An evening with the recently deceased

I had a weird experience watching The Circle on Tuesday night. It was like I was watching a ghost, or rather, ghosts.

Because I was.

Emma Watson is the movie’s protagonist, and I’m quite happy to say that she’s alive and well.

The actors who played her parents? Not so much.

When Glenne Headley appeared as her mother, I thought, “Oh too bad, she just died.” It was on June 8^th of 2017, actually, so nearly a year ago.

Then I looked at the man sitting next to her at the dinner table, playing her husband and father to Watson’s character. He was a bit bearded and scruffy, and he was playing a character with MS, making it difficult to immediately identify the actor. But then it finally happened and I thought, “Wait wait wait … is that Bill Paxton? Shit, he’s dead too!”

That happened on February 25^th of 2017.

Paxton died about two months before the release of James Ponsoldt’s film. Headley died about two months after.

Both deaths were sudden. Paxton had a stroke and Headley a pulmonary embolism. Yikes. They were both heart related.

It’s not strange to see an actor who has recently died appearing in a recent movie, as many actors are working up until their sudden deaths. It is a bit strange to see it happen with two characters in the same movie, even if The Circle was only a posthumous release for one of them. And two characters who were married to each other in the movie, too.

I wonder how Emma Watson feels about all this.

I guess it’s been a pretty morbid week on The Audient with yesterday’s post about Margot Kidder’s death. Here’s hoping there are livelier days ahead.