Keir Dullea

However, this tall and thin actor, with light eyes, has a long and constant acting career behind him, his presence is powerful although he has never stood out as much as in the glorious decade of the 60s. Among the characters he has played, stand out the psychologically complex ones are always emotionally challenged and pressured types, but who maintain, to some extent, their coolness.

Keir Dullea was born in 1936 in Cleveland, Ohio, where his parents were booksellers. For this reason, it is not without its irony that one of his last film roles is in the HBO version of Fahrenheit 451 , based on the novel by Ray Bradbury in which in a dystopian future, firefighters are dedicated to throwing the “dangerous” books to the flames, it is forbidden to read and it is more beneficial, the authorities think, to have the population glued to their screens like authentic zombies.

But let’s not advance events. Long before that, Dullea grew up in New York’s Greenwich Village, and after completing youth studies in Pennsylvania, he thought that theater was his thing, so after participating in amateur summer plays, he took classes at the prestigious Neighborhood Playhouse school in the big Apple. Then there would be some works on stage, and also some sporadic intervention in different television shows.

His film debut came under the orders of Irvin Kershner , the future director of The Empire Strikes Back . In Refuge for Criminals (1961), which followed the pastoral work of a Jesuit who helps young criminals reintegrate, he was one of these lost sheep. His work caused an impression, because the following year he was in Elisa (1962), a sensitive love story between two young people with mental problems, he cannot bear that nobody touches him; the film had two Oscar nominations, for Frank Perry ‘s direction and his wife’s screenplay From him Eleanor Perry, and he was recognized with a Golden Globe as a young promise, he was then 25 years old. From that moment on, he regularly claims his presence in plays and episodes of television series.

In cinema, in his main acting decade, that of the 60s, a variety of films follow one another, although he will never be someone who has a bunch of mythomaniacs behind him. In addition, during this period, two marriages ended in divorce, Dullea has not just found stability. They are in 1964 the western with a comic touch Catalog Wife , and the war film that she adapts to James Jones The attack lasted seven days . And he works with a prestigious director, Otto Preminger , in the thriller The Kidnapping of Bunny Lake (1965), although he was not very satisfied with the experience, in fact he would compare it, and the balance was in favor of Stanley , who is always labeled an exasperating perfectionist. Kubrick , with the much more rewarding of2001, a space odyssey (1968). He even revealed that an idea for the final stretch, when his character sees himself getting older, the fall of his glass when he is eating, was suggested by him, and was accepted by the director, who knew how to listen, according to the actor, and then he would listen or not.

Dullea has always insisted that he had worked with a genius on this occasion, apart from the fact that he is well aware that his role as astronaut Dave Bowman, stunned by the rebellion of HAL 9000 – “Sorry, Dave, this conversation has no meaning.” object…”- is the most remembered of his career. Although he would return to the character fifteen years later in 2010: Odyssey Two ( Peter Hyams , 1984), it was a pale sequel, which did not stand up to comparison with the original, despite the fact that writer Arthur C. Clarke was involved again . More interesting, at that time and for television, would be the adaptation of Brave New World (1980), based on the novel by Aldous Huxley .

In the 70s, his career did not take the force that one would expect. In return he will finally find the happiness of a home. In 1972 he married Suzanne Fuller, who brought two daughters from a previous marriage, Keir would have no children of his own. They will be together until her death in 1998, and he will still marry her current wife, Mia Dillon, the following year. The presence of him as the Marquis de Sade in De Sade (1969) did not prevent it from being a weak film that only played and “epatar”. It is difficult to understand what guides his acting choices at that time, where he reconciles theater and cinema, with a trip to Canada that allows him to make the curious Paperback Hero (1973), about a hockey player in a small town who behaves like if I were your sheriff. In the UK he does Together Until Death(1974), where Lewis Gilbert undertook the sequel to his own film Something More Than Friends (1971). And it is decidedly bizarre and almost a cult film, the kind of predecessor to Halloween that consists of Black Christmas (1974), where he is accompanied by Olivia Hussey . Continuing with terror, she would be alongside Mia Farrow in Chill (1977), one of the first films directed by the British Richard Loncraine .

Although a great professional and hard worker, he does not stop performing wherever he is called upon, the 90s is not exactly a period of glory. With the new millennium Robert De Niro gives him a small role in The Good Shepherd (2006). The 50th anniversary of 2001 gives him the opportunity to voice the animated version of Kubrick in the recreation of an interview, the crux of the short documentary 2001 Flashes in the Dark (2018). While the singular Polish filmmaker Lech Majewski has given him a role in Valley of the Gods , a film with mythical resonances that promises a dazzling visual packaging.