Interesting insight from film critic Robbie Collin, here:
One of my own favourites came in a film in which we never saw him: the Pixar animation Ratatouille, in which he played Anton Ego, a seemingly unpleasable food critic whose heart is finally melted by a perfectly prepared portion of the French dish.
“The world is often unkind to new talent; new creations,” he says in the film’s closing scenes. “The new needs friends. Last night, I experienced something new: an extraordinary meal from a singularly unexpected source.”
I’ll admit I shed a tear when I first heard O’Toole speak those lines, and yet the words are delivered with such simplicity you can scarcely detect a scrap of the actor’s craft in them. What’s the trick? Acknowledging each emotion without sinking into it. Navigating the script like a seasoned traveller. And above all, not minding that it hurts.
