I thought he was supposed to be Hervey. :) No, I know what you mean, and it's true. This, btw, is the kind of thing that could be fixed with several other problems - just give Hephaistion scenes with the other companions - Ptolemy for starters, since he's in need of a personality - where he can be showcased in his competent second-in-command-ness, and they debate what's going. As ever in a movie, there's a time problem, but again I have to point to Lawrence of Arabia, which managed to get across in addition to Lawrence himself what Ali, Feisal, Auda Abu Tai, Daoud, Farraj and even Allenby were like. Hell, even Lowell the photographer gets a character scene.
Mel Gibson: I've never seen Braveheart (nothing to do with Gibson, I just haven't), but I thought he was excellent in smaller scale character roles, such as Maverick, or in the sole Bounty film sympathetic to William Bligh, The Bounty, where he played Fletcher Christian (to Anthony Hopkins' Bligh), whereas I thought he really wasn't good in Hamlet, but then Zeffirelli should have stuck with the Italian Shakespeare plays, the film in general wasn't very good.
Actor able to sell charismatic larger-than-life historical character to me, hm, let's see: Katherine Hepburn as Eleanor of Aquitaine in The Lion in Winter, always. (Ditto for O'Toole as Henry, and he's a double entry as Lawrence.) Of the many ladies who played Elizabeth I., Glenda Jackson definitely in the BBC series, Helen Mirren in the two parter, and Judi Dench in her Shakespeare-in-love cameo. Bette Davis undoubtedly would have with another script, but I thought the one for Elizabeth and Essex just wasn't up to scratch. Oh, and young Jean Simmons was charming as teenage Elizabeth in "Young Bess", but that script didn't call for her being larger than life or show the slightest bit of Elizabeth's darker side, so it doesn't count. Speaking of the Tudors: while The Private life of Henry VIII by Alexander Korda is absolute (entertaining) nonsense historically, Charles Laughton really is great in the title role, not just when he's chewing up the scenery (literally) but also in the smaller moments, and despite the many later Henries (all played by more handsome and less heavy actors, and not just in Henry's youth when he's supposed to be fit and good looking), Laughton remains the definite one for me.
Danton, directed by Andrzeji Wajda, starring a young Gerard Depardieu in the title role, Wojciech Pszoniak as Robespierre and Patrice Chereau (otherwise mainly known as a director) as Camille Desmoulins, remains my go to example for the French revolutionaries. Depardieu (easily as flawed a human being as Gibson, and in later years often his own caricature as an actor, but really superb here) is fantastic as Danton, and he needs to sell us both on Danton the (also extremely flawed) hedonist and Danton the too-late acting when he does speak at the trial, and make it understandable why he has such a following. (The film was also the first fiction, decades before Hilary Mantel in A Place of Greater Safety, where I've seen Robespierre characterized not as a monster but too caught up in the logic of the system he's go-created to act other than as he does, with the awareness at the end that the deaths of Desmoulins in particular and Danton have killed his humanity and foreshadow his own.)
Last but certainly not least in my personal entries of "actor making me believe they are a historical character famed for their larger than life charisma": Ben Kingsley as Gandhi. This one is especially remarkable because he has to portray Gandhi growing into his charisma, not having it from the get go when he's an Indian lawyer in South Africa who believes in the Empire and is a terrible public speaker (at first), but you can see it happening, and later you, or rather, I, believe he is able to get thousands moving.
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Mel Gibson: I've never seen Braveheart (nothing to do with Gibson, I just haven't), but I thought he was excellent in smaller scale character roles, such as Maverick, or in the sole Bounty film sympathetic to William Bligh, The Bounty, where he played Fletcher Christian (to Anthony Hopkins' Bligh), whereas I thought he really wasn't good in Hamlet, but then Zeffirelli should have stuck with the Italian Shakespeare plays, the film in general wasn't very good.
Actor able to sell charismatic larger-than-life historical character to me, hm, let's see: Katherine Hepburn as Eleanor of Aquitaine in The Lion in Winter, always. (Ditto for O'Toole as Henry, and he's a double entry as Lawrence.) Of the many ladies who played Elizabeth I., Glenda Jackson definitely in the BBC series, Helen Mirren in the two parter, and Judi Dench in her Shakespeare-in-love cameo. Bette Davis undoubtedly would have with another script, but I thought the one for Elizabeth and Essex just wasn't up to scratch. Oh, and young Jean Simmons was charming as teenage Elizabeth in "Young Bess", but that script didn't call for her being larger than life or show the slightest bit of Elizabeth's darker side, so it doesn't count. Speaking of the Tudors: while The Private life of Henry VIII by Alexander Korda is absolute (entertaining) nonsense historically, Charles Laughton really is great in the title role, not just when he's chewing up the scenery (literally) but also in the smaller moments, and despite the many later Henries (all played by more handsome and less heavy actors, and not just in Henry's youth when he's supposed to be fit and good looking), Laughton remains the definite one for me.
Danton, directed by Andrzeji Wajda, starring a young Gerard Depardieu in the title role, Wojciech Pszoniak as Robespierre and Patrice Chereau (otherwise mainly known as a director) as Camille Desmoulins, remains my go to example for the French revolutionaries. Depardieu (easily as flawed a human being as Gibson, and in later years often his own caricature as an actor, but really superb here) is fantastic as Danton, and he needs to sell us both on Danton the (also extremely flawed) hedonist and Danton the too-late acting when he does speak at the trial, and make it understandable why he has such a following. (The film was also the first fiction, decades before Hilary Mantel in A Place of Greater Safety, where I've seen Robespierre characterized not as a monster but too caught up in the logic of the system he's go-created to act other than as he does, with the awareness at the end that the deaths of Desmoulins in particular and Danton have killed his humanity and foreshadow his own.)
Last but certainly not least in my personal entries of "actor making me believe they are a historical character famed for their larger than life charisma": Ben Kingsley as Gandhi. This one is especially remarkable because he has to portray Gandhi growing into his charisma, not having it from the get go when he's an Indian lawyer in South Africa who believes in the Empire and is a terrible public speaker (at first), but you can see it happening, and later you, or rather, I, believe he is able to get thousands moving.