First heard of Clift thro the book by Patricia Bosworth. Read his biog before I saw any of his movies. It was the cover: a man in a suit and a tie carrying a raincoat - windswept. Looked amazing, intriguing, on point.
Ofcourse he was no Steve McQueen; even on screen he seemed way too vulnerable to be that cool.
He was no Brando; he never seemed to fill the screen in the same way as Brando, just the part.
And he was no Dean; he didn't possess that same explosive quality as his ever admiring fan.
No, Clift was none of the above and all the better an actor for it.
Even today, his acting style seems modern, convincing, natural.
Check out his part in From Here to Eternity or The Misfits; for all the talk about the Method, his drugs and his illnesses, there's a realism in his acting which still makes it seem effortless and true even now.
The only line that's wrong in Shakespeare is "holding a mirror up to nature." You hold a magnifying glass up to nature. As an actor you just enlarge it enough so that your audience can identify with a situation. If it were a mirror we would have no art. Clift.
Clift died on this day back in 1966.
