Latest news with #HollyHunter
Yahoo
9 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
This movie ruined my career and ended my dating life. 30 years later, it's seeing a resurgence on Netflix.
William McNamara opens up to Yahoo about "Copycat" — the film that derailed his career — and how it's suddenly finding a new life 30 years later, thanks to Netflix. In high school and into college, I watched my VHS copy of 1988's Stealing Home approximately 876 times. William McNamara, with his tousled hair and Hollywood-approved cheekbones, played a teen whose relationship with his childhood babysitter defined his coming of age. Back then, McNamara was on a path to leading man status. The heartthrob graced the pages of fan magazines, made a movie with the Coreys, shared the screen with rising star Reese Witherspoon and was cast as golden-age icon Montgomery Clift. He even dated Brooke Shields. Everything was coming up Billy — and then he sort of vanished. Blame Copycat — or at least he does. In the 1995 psychological thriller starring Sigourney Weaver and Holly Hunter, McNamara played a clean-cut sociopath. Perhaps too well. 'It ruined my career,' he tells Yahoo. 'I was on the leading man trajectory — the good guy roles. All of a sudden … casting agents said, 'No, I saw Billy in Copycat. He's too edgy. He's too dark. He's too comfortable in that role. There's no acting. That had to be him.' After that, the parts McNamara got offered changed, and his leading man status faded. It also killed his dating life. Women 'saw the movie and my character disturbed them,' he says. So you can imagine the whiplash he felt when, 30 years later, Copycat landed on Netflix and rocketed to the platform's global Top 10 the week of June 16, charting in 46 countries. The film that derailed his career was suddenly back. Stunned by its resurgence, McNamara talks to Yahoo about the film's surprise second life, the toll it took on his career and his hope for another shot. The comeback McNamara had no idea the Jon Amiel-directed film landed on Netflix until his social media started blowing up in June. 'I was getting 100 new Instagram followers a day and all these [direct] messages,' he says. 'I go on IMDbPro's STARmeter and usually I'm between 5,000 to 10,000, which is not bad for a '90s star, by the way. I was (No.) 165, above Angelina Jolie. I thought it was a mistake. Then a couple of people started texting: 'Hey, Copycat is trending.' The whole thing 'blew my mind,' he says of Copycat getting 6 million views in a week on the streaming service. It also 'tells me that I make an impression on people. I have a supporting role in Copycat. For that many people to look me up [says something]. They should give me another shot today.' The killer role that changed everything McNamara was cast against type as Peter Foley — a soft-spoken, button-down shirt-wearing guy who's secretly mimicking infamous murderers. 'I didn't suspect at all that I would be asked to do a serial killer role,' he says. 'I thought he was interested in me for the detective role [that went to] Dermot Mulroney.' At his two meetings with the director, he didn't read lines. They talked, which McNamara says felt more like 'a psychiatric tour of my life' than an audition. Finally, an offer followed. 'My agent at the time said, 'They want you to play the serial killer,'' he recalls. 'I was like, 'Really? I don't know if I could do that.' He said, 'This is an important film… It's Warner Bros. You need to do this.' I thought: It seems difficult, but at the time, I was not a superstar. The money was very good, and [so was the opportunity to work] on a big studio movie with Sigourney and Holly and Dermot and Harry Connick Jr. … It was like: 'OK, I gotta do it. I gotta just figure this out.'' McNamara prepared extensively for the role, working with forensic psychiatrist Park Dietz, who consulted on the highest-profile criminal cases like Jeffrey Dahmer and FBI profiler Robert Ressler, paying them out of his own pocket. 'I did an interesting, definitely unique portrayal of a serial killer and everybody liked it,' he says. 'I got letters from Warner Bros. and [Regency Enterprises founder] Arnon Milchan, so it seemed everything was good and my career was taking off. Then I was walking through [L.A.'s] Westwood … and two UCLA girls recognized me: 'Hey, we just saw your movie.' I thought they meant Stealing Home, my big movie everybody recognized me from, but they said, 'No, Copycat.' It turns out they had participated in a test screening of the yet-to-be-released film. 'I said, 'How was the movie?' and they replied, 'Not too good. You didn't score well,' he says. He thought it was a joke until the next day, when his agent called. 'He said, I've got good news and bad news,'' McNamara says. 'Good news: They're not going to fire you. Bad news: Your movie didn't test well. But it's not just you… They've hired Frank Darabont to rewrite the script, and you're going to reshoot for 21 days.' A surprise acting coach and men in black Being told reshoots are needed is something 'no actor wants to hear,' McNamara says. But,'it wasn't really all my fault.' McNamara says he based his character on what he learned through his research, but his performance wasn't 'Hollywood' enough. 'Most serial killers are not movie stars or wildly entertaining people,' he says. 'They're cerebral and very introverted. It wouldn't be exciting to follow the real Jeffrey Dahmer around. You need Hannibal Lecter from The Silence of the Lambs… It didn't translate. It was unique — nobody had done this particular portrayal of a serial killer — but it was not Hollywood. I learned that lesson.' Leading up to the reshoots, McNamara was feeling 'panicked.' His mentor, actor Roddy McDowall, offered to have ''my friend Tony coach you'' on the script. 'Tony' turned out to be Anthony Hopkins. 'I brought all my research,' McNamara says. 