-actor-cum-senator-cum-actor again.
We've singled out Shawn, but really, each of these people makes us happy. This is because they treat stardom the way it should be treated (as an amusing and lucrative hobby) rather than the way the rest of the world treats it (as a kind of mortal deification).
Most movie stars, furthermore, are too busy and too boring to do anything with their spare time except paint badly. The more you learn about their real personalities, the more you wish you still knew nothing about them at all.
A grump might argue that people like Stein and Shawn stand as victims of the perverting power of fame -- distracted from their valuable offscreen work by the promise of cheap renown. But if you argued that, you'd be arguing against Wallace Shawn, and who wants to do that? Incontheivable!
Instead, let us applaud Wallace Shawn. Let us applaud him and his moonlighting contemporaries. Fred Thompson, you are cooler than a dozen Nicole Kidmans. Ben Stein, you are cooler than a constellation full of Brad Pitts. Ricky Jay, you are cooler than Fred Thompson and Ben Stein put together.
And Wallace Shawn, you also are cool. True, you're only cool in a Bizarro universe kind of way, but trust us, that's the universe we want to live in too.
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