BBC movie series recommendations please :)

[Carol]

Alla wrote:
<snip>
> It seems to me that the lesser actor is known, the harder they work. Why, I have no clue. <snip>

Carol responds;
Could it be because a less well-known actor (male or female) *has* to work harder to get a job whereas a big-name actor can ask for and receive a ridiculously big paycheck (probably more money per minute than most people would earn in a decade) because he or she is a big box office draw?

But I've also noticed that certain character actors (for example, Julie Walters), in contrast to lead actors, blend into their roles so well that viewers don't recognize them. Many lead actors (say, Tom Hanks or Kate Winslett) are so well-known that it's hard to forget that they're actors playing a role, and some of them (Tom Hanks more than Kate Winslett) always seem to play themselves. If you watch old movies from the fifties and sixties, you'll see the same thing with, say, John Wayne and Charlton Heston. (I have a hard time watching old films because the acting is so far from naturalistic.)

That's even true of lesser-known actors. Last Sunday, I watched the first installment of "Little Dorritt" on PBS, and all I could think of was that the lead male actor was the same person who played Darcy in "Pride and Prejudice" (the 2005 production with Keira Knightley as Elizabeth Bennett). I had to look up his name (Michael Macfayden), but I knew that face.

Carol, who missed last night's episode of "Little Dorritt" and doesn't know whether it's a faithful adaptation because that's one Dickens novel she hasn't read