'I handed it to [Hopkins] and he throws it away. He said, 'That got in your way. No more research. You want to keep it simple, stupid. We're going to memorize your lines backward and forward, and then we're just going to make it a joyous occasion. You're not a serial killer. This is a comedy, and you want to have fun.' It changed my whole perspective on acting.' While he was Hopkins-trained, the pressure was on. The first day back on the set, McNamara arrived and there were seven or eight men in black suits with their arms crossed. ''They're here for you,'' he says Amiel told him of the FBI look-alikes who turned out to be studio execs, including then-Warner Bros. chairman Terry Semel. 'If you don't knock it out of the ballpark today, they have somebody waiting [to replace you].' McNamara delivered, but when the film was released to largely positive reviews, he immediately felt a shift in the roles he was offered. 'Before Copycat, I had done a lot of movies playing the leading man, the straight and narrow guy,' he says. 'My agent would [try to get me] edgier roles and it was: 'No … He's too soft. He's too boy next door. He doesn't have any edge.'' When Copycat came out, 'All of a sudden, I'm not on the leading man track anymore because of this dark, edgy guy I played,' he says. 'I started being offered not B movies but [also] not A+ movies to play the bad guy. But for lots of money. I had two mortgages. I had a house on the beach in Malibu. I took the money basically.' McNamara's career path veered from the high-profile good guy leading man roles to more supporting turns in film and television. However, 'I continued to work,' he says. 'I work all the time. I'm very lucky.' His professional life wasn't his only disappointment. McNamara's romantic life suffered, too. 'I was a single bachelor and did well with the girls back then,' he says. 'After Copycat came out, [it changed]. [I'd ask a woman], 'Hey, can I get your number?' And she's like: 'Yeah, um, I don't know. I just don't get a good vibe about you.'' He recalled telling his therapist, ''Something really weird is going on. Every girl is rejecting me.' She said: 'Do you think it might be your role?'' They deduced that Copycat viewers didn't consciously recognize McNamara from the film, because his role was supporting, but they subconsciously associated him with his creepy character who drugged drinks and kidnapped and tortured his victims. Luckily, he was able to turn the 'Billy McNamara charm' back around. Coming soon: His dream role With new fans discovering his old movies, McNamara says he'd love to see Stealing Home, 'which didn't get the right amount of attention at the time' and the 'zany and funny' 1994 film Chasers, get their due. As for his future dream role, it's one 'I created for myself,' he says. ' he says. McNamara wrote, directed and produced 10 episodes of The Trouble With Billy, a comedy series in which he also stars, about an exaggerated version of himself. It's about a former '90s heartthrob's quest to finance his dog's life-saving heart transplant. (McNamara's an animal activist, making headlines for his efforts.) The series, which is being shopped around, was created 'out of desperation because for years, I've always wanted to do comedy [but was told], 'You're not funny. You're a dramatic actor,'' he says. He's had fun leaning into the washed-up actor vibe. "[I was told]: 'Don't ever show [the series] to a girl you're interested in because it portrays you in a very bad light, like a loser.' But I've never been homeless. I've never lived in my car. They don't do heart transplants on dogs. I have not been abducted by aliens,' he laughs. 'I'm proud of it. It's pretty good.' Solve the daily Crossword
Engadget
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Engadget
The first Star Trek: Starfleet Academy trailer is filled with Easter eggs
We've known Star Trek: Starfleet Academy was coming for a while now , but we finally have some real footage. Paramount just dropped a trailer , in addition to an official announcement that the show will premiere in "early 2026." For the uninitiated, the show is set at the titular Starfleet Academy in future San Francisco and follows a group of cadets and their instructors. The trailer introduces us to all of the major characters, more or less, all while chancellor Holly Hunter does her best space Dumbledore and delivers a rousing speech. Eagle-eyed fans, however, will notice an abundance of Easter eggs in this footage. Starfleet Academy is where nearly every major Star Trek character in franchise history went to school, and they've all left their footprints here. There are shoutouts to James Kirk, Wesley Crusher, Tom Paris and, most interestingly, a class that examines the ultimate fate of Deep Space Nine head honcho Benjamin Sisko. The trailer also re-introduces two fan-favorite characters from previous installments. Robert Picardo returns as the holographic doctor from Star Trek: Voyager and the one-and-only Tig Notaro returns as snark-mouthed engineer Jett Reno from Star Trek: Discovery . Holograms don't age, but people do, so I wonder what kind of sci-fi gobbleygook they'll come up with as to why Picardo now looks older. Speaking of the passage of time, there's the Discovery -sized elephant in the room. Starfleet Academy is set in the 32nd century, after the crew of the Discovery accidentally ended up there at the end of season two. This is 800 years after the 90s shows like The Next Generation and 900 years after the original series. So this means any and all connections between planets and species are likely to be radically different, as eight centuries is a really, really long time. Just think about how different the year 1225 was from today. The show premieres in six or seven months on Paramount+ . Star Trek: Starfleet Academy stars the aforementioned Holly Hunter, Sandro Rosta, Karim Diané, Kerrice Brooks and Paul Giamatti as the half-Klingon antagonist.
