Noah Taylor can make a troubled young man feel worth listening to with little outward fuss. We rate that restraint, especially in Shine, though casting him repeatedly as the sensitive outsider risks wasting it.
Fi1m perspective
In Shine (1996), Noah Taylor makes the pressure on a young pianist feel hard to bear. As the adolescent David Helfgott, he keeps our attention on the boy rather than the promise of another musical performance. We were moved by him in the family scenes because his vulnerability makes the demands placed on David so uncomfortable. Scott Hicks’s film takes storytelling shortcuts, but Taylor gives us good reason to stay with it.
His early leading roles in The Year My Voice Broke (1987) and its sequel, Flirting (1991), established him in Australian cinema. The sensitive outsider became a familiar assignment, and the international attention from Shine was followed by supporting work in Hollywood films and television. His economical acting fits the ensembles of Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous (2000) and Wes Anderson’s The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004). He can suggest that someone has plenty on their mind without doing much with his face or hands.
Geoffrey Rush gives us more to notice as the adult David in Shine, which makes Taylor’s contribution easy to underestimate. Yet the change of actor does not feel like the arrival of a different character. Taylor supplies the vulnerability that lets us believe the pressure; Rush makes space for humour without reducing David to eccentric behaviour. The continuity matters because Hicks needs us to care about the man away from the piano as well as when he plays.
There is a limit to how often we want to see Taylor cast as another sensitive outsider. That association restricted his leading opportunities after the mid-1990s, and repeated casting makes it too easy to assume we know what he will do. His ruthless mercenary Locke in Game of Thrones (2013–14) at least gives that expectation something to contend with. Start with Shine, though, and resist treating the adolescent scenes as a wait for Rush.
Biography
Noah George Taylor is an English-Australian actor born on 4 September 1969 in London to Australian parents. His family moved to Australia when he was five, and he grew up in Melbourne. He began acting in his teens after leaving school at 16, with early roles in Australian films including The Year My Voice Broke (1987) and its sequel Flirting (1991).
Taylor gained international recognition for portraying the adolescent David Helfgott in the 1996 film Shine. He has since appeared in films such as Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), Predestination (2014) and Edge of Tomorrow (2014), and in television series including Game of Thrones (as Locke) and Peaky Blinders (as Darby Sabini).
