James Foley obituary

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American film director best known for Glengarry Glen Ross and At Close Range The film director James Foley, who has died from brain cancer aged 71, was a self-effacing and shrewd stylist whose camerawork always served the actors and the psychology of the characters. This thespian focus was best showcased in his 1992 adaptation of David Mamet’s stage play Glengarry Glen Ross ; its heavyweight cast, which included Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon , Alec Baldwin, Ed Harris and Kevin Spacey, might have overwhelmed a less purposeful supervisor. But in his hands this dissection of American capitalism, set in a beleaguered real-estate office, became an actors’ masterclass; the cast would turn up on their days off to watch each other work. Foley had been convinced to direct it by a new version of Mamet’s script that broke down what on stage had been cerebral monologues into pithy, visceral repartee. Accordingly, the director insisted on casting “great actors, people with movie charisma, to give it wat...
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‘My moment of glory’: Nicolas Cage lookalikes assemble in London

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To mark the release of his new film, hundreds of people who sort of look like the actor gather outside Prince Charles cinema

On a sunny, bustling late afternoon outside a cinema in Soho, central London, more than 100 people have gathered, a number of whom sort of, if you squint, look a little bit like the actor Nicolas Cage.

There is a Raising Arizona Cage, moustachioed and with a Hawaiian shirt. There are several Con Air Cages in white vests, one of whom has a toy bunny in a small cardboard box. Several can genuinely claim an uncanny likeness to the actor; one or two others might uncharitably be said to be closer to Cage’s character in Face/Off, who surgically swaps his own distinctive features for the face of someone else – in that case, John Travolta – who looks nothing like him.

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