Kevin Kline: 5 Awesome Performances And 5 That Sucked

2. Nathan Landau - Sophie's Choice (1982)

Kline was a big deal on the Broadway circuit before he ever appeared on the silver screen, garnering multiple Tony awards and even being dubbed "the American Olivier" after his numerous appearances at the New York Shakespeare Festival. When he finally took his first film role in Alan J. Pakula's adaptation of Sophie's Choice, he found himself starring opposite none other than Meryl Streep. Streep had already garnered one Academy Award and would win her second for the role of Sophie, but Kline's first screen performance deserves laudation as well. Nathan Landau, Sophie's short-fuse lover, is by turns tender and abusive toward her, swinging violently from one mood to the next as the film progresses. The explosive first scene, in which Nathan is convinced that Sophie has been unfaithful to him and proceeds to heap a brutal verbal attack on her, perhaps shows Kline still attached to his theatre roots; he is loud and animated, immediately projecting his character above the frail figure of Sophie, and one might think Kline had just ignored the rolling cameras. But his next scene, in which he literally apologizes for his prior outburst, sees Kline enter into the cinematic tradition. He is quiet, no doubt holding that capacity for rage at bay, and achieves no small amount of charm as he sits casually on a windowsill. Later in the film, Nathan is revealed to be a paranoid schizophrenic, and all of the turbulent emotion required by such a part would come to prove that Kline was a film actor here to stay.