March 17, 2025
by Carla Hay
Directed by Duke Johnson
Culture Representation: Taking place in the 1950s, in Ohio and in New York state, the sci-fi drama film “The Actor” (based on Donald E. Westlake’s novel “Memory”) features a predominantly white group of people (with one African American and a few Asians) representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: After being hit over the head with a chair, a New York City-based actor gets amnesia and tries to get back his memories and identity.
Culture Audience: “The Actor” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of time-bending dramas that have elements of mystery.
The Actor is an intriguing blend of retro noir and sci-fi drama. This adaptation of Donald E. Westlake’s Memory novel (about an actor who has amnesia) has a more optimistic ending than the book but still demonstrates how identity is rooted in memories. The movie has excellent cinematography that blurs the lines between cinematic reality and a life being acted out on stage.
Directed by Duke Johnson (who co-wrote “The Actor” screenplay with Stephen Cooney), “The Actor” is based on Westlake’s “Memory” novel that was written n 1963 and posthumously published in 2010. Johnson and Kaufman received an Oscar nomination (Best Animated Feature Film) for co-directing 2015’s “Anomalisa,” another movie about a middle-aged loner experiencing an existential crisis. Kaufman is an executive producer of “The Actor,” which has elements of other Kaufman films where the characters’ “reality” might not be real at all.
“The Actor” (which takes place in the 1950s) begins by showing the title character Paul Cole (played by André Holland) having a sexual tryst in a bedroom with a woman he recently met named Mrs. Wilson (played by Cassie Lauren Lewis). Her husband Mr. Wilson (played by Jonathan King) bursts into the room and hits Paul over the head with a chair. The next thing Paul knows, he’s in a hospital and can’t remember who he is and what happened.
While Paul is in the hospital, some of Paul’s memories come flooding back to him in snippets. Hospital employees tell Paul he’s in Jeffords, Ohio, and he was an actor appearing in a theater production, but the cast and crew have left town without him. Paul finds out from the ID in his wallet that he lives at 125 Grove Street in New York City.
Paul doesn’t have enough money to travel back to New York City. And so, he gets a menial job at a local tannery. While he’s in Jeffords, he goes to a movie theater playing a Casper the Friendly Ghost movie. The only other person in a theater is a woman, whom Paul sees later when he’s eating at a diner.
The woman is a costume designer named Edna (played by Gemma Chan), who is wearing a clown’s outfit in the diner. Edna and Paul begin talking and have an immediate flirtatious attraction to each other. Paul tells her that he has amnesia and wonders aloud if he’s dreaming. Edna shows him that she can do a test to see if he’s dreaming or not. She squeezes his arm hard, and he flinches because he can feel the pain.
Edna and Paul go on a few romantic dates together. On one of these dates, they go back to Edna’s place, where she shows him that she kept the program booklet for the stage play that Paul was in before the assault that led to his amnesia. The name of the play is “My Soul to Keep.” She breaks things off with Paul when he tells her he has to go back to New York City. Paul invites Edna to go to New York with him, but she rejects his offer.
The rest of “Memory” shows how Paul struggles to find out more about his identity, which becomes even more challenging for him because he now also has short-term memory loss. He finds out that before he lost his memory, he was self-centered Lothario who had a habit of having sexual flings with other men’s wives. He gets run out of town on more than one occasion when an angry husband threatens to have Paul arrested.
“The Actor” can get confusing and repetitive in the way it keeps viewers guessing if what Paul is experiencing is real, or if Paul is still alive. However, the movie has very good performances from all the principal cast members, while the production design and cinematography above-average and immersive in evoking a dream-like state of mind. Each principal cast member portrays multiple characters throughout the movie, except for Holland, who plays the constantly confused Paul.
Many of the characters who interact with Paul have significant speaking roles but do not have names in the movie. Among the various characters are Mrs. Malloy (played by Tracey Ullman), a landlady who rents a room to Paul when he’s staying in Jeffords; Nicky (played by Joe Cole), Paul’s closest friend in Paul’s artsy New York clique; Benny (played by Fabien Frankel), a man staying in Paul’s New York City apartment while Paul was away; Rita (played by May Calamawy), a girlfriend of Paul’s in New York City; an unnamed actor (played by Asim Chaudhry), who co-stars with Paul in a live TV production; Helen (also played by Ullman), Paul’s ambitious agent; an unnamed private detective (played by Toby Jones); and an unnamed doctor (played by Simon McBurney) at the hospital where Paul gets treated for the assault injuries to Paul’s head.
One of the movie’s changes from the “Memory” book is how the character of Edna is depicted. In “Memory,” Edna is described as plain-looking and insecure. The movie’s version of Edna is beautiful and confident. This alteration is one of the reasons why “The Actor” is a more glamorous and more romantic-looking version of the “Memory” book.
Paul is anxious to get back to New York City, but he has detours along the way. He has doubts about whether or not the life he had before his amnesia is a life that is worth resuming, or if she should start a new life. “The Actor” is not quite like the original “The Twilight Zone” TV series, which wraps up each episode with at least some semblance of an answer to the episode’s mystery. The movie concludes in way that answers some questions but leaves a lot up to interpretation.
Neon released “The Actor” in select U.S. cinemas on March 14, 2025.
