The Chronicles Of…

I was reading Tom’s blog and noticed his mention of James Gandolfini as a character in ‘Where the Wild Things Are’.

Now I can’t possibly think of Mr Gandolfini as anyone other than Tony Soprano. He was that character, and that character was him. I’ve seen him in a few other films, playing other roles, but I’ll never be able to see him as anyone else. Blame that on scripts/ acting talent/ production/ whatever, the character in the show was made real for me.

There are other actors out there who have made characters their own, and can never really move on. I think of most of the cast of ‘The Bill’ for example, who will probably never move on and get a different role.

But what about in other areas of life, beyond TV or film – are there characters in books that you’ve read, and imagined to look a certain way, that could just never be different, no matter how they were portrayed in a film? Or a definitive version of a song, whether it’s by the original composer or a particulalry inspired cover version. Jeff Buckley’s cover of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah comes to mind. No matter how many times I hear someone play that song, the version that I’ll always be comparing it to will be the one I heard on ‘Grace’, that starts with a sigh and ends with an amazingly sustained falsetto note.

Or your nanna’s sausage rolls, or your first kiss with ‘that person’, or whatever… what are some of the things that have set the benchmarks in your life?