Great Performances

By RICHARD CORLISS

"Audiences don't know somebody sits down and writes a picture," says the cynical scenarist played by William Holden in Billy Wilder's 1950 Sunset Blvd. "They think the actors make it up as they go along." O.K., most actors don't write their own dialogue. But they are more than handsome lugs and ladies. They are the script's words made flesh, the director's dreams embodied. And for us people out there in the dark, actors are our best, our baddest, our deepest and most glamorous selves.

An actor doesn't need to think up a picture. He can just take it over, make its personality his. Hustle & Flow might sputter without the seductive screen intelligence of Terrence Howard. An actor can anchor a movie, as Maria Bello does in A History of Violence, or steal it, like Gong Li in Memoirs of a Geisha.

It's great to see a lifetime of craft and care in Tommy Lee Jones' face; and to find, in Owen Kline, now 14, the boldest understanding of a weird, endearing kid.

In an awards season that revs up next Monday with the Golden Globes and peaks on March 5, Oscar night, some of the actors celebrated here will hear their names called; some won't. We're not giving out statuettes, just thank-you notes to seven people who wrote their artistry on the screen.