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
First Star Trek: Starfleet Academy trailer knows not to skimp on the Holly Hunter
Look, if you manage to get Holly Hunter to be the star of your new 'Young adults go to Star Trek school and almost certainly do a ton of smooching' TV show, you use her, right? That's certainly the perspective put forward in the trailer for Paramount+'s new Starfleet Academy, which foregrounds itself with Hunter introducing herself to the first class to enroll at the titular academy in more than a century, and then lets her soothing voice walk viewers through the show's cast of ambitious youths. For the record, that's Sandro Rosta as undeclared human student Caleb Mir, Karim Diané as Klingon science guy Jay-Den Kraag, Kerrice Brooks as first-of-her-kind-at-the-Academy Sam, George Hawkins as wannabe captain Darem Reymi, and Bella Shepherd as admiral's daughter Genesis Lythe. The trailer is also careful to show off plenty of returning faces, including Tig Notaro, reprising her role from Star Trek: Discovery, and Robert Picardo, returning to the series as Star Trek: Voyager's The Doctor. (And if that's not enough fan-service for you, the new Academy also apparently has, like, Choose-Your-Own-Adventure exhibits about some of Starfleet's biggest mysteries; hands up if you paused your video on the one about 'The Fate Of Benjamin Sisko, Emissary Of The Prophets.') That's to say nothing of the guy who merits the big 'end of the trailer' reveal: A whistling Paul Giamatti, who'll be playing the season's villain, Nus Braka, a guy who's part-Klingon, part-Tellurite, all 'guy who wears a lot of rings as a personality statement' Starfleet Academy is being co-showrun by Alex Kurtzman and Noga Landau. The series is expected to premiere on Paramount+ some time in early 2026. More from A.V. Club The biggest news (so far) from San Diego Comic-Con 2025 What's on TV this week—Chief Of War and Eyes Of Wakanda R.I.P. Tom Lehrer, mathematician and musical satirist Solve the daily Crossword
Gizmodo
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Gizmodo
‘Star Trek: Starfleet Academy' Cast and Creators Lift the Lid on Their New Series
Thanks to San Diego Comic-Con, we know quite a bit more about Star Trek's next new series, Starfleet Academy. We got a teaser trailer and character details—and the show's cast and creators took to the Hall H stage to share even more hints about what's to come. Though Paul Giamatti—who portrays the show's 'half-Klingon, half-Tellerite' villain, a blend clarified by executive producer and co-showrunner Alex Kurtzman—was not in attendance, Holly Hunter, who plays Academy chancellor Captain Nahla Ake, took the stage along with her 'students,' played by Sandro Rosta, Karim Diané, Kerrice Brooks, George Hawkins, and Bella Shepard. Kurtzman's fellow executive producer and co-showrunner Noga Landau was also on hand. 'It's set in the 32nd century, so it takes place in a time right after the Burn,' Landau explained, referencing a catastrophic event fans of Star Trek: Discovery will know very well. 'It's a time of rebuilding, and it's a time when the generation of Starfleet cadets that you're going to meet here—the world has to be fixed, and a lot of the responsibility [for] that lies on their shoulders. It was a very intentional choice because a lot of the generation who's alive right now, who would be going to Starfleet Academy, if there was a Starfleet Academy, that's a similar thing to what they would be going through.' Added Kurtzman, 'We looked at the generation now that is inheriting all this division and all these major issues, and what we felt was that we wanted to create a show that anchored us back to [Gene] Roddenberry's essential vision of hope. How do you find it? How do you rebuild it? This is the first Academy class back after 120 years of a closed Starfleet. They have a tremendous amount on their shoulders, and their mission is to reinstate the original vision of Star Trek. And it's really exciting to also have all these teachers who are really, really fun. Our rule on the show was that the teachers have to be as interesting and as fun as the cadets.' At the top rung is, of course, Hunter's authority figure. 'It was really interesting to get the offer to be the captain, but then also to combine that with being the chancellor—it was just an interesting dichotomy and challenge because the captain is there to command, to analyze in emergency situations, and then to delegate. And the chancellor is there to guide, to collaborate, and have tremendous empathy,' the Oscar winner said. 