· Image Search

A couple of months ago, Entertainment Weekly hosted a roundtable discussion among several actors, all well known for their work in film, who were starring on Broadway at the time. The general consensus -- among the stage veterans profiled, anyway -- was that any untalented yet photogenic simpleton can have a successful career acting in films (which goes a long way toward explaining why Jennifer Love Hewitt is still working), but that any actor who hadn't tested his or her mettle on stage wasn't, in some important way, a real actor. None of the actors who participated in this article declared his or her intention to give up film acting and work exclusively on the stage. We do not claim the ability to read their minds on this subject, but if we were called upon to make an educated guess, we would venture that money has something to do with it. Specifically, you can make way more of it, while expending way less of your energy, by acting in a film than you can in a Broadway play. Jeffrey Wright might prefer to hone his craft on stage in Topdog/Underdog, but that doesn't mean he's above portraying a gang kingpin in Shaft as long as Scott Rudin's cheques clear.

Cherry Jones was not among the stage and screen straddlers EW profiled, but she sure could have been. Jones had already made her name as a towering Broadway talent, racking up three Tony nominations and one win -- when she starred in Cradle Will Rock in 1999. Though she had played small roles in various forgettable films and TV movies, Cradle Will Rock seemed to be her real Hollywood début. A serious Broadway actor could have scarcely wished for a more perfect, less reproachable vehicle in which to make the jump to film without jeopardizing even a morsel of her stage cred. For one thing, no one could accuse her of doing it for the money: it was made for a lean $32 million, despite its cast of thousands (several of whom were Oscar veterans). For another, the film's subject matter would be near and dear to the heart of any Broadway stalwart: the WPA, specifically, its staging of a staunchly socialist musical. As Hallie Flanagan, a WPA official charged with choosing which scripts the WPA would back, Jones got to live what is probably every Broadway actor's secret dream: government power and a government budget.

Since then, Jones has not had the good fortune to find another script to rival Cradle's; instead, she has put her matronly, salt-of-the-earth good looks to work in order to portray salt-of-the-earth matrons in movies like Erin Brockovich and The Perfect Storm. Even in the typical character role -- tiny and underwritten -- Jones puts her natural intelligence and plain-spoken common sense to work so that the viewer can imagine past heartbreaks, victories, disappointments, and joys. Yes, she's that good. (And in the case of Brockovich, the direction of Steven Soderbergh probably didn't hurt.)

Earlier this summer, Jones turned up in Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, taking a detour from her established movie "type" to play Buggy, a caricature of repressed, debased femininity. She was accorded fewer scenes than the average person has fingers on one hand, and had to use them to portray a fanatically religious woman thwarted by her husband and jealous of her daughter; basically, she has nothing more to do than be one of the ghouls of Ashley Judd's bad childhood. Boo.

However, her character in the current Signs is a return to form for Jones -- a woman of the heartland, whose demeanour marries the cool reason and logic of a law-enforcement officer with a maternal kindliness and solicitude. Even though Jones doesn't have much to do -- the script doesn't even require her to change her mood until director M. Night Shyamalan makes with the flashbacks -- it's perfectly in line with the sensible matrons she's been playing in films since Cradle, films of ever-increasing budgets. Signs's Caroline Paski may not be as meaty a role as Hallie Flanagan, but Jones probably made a lot more money for the former. See what we mean about her common sense?