From “Orson Welles Volume 2: Hello Americans” by Simon Callow:
Agnes Moorehead was perhaps the most remarkable of all the actors in the Mercury stable. Like many of the others, she had first worked with Welles onradio…In addition to the high spirits and technical skill of the other actors, she brought an extraordinary emotional depth and a transforming imagination to her work, which made each of her roles uniquely expressive; like the very greatest actors, she forged a mask that both liberated her and imprinted itself indelibly on the spectator’s mind. Welles took her to Hollywood with him, and in “Citizen Kane,” cast her in the small role of the mother of the young Charles Foster Kane. Noting the terrifyingly intense determination she brought to the part, allied to and expressed by the American Primitive gauntness of her appearance…he and [Greg] Toland shot her in such a way as to give her work maximum impact….There was in the actress a latent (and sometimes naked) neediness, a disappointment in herself and, especially, her physical appearance, that can often be the source of exceptional power. Her greatest admirers as directors–and the directors whom she most admired–were Orson Welles and Charles Laughton, and both of them had a particular protective affection for her beyond their respect for her work.
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