John Shea (11/08 Invisible Sign of My Own)
Excerpt from Celebrity Gossip 11/14/08: John Shea | An Invisible Sign of My Own | Pics on Spokeo
Jessica Alba Has a “Profound Love” for Honor Marie
Back on the set of her new movie alongside co-star John Shea, Jessica Alba continued filming “An Invisible Sign of my Own” in New York City on Friday (November 14).
© Celebrity Gossip
Excerpt from Mahon About Town 3/14/09: John Shea
Catching Up With: John Shea
March 14, 2009
I got in touch with actor and writer John Shea last week to find out what he’s been working on. When does John sleep, I want to know. Here’s what he wrote:
Nice to hear from you; I guess if we can’t play catch we can play catch up. As usual I’m juggling lots of different projects. These days my work life breaks down into both acting and writing and directing projects. Acting: Besides the recurring role I play on “Gossip Girl” and a guest starring role on “The Eleventh Hour”, I have two films getting ready for release. In “An Invisible Sign”, I co-star with Jessica Alba, Sonia Braga and Chris Messina; Jessica plays my daughter, Sonia my wife. It’s a coming of age drama in which Jessica breaks out of the psychological prison I’m in and tries to make a life of her own.
© Mahon About Town
Excerpt from Beyond Hollywood 4/6/11: John Shea
Jessica Alba is an Awkward Math Genius in An Invisible Sign
06 April 2011 - by Nix
It’s definitely a major step out of her comfort zone, which probably explains why it’s not getting a whole lot of attention and is already on VOD and scheduled to open in select theaters May 6, 2011 from IFC Films.
...
Starring Jessica Alba, Chris Messina, JK Simmons, John Shea, Bailee Madison, Sonia Braga, and directed by Marilyn Agrelo.
© Beyond Hollywood
Excerpt from NY Times 4/27/11: John Shea
May Release Schedule: MAY 6
By DAVE KEHR Published: April 27, 2011
AN INVISIBLE SIGN Raised by a brilliant but mentally ill mathematician (John Shea), a young woman (Jessica Alba) must learn to cope with the real world when she accepts a job as an elementary school teacher. Marilyn Agrelo directed; with Bailee Madison, Chris Messina, J. K. Simmons and Sonia Braga.
© New York Times
Excerpt from Variety 5/4/11: John Shea
Review: ‘An Invisible Sign’
May 4, 2011 | 07:12AM PT John Anderson
Back in the reality-based world, Young Mona (Bailee Madison) enjoys a close relationship with her father (John Shea), sharing his love of mathematics and running, until the day Dad has a breakdown. Whether it’s a minor stroke or the onset of depression or schizophrenia is unclear, but in any event, Mona starts making math-based deals with God. If she skips rope exactly 43 times, for instance, Dad will get better. He never does.
© Variety
Excerpt from New York Times 5/6/11: John Shea
Strength in Numbers
By JEANNETTE CATSOULIS Published: May 5, 2011
The film’s flinching heroine is Mona (Jessica Alba), an obsessive-compulsive 20-something with the fashion preferences of a 12-year-old. Mona cares about only two things: numbers and her father (John Shea), a brilliant mathematician whose brain is slowly losing its grip on reality. Devastated by Daddy’s decline, Mona moons around the house until her weary mother (poor Sonia Braga) throws her out. “She’ll never find an apartment with a toilet as strong as ours!” whines her father, his male grasp of priorities still fully functional.
© New York Times
Excerpt from Covering Media 5/6/11: John Shea
An Invisible Sign (2010/2011) Also Known As: An Invisible Sign of My Own, An 1nvisible Si6n
Opened: 05/06/2011 Limited
IFC Center 05/06/2011 - 05/12/2011 7 days
Sunset 5/LA 05/13/2011 - 05/19/2011 7 days
DVD 11/01/2011
Biographies
JOHN SHEA (Dad)
Writer, director and Emmy Award winning actor John Shea recently finished shooting Jimmy Hemphill's romantic comedy The Trouble With the Truth with Lea Thompson. Area 51 recently premiered on the SyFy Network and will be distributed by Lions Gate. Marilyn Agrelo's An Invisible Sign of My Own with Jessica Alba and Sonia Braga premieres soon. On stage he recently played the French painter Pierre Bonnard in Israel Horovitz's Off B'Way production of The Secret of Madame Bonnard's Bath. As a film actor, Shea burst onto the international scene in 1982 with his depiction of a young American idealist caught up in the violence of Chilean politics in Costa Gavras' Academy Award-winning political thriller Missing. The film, which won the Palme D' Or at Cannes, also starred Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek. He was later honored by Amnesty International for his political work following the film's release. One the most versatile actors of his generation Shea's diverse film credits include the British film noir Hussy opposite Helen Mirren; Windy City opposite Kate Capshaw, (Best Actor Award at the Montreal Film Festival); the French thriller Lune de Miel (Honeymoon) opposite Nathalie Baye, a film he shot in both French and English; Alan Alda's romantic comedy A New Life opposite Ann-Margret; Disney's comedy Honey, I Blew Up the Baby with Rick Moranis; Stealing Home with Jodie Foster; Uri Barbash's Israeli epic Unsettled Land opposite Kelly McGillis; and the Sundance indie film The Adventures of Sebastian Cole. Recent film work includes Scott Dacko's political thriller The Insurgents, Roosa Toivoinen's The Italian Key, and Achchamundu for Indian director Arun Vaidyanathan, shot in English and Tamil. On series television Shea most recently starred in Mutant X ( Gemini Award nom, Best Actor). Mutant X, based on Marvel comic's X-Men, played in one hundred twenty countries and was honored at Le Festival de Television de Monte Carlo. He currently appears on Gossip Girl. On television Shea also portrayed the iconic sociopath Lex Luthor in the international hit series Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman. He won his Emmy Award for his portrayal of a man caught in the maelstrom of a landmark reproductive case in the miniseries Baby M, with JoBeth Williams, and scored praise for his role as the determined DA who brought infant killer Diana Downs (played by Farrah Fawcett) to justice in the Peabody Award-winning Small Sacrifices. In a career marked by widely divergent choices Shea played Israel's most famous spy opposite Eli Wallach in the BBC/ HBO production The Impossible Spy, which earned him the Golden Panda Award from China, and then a young Nazi (with Bill Nighy) in Hitler's S.S. He was the crusading father of an abused boy in Do You Know The Muffin Man? and then an incestuous abuