His curt reposts clearly signpost that this is someone clearly scarred for life, but they also stop scenes which have potential to light the screen up from doing so.
The film includes show-stopping scenes with Busby Berkeley-choreographed routines.
Jones has multiple show-stopping scenes in "Lincoln" and won the Screen Actors Guild award for Best Supporting Actor; that's significant if only because in the last 10 years, seven SAG winners in the category went on to win the Oscar.
Others were scissored open, fastened together with staples and studs of gold in homage to that dress – Liz Hurley's show-stopping, scene stealing 1994 Versace gown.
He features in a show-stopping scene when he sings Can't Take My Eyes Off You to Kate over loudspeakers on the athletics field.
Yet on the demons issue, well, he puts the power of a show-stopping scene in Revolutionary Road, for instance, down to a festering desire to tell his own mother to "shut up".
Atticus, whose other credits include "My Name Is Earl" and the movie "Hancock" (sharing a bus stop scene with Will Smith), is the first to admit he's a little kooky in real life — certainly not your average 11-year-old, even one in show business.
"To watch it all unfold, I could barely talk when we saw the tears going down his face," recalls Moore, still moved by the heart-stopping scene.
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In between the heart-stopping swan scenes are witty parodies — notably, of the British Royal Family, with all the deliciously squalid problems they were having at the time.
Appropriately, van Niekerk's greatest fictional gifts are theatrical: her impeccable ear and her ability to bring to life a family that never stops creating scenes.
