Moreno’s tumultuous romance with Brando

Rita Moreno is one of only six women to have bagged the EGOT—Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony awards, said Simon Hattenstone in Guardian (U.K.). But her introduction to show business was brutal. Raped by her agent as a teenager, she was preyed on by studio bosses for years and cast mainly as “little island girls,” on account of her Puerto Rican heritage. After winning the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for playing Anita in 1961’s West Side Story, Moreno didn’t work for seven years, because, she says, she was offered only roles in “crappy” gang movies. Her personal life wasn’t easy, either. In 1953, at age 21, Moreno fell in love with Marlon Brando. “He had a gorgeous intelligence. He was the funniest person I’ve ever met.” Plus, he was “incredible” in bed. But Brando was also monstrous. He forced her to get an abortion, and while involved with her he got married twice. She sought revenge by dating a 25-year-old Elvis Presley—who was “sweet” but boring— and finally broke with Brando in 1961, after attempting suicide at his home. The pair reconciled years later, and Brando would sometimes call Moreno to say, “You were the only woman in my life who was able to make that right turn.” What did he mean? “That I didn’t need him anymore. That I found a sense of dignity about myself.”

Strong’s intense methods

Jeremy Strong tries to lose himself while acting, said Michael Schulman in The New Yorker. Since being cast as Kendall Roy— the bro-y, desperately ambitious son of a media mogul in HBO’s Succession—he has tried to utterly inhabit the role, wearing Kendall’s clothes when he’s not on camera and isolating himself from the actors who play his estranged siblings. “To me, the stakes are life and death,” says Strong, 42. “I take [Kendall] as seriously as I take my own life.” Some crew members on past projects have snickered at his full-immersion methods. Cast as Robert Downey Jr.’s brother in the 2014 movie The Judge, he paced around the set sobbing loudly as Downey shot a funeral scene, even though Strong wasn’t called that day. “I think you have to go through whatever the ordeal is that the character has to go through,” Strong says. While playing Yippie activist Jerry Rubin in last year’s The Trial of the Chicago 7, he asked to be sprayed with real tear gas during a protest scene. (He was denied that, since cast and crew members would have been endangered.) Fellow actors either admire Strong’s dedication or find his demands, like refusing to rehearse, difficult. Strong, who spent years struggling to break through, used to feel desperate to prove himself. “Now, I feel like I’m up against myself in the ring.”