Sidney Arthur Lumet was an American film director.
74 Facts About Sidney Lumet
2.
Sidney Lumet was nominated five times for Academy Awards: four for Best Director for 12 Angry Men, Dog Day Afternoon, Network, and The Verdict and one for Best Adapted Screenplay for Prince of the City.
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Sidney Lumet did not win an individual Academy Award but did receive an Academy Honorary Award, and 14 of his films were nominated for Oscars.
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Sidney Lumet was known as an "actor's director", having worked with the best of them during his career, probably more than "any other director".
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Sidney Lumet's first movie, 12 Angry Men, was a courtroom drama centered on a tense jury deliberation.
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In 2005, Sidney Lumet received an Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement for his "brilliant services to screenwriters, performers, and the art of the motion picture".
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Sidney Lumet was born in Philadelphia and grew up in the Lower East Side neighborhood of Manhattan.
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Sidney Lumet studied theater acting at the Professional Children's School of New York and Columbia University.
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Sidney Lumet's father, an actor, director, producer and writer, was born in Warsaw.
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Sidney Lumet's mother, who was a dancer, died when he was a child.
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Sidney Lumet made his professional debut on the radio at age four and his stage debut at the Yiddish Art Theatre at age five.
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Sidney Lumet organized an Off-Broadway group and became its director, and continued directing in summer stock theatre, while teaching acting at the High School of Performing Arts.
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Sidney Lumet was the senior drama coach at the new 46th St building of "Performing Arts".
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The 25-year-old Sidney Lumet directed the drama department in a production of The Young and Fair.
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Sidney Lumet began his career as a director with Off-Broadway productions and then evolved into a highly respected TV director.
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Sidney Lumet soon developed a "lightning quick" method for shooting due to the high turnover required by television.
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Sidney Lumet chose Cronkite for the role of anchorman "because the premise of the show was so silly, was so outrageous, that we needed somebody with the most American, homespun, warm ease about him", Sidney Lumet said.
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Sidney Lumet directed original plays for Playhouse 90, Kraft Television Theatre and Studio One, directing around 200 episodes, which established him as "one of the most prolific and respected directors in the business", according to Turner Classic Movies.
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Sidney Lumet's first movie, 12 Angry Men, based on a CBS live play, was an auspicious beginning for Lumet.
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Sidney Lumet began adapting classic plays for both film and television, directing Marlon Brando, Joanne Woodward and Anna Magnani in the feature film The Fugitive Kind, based on the Tennessee Williams play Orpheus Descending.
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Sidney Lumet later directed a live television version of Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh, which was followed by his film, A View from the Bridge, another psychological drama from the play written by Arthur Miller.
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Sidney Lumet's streets were just as mean as Scorsese's, but Sidney Lumet's seemed plain rather than poetic.
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Sidney Lumet channeled that New York skeezy vitality with such natural force that it was easy to overlook what was truly involved in the achievement.
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Sidney Lumet "has no equal in the distinguished direction of superior actors", adds Cunningham, with many coming from the theater.
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Sidney Lumet was able to draw powerful performances from actors such as Ralph Richardson, Marlon Brando, Richard Burton, Katharine Hepburn, James Mason, Sophia Loren, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Blythe Danner, Rod Steiger, Vanessa Redgrave, Paul Newman, Sean Connery, Henry Fonda, Dustin Hoffman, Albert Finney, Simone Signoret, and Anne Bancroft.
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When necessary Sidney Lumet chose untrained actors, but he stated, "over ninety percent of the time I want the best tools I can get: actors, writers, lighting men, cameramen, propmen".
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Sidney Lumet did so with Nick Nolte, Anthony Perkins, Armand Assante, Jane Fonda, Faye Dunaway, Timothy Hutton and Ali MacGraw, who herself referred to him as "every actor's dream".
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Sidney Lumet believed that movies are an art, and "the amount of attention paid to movies is directly related to pictures of quality".
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Sidney Lumet's debut film, Twelve Angry Men, was an acclaimed picture in its day, representing a model for liberal reason and fellowship during the 1950s.
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The film and Sidney Lumet were nominated for Academy Awards, and he was nominated for the Director's Guild Award with the film widely praised by critics.
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Sidney Lumet preferred the appearance of spontaneity in both his actors and settings, which gave his films an improvisational look by shooting much of his work on location.
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Sidney Lumet was a strong believer in rehearsal and felt that if an actor rehearsed correctly, the actor would not lose spontaneity.
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Director Peter Bogdanovich asked him whether he rehearsed extensively before shooting, and Sidney Lumet said he liked to rehearse a minimum of two weeks before filming.
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Sidney Lumet praises his style of directing in Network, in which she won her only Academy Award:.
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Sidney Lumet, let me say, is one of, if not, the most talented and professional men in the world.
