We're celebrating PTA this week for his 50th birthday!
by Nathaniel R
Famed auteur Paul Thomas Anderson is not, perhaps, the creature of habit we expected him to be after his first three films made him a legend-to-be and suggested a steady stable of actors shifting guises with each film like a Scorsese or an Altman or an Allen. Since that magnum ensemble opus Magnolia (1999) his films have shifted closer to the traditional one or two man focal point employed by most auteurs even as they've gotten more experimental in other ways. It's as if he was purposefully shaking off the Altman-progeny tag.
That's a wee bit disappointing since auteurs who are particularly genius at assembling a whole mess of actors and watching the idiosyncratic group dymanic spark are few and far between. With PTA's next project set to be a drama about a famous child actor in high school, it's unlikely we'll see many repeats from his troupe, though there's always a possibility one or two of them show up as a teacher or parent or co-star on set. Let's look at the actors he's used the most in his filmography thus far...
Look at how young they were! P.T. and his gang at the beginning
THE P.T. PLAYERS
(Quantitatively Speaking)
from 8 films
1990s - HARD EIGHT (1997) | BOOGIE NIGHTS (1997) | MAGNOLIA (1999)
2000s - PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE (2002) | THERE WILL BE BLOOD (2007)
2010s - THE MASTER (2012) | INHERENT VICE (2014) | PHANTOM THREAD (2017)
2020s - one film in preproduction. no cast yet announced
5+ films
PHILIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN (Hard Eight, Boogie, Magnolia, Punch-Drunk, Master, plus the music video "Try")
Sadly this wildly acclaimed actor died just two years after The Master. Paul Thomas Anderson clearly loved him so if he hadn't died perhaps we would have seen him in Inherent Vice?
3+
PHILIP BAKER HALL (Hard Eight, Boogie, Magnolia, and the short "Cigarettes & Coffee")
JOHN C REILLY (Hard Eight, Boogie, Magnolia + the short "Flagpole Special" and the music video "Across the Universe")
MELORA WATERS (Hard Eight, Boogie, Magnolia, and the voice of the band in The Master and the music video "Try")
Philip Baker Hall is now 88 years old but still acting. PTA really ought to give him one last great movie role! We expect that John C Reilly and Melora Walters will work with him again at some point, but why isn't he grabbing them each time?
3 films
LUIS GUZMAN (Boogie, Magnolia, Punch-Drunk)
2+ films
ALLAN GRAF (Boogie, Magnolia + stunt work on some others)
THOMAS JANE (Boogie, Magnolia + the music video "Try")
2 films
DANIEL DAY-LEWIS (Blood, Phantom)
ALFRED MOLINA (Boogie, Magnolia)
CHARLEY MORGAN (Master, Inherent Vice)
DON MCMANUS (Magnolia, Punch-Drunk Love)
ERICA SULLIVAN (Blood, Inherent Vice)
JILLIAN BELL (Master, Inherent Vice)
JIM MESKIMEN (Magnolia, Blood)
JOAQUIN PHOENIX (Master, Inherent Vice)
JULIANNE MOORE (Boogie, Magnolia)
KEVIN BREZNAHAN (Magnolia, Blood)
KEVIN J. O'CONNOR (Blood, Master)
MISSY SPELL TANNER (Boogie, Magnolia)
RICKEY JAY (Boogie, Magnolia)
RICO BUENO (Boogie, Punch-Drunk)
ROBERT DOWNEY SR (Boogie, Magnolia)
WILLIAM H MACY (Boogie, Magnolia)
DAVID WARHOFSKY (Master, Blood)
From this group we weep that he's never reunited with Julianne Moore, who was so indelible in both her PTA features. Who else do YOU wish he'd work with again? (I'm rooting for three Inherent Vice players to show up again: Hong Chau, Josh Brolin, and Jeannie Berlin.)
1 + film special cases
JON BRION (Boogie + the composer on 3 films)
MICHAEL PENN (Boogie + composer on 2 films and a music video)
MARY LYNN RAJSKUB (Punch-Drunk + voice work in Magnolia)
MAYA RUDOLPH (Vice + his real life partner who he met on his shadow-director gig on the set of Robert Altman's Prairie Home Companion to assist the ailing director with insurance company demands)
MICHAEL STEIN (Boogie + the original Dirk Diggler in a short film)
PAUL F TOMKINS (Blood + voice work in Magnolia)
ROBERT RIDGELY (Boogie, plus that Dirk Diggler short in the Burt Reynolds part)
P.S.
While this list is about actors Paul Thomas Anderson has worked repeatedly with several musicians and craftspersons. For example:
multiple music videos
6 for HAIM
5 for Fiona Apple
3 for Radiohead
2 for Joanna Newsom (and she's the narrator of Inherent Vice)
other frequent collaborators
Mark Bridges -costume designer of ALL films
Robert Elswit -cinematographer on 6 films
Cassandra Kulukundis - casting on 6 films
Jonny Greenwood - composer on 4 films and the subject of his documentary Junun
Dylan Tichenor - editor on 4 films
David Crank - production design on 3 films
Leslie Jones - editor on 3 films
Amy Wells - set decoration on 3 films