American actor James Garner has died at his home in Los Angeles. He was 86.
Garner was perhaps best known for his rakish charm and eye-twinkling good looks. He was the sort of guy you wanted on your side in a jam, because he was the sort of guy who would know how to get out of that jam, whether it meant resorting to his fists or his wits.
Much has been made of how Garner ably hopped from television to film and back again (even if potential big-screen bosses worried he was too associated with his small-screen roles), but just as much could be discussed about how Garner so ably shoehorned his basic persona into just about every genre imaginable. If you want Garner in action mode, there's plenty of room for that in his filmography. Want to see him outsmarting criminals in crime stories? He can handle that, too. And if you just want to see him playing romance or even comedy, he's more than able to. Garner was a star, to be sure, but he was the rare kind of star who could make his essential James Garnerness work in just about any situation. He was versatile, but always somehow himself, a rare blend that many actors strive for but few achieve. (...)
Garner was already slowing down by the time Rockford reached its end in 1980, and he spent most of the last decades of his career starring in smaller films (with the occasional Space Cowboys interspersed for good measure). This means he did yet more romances, and while 2004's The Notebook is probably the best known of these films, check out the 1985 film Murphy's Romance instead. Garner is more central to that film's story (which is about an unlikely relationship that develops between his character and a younger woman played by Sally Field), and he's so charming in it that he managed to score his only Oscar nomination for the role.
by Todd VanDerWerff , Vox | Read more:
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