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The film's star, Treat Williams, said that Sidney Lumet was known for being "energetic":.
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Sidney Lumet had passion for what he did and he "came to work" with all barrels burning.
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Harpole adds that "whereas many directors disliked rehearsals or advising actors on how to build their character, Sidney Lumet excelled at both".
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Joanna Rapf, writing about the filming of The Verdict, states that Sidney Lumet gave plenty of personal attention to his actors, whether listening to them or touching them.
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Sidney Lumet describes how Lumet and star Paul Newman sat on a bench secluded from the main set, where Newman had taken his shoes off, to privately discuss an important scene about to be shot.
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Sidney Lumet's actors walk through their scenes before the camera rolls.
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Newman liked to call him "Speedy Gonzales", adding that Sidney Lumet did not shoot more than he had to.
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Biographer Joanna Rapf observes that Sidney Lumet had always been an independent director, and liked to make films about "men who summon courage to challenge the system, about the little guy against the system".
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Sidney Lumet's protagonists tended to be antiheroes, isolated and unexceptional men who rebel against a group or institution.
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The most important criterion for Sidney Lumet was not simply whether the actions of the people are right or wrong, but whether they were genuine and justified by the individual's conscience.
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Sidney Lumet used the film to examine, with flashbacks, the psychological and spiritual scars Steiger's character lives with, including his lost capacity to feel pleasure.
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Serpico was the first of four "seminal" films Sidney Lumet made during the 1970s that marked him as "one of the greatest filmmakers of his generation".
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Sidney Lumet admitted that he did not believe that the movie business itself has the power to change anything.
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Sidney Lumet has steady themes: the fragility of justice, and the police and their corruption.
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Sidney Lumet always preferred to work in New York City and shunned the dominance of Hollywood.
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Sidney Lumet claimed that "the diversity of the City, its many ethnic neighborhoods, its art and its crime, its sophistication and its corruption, its beauty and its ugliness, all feed into what inspires him".
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Sidney Lumet felt that in order to create, it is important to confront reality on a daily basis.
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For Sidney Lumet, "New York is filled with reality; Hollywood is a fantasyland".
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Sidney Lumet was attracted to crime-related stories in New York City urban settings where the criminals get caught in a vortex of events they can neither understand nor control, but are forced to resolve.
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Sidney Lumet's films were characterized by a strong emphasis on family life, often showing tensions within the family.
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Sidney Lumet was a visionary film-maker whose movies made an indelible mark on our popular culture with their stirring commentary on our society.
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Sidney Lumet had always preferred naturalism or realism, according to Joanna Rapf.
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Sidney Lumet did not like the "decorator's look", where the camera could call attention to itself.
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Sidney Lumet edited his films so the camera was unobtrusive.
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Sidney Lumet disliked CinemaScope and never filmed in an aspect ratio wider than 1.85:1.
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Sidney Lumet has been recognized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the following films:.
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Sidney Lumet has received the Berlin International Film Festival's Golden Bear for 12 Angry Men.
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Sidney Lumet received four nominations for the Cannes Film Festival Palme d'Or for the films Long Day's Journey into Night, The Hill, The Appointment, and A Stranger Among Us.
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Sidney Lumet received a Venice Film Festival Golden Lion award nomination for Prince of the City.
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Sidney Lumet's films have thereby continually given us the "quintessential hero acting in defiance of peer group authority and asserting his own code of moral values".
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Sidney Lumet is one of the most important film directors in the history of American cinema, and his work has left an indelible mark on both audiences and the history of film itself.
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Al Pacino, upon hearing of Sidney Lumet's death, stated that with his films, "he leaves a great legacy, but more than that, to the people close to him, he will remain the most civilized of humans and the kindest man I have ever known".
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Boston Herald writer James Verniere observes that "at a time when the American film industry is intent on seeing how low it can go, Sidney Lumet remains a master of the morally complex American drama".
69.
Sidney Lumet did not win an individual Academy Award, although he did receive an Academy Honorary Award in 2005 and 14 of his films were nominated for various Oscars, such as Network, which was nominated for 10, winning 4.
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Sidney Lumet had worked with Human Rights First on a media project related to the depiction of torture and interrogation on television.
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Sidney Lumet was married four times; the first three marriages ended in divorce.
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Sidney Lumet was married to actress Rita Gam from 1949 to 1955; to artist and heiress Gloria Vanderbilt from 1956 to 1963; to Gail Jones from 1963 to 1978; and to Mary Bailey Gimbel from 1980 until his death.
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Sidney Lumet wrote the screenplay for the film Rachel Getting Married, as well as co-creating two television series with Alex Kurtzman, The Silence of the Lambs sequel Clarice, and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.
74.
Sidney Lumet died at the age of 86 on April 9,2011, in his residence in Manhattan from lymphoma.