Advanced Actors

I got an email from a reader who asked me to talk more about Advanced actors. Here's what I told him:

I don't know enough about acting to comment with much authority about which ones are true geniuses. Without identifying someone as a true genius, it would be hard for me to label them as Advanced. Marlon Brando was most likely Advanced. I think that Philip Seymour Hoffman (whom Chuck mentioned in his Esquire article) is a really great actor, and he has appeared in Paul Thomas Anderson/Coen Brothers types of projects. So for me to consider him Advanced, someone who knows a lot more about acting than I would have to prove to me that he is a genius. Then Hoffman would have to appear in movies that are seemingly out of character but not in a way that I could predict. Some big-budget action film or a sequel or something like that, but not that because that would be doing the opposite of what is expected, which is not Advanced.

So, that's my story. I guess in a perfect world this blog would have people writing about paiting, sculpture, acting (stage and film), poetry, fiction, and so on. Unfortunately, I don't know enough about all that to have an opinion about Advancement in those fields. So we're stuck with music for now.