'So it was just a wonderful combination of things that it brought out in me, in all of us. I mean, each relationship that I have with each of you [actors playing the students] is so particular and so private. That's the cool thing about the show—[its] massive scale combined with this incredible intimacy that we all have with each other and an intimacy that we all had as a group. So yeah, it was a privilege.' We'll get to know the younger characters better once Starfleet Academy arrives, but two among the cast seem to have particularly intriguing roles. Sandro Rosta's Caleb is described as a 'troubled orphan' in his official character description; he also happens to be human, seemingly one of few humans among Starfleet Academy's core cast. 'Caleb starts off in a different place from the other cadets,' Rosta explained. 'He starts off being disillusioned by Starfleet. He's grown up without an institution or institutional help for 13 years, so he's been surviving on his own. He's been on the run for his entire life; [he's an] outsider [who is] introduced to Starfleet's values of connection, community, working together for a higher purpose to better yourself as a group, not just as an individual—that was what was special about Caleb. […] You're going to be entering Starfleet through the eyes of this outsider, and it was an honor to play that role.' Kerrice Brooks—who became emotional watching the Starfleet Academy teaser for the first time, which immediately endeared her to the entire Hall H audience—co-stars as Sam, 'aka Series Acclimation Mil, the first member of her species, the Kasqians, to sign up for Starfleet,' according to the official description. 'I'm a hologram,' is how Brooks described Sam. 'Sam is programmed to feel a certain age, but she was literally only created like weeks ago. So she's like a newborn; everything is so fresh to her.' Kurtzman stepped in at the end to offer a few parting insights to the crowd. 'I'm sure there's been some questions about the trailer,' he said, '[including] why is there a ship that's landing in San Francisco? And the answer is, the school is a ship, and it's part of the campus in San Francisco. So they go to class in San Francisco, in the ship. And because resources are lighter in the 32nd century, think of it like a teaching hospital: the ship gets deployed with the fleet in a real-life situation so they can learn in the field.' 'So this is not just theoretical classrooms. You're going to see Star Trek episodes where we meet new species, episodes that are about diplomacy. You'll see episodes where these cadets, who are not yet captains, are learning who they are and how they fit into Starfleet. They can make mistakes in ways that if you're already a captain or if you are already in Starfleet, you really can't. So these characters get to do unique things in that way.' Star Trek: Starfleet Academy hits Paramount+ in early 2026. Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what's next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
'Star Trek: Starfleet Academy' debuts first trailer, Paul Giamatti as villain
SAN DIEGO – Finally there is a show for those wishing they would do a cross between 'Star Trek' and 'Harry Potter.' A 'Star Trek' Universe panel on Saturday, July 26, at the pop-culture festival Comic-Con debuted the first trailer for 'Star Trek: Starfleet Academy," a series coming to Paramount+ in 2026 that follows the first class of Starfleet cadets in 120 years. The footage also showcased a little peek at Paul Giamatti's Nus Braka, a part Klingon, part Tellarite villain who has a past connection with one of the cadets. It's a "time of rebuilding" when the new class of students comes to campus, executive producer Noga Landau said. "The world has to be fixed and a lot of the responsibility of that is on their shoulders." Join our Watch Party! Sign up to receive USA TODAY's movie and TV recommendations right in your inbox Executive producer Alex Kurtzman added that the show is meant to reflect modern youngsters who are "inheriting all this division" in the real world. He also teased that the Starfleet Academy campus is a ship, so it can go into space on missions where students can get experience in diplomacy and meeting new species in the field. Holly Hunter plays Nahla Ake, who's both captain and chancellor, and she enjoyed the dichotomy between the two roles. "The captain's there to command and analyze in emergency situations and delegate," she said. "The chancellor is there to teach and have empathy. It was a wonderful combination of things that it brought out in me and all of us." This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Star Trek' debuts 'Starfleet Academy' trailer with Holly Hunter
