One of the great fictions perpetuated by most actor-interviews is that thesps have control of their own careers. They don't. Insecure, mindful of keeping in the public eye (if they have made the awful decision to be a 'movie star' rather than an impecunious jobbing actor), and beset by money worries like the rest of us (you should see Michael Madsen's overheads), they will - apart from a select few - accept work when it is offered. If the project then turns out to be pants, they are contractually stuck with it: remember the $8m lawsuit levelled against Kim Basinger when she (wisely, self-respect-wise) dropped out of the execrable Boxing Helena. Hence I think Mena Suvari's payoff line in the latest Orange cinema ads, where she plays Joan of Arc recast as a cheerleader,  is more telling than it at first seems: "Can someone untie me so I can quit?"

These thought were prompted by seeing Nicolas Cage in Next (a movie without an ending, in which he plays a character without a personality) and Ghost Rider (a movie without a spine in which he plays a character without a head). I was going to suggest Cage hired Bruce Willis's agent, given the way the ageing, balding Willis has entered a late-period career-revival in the likes of Sin City, 16 Blocks, even his defiantly unsympathetic turn in FAst Food Nation. But then I saw Perfect Stranger, and that idea went to hell. Because in this deeply rubbishy thriller-with-not-much-of-a-twist, Willis plays a leery ad exec. So naturally, the smirk is back. The smirk that was bolted to Willis' face from about the time of Moonlighting until he and Demi Moore broke up. We love to punish actors for their supposed hubris in making us worship them. Bruce's recent, downbeat roles (drunks, deadbeats, disappointed men) seemed like an act of penance. But the smirk wiped it all away.

I am not going to crow, however. Especially not over Perfect Stranger's other casualty, Halle Berry, who is now exhibiting the weird physical perfection of a waxwork, and who genuinely hasn't had a decent role since Monster's Ball (Jinx in Die Another Day was eye-catching at best, and as someone else said, her X-Men character should have been called Cleavage rather than Storm). Perfect Stranger is not Halle's fault. It is probably not her agent's fault. (The film could have been The Last Seduction rather than the Poundstretcher Basic Instinct.) There is something deeply unplesant over those who mock actors stuck in turkeys, especially when that actor is the first black woman to win the best actress Oscar. We should commiserate, and understand... but we should not, under any circumstances, go and see Perfect Stranger.

Two quick notes. I'm only guessing here, but I reckon the creators of Moliere, in which comic events in the writer's life foreshadow his creation of Tartuffe, might just conceivably have seen Shakespeare in Love. And the publicity notes for the Tony Gatlif's forthcoming Transylvania describe star Asia Argento as having "a venomous beauty that eats away at the screen. I can't argue with that. But her character Zingarina is also EXTREMELY ANNOYING, and I wouldn't be surprised if the suffers from the kind of objections from Romanians that Kazakhz levelled against Borat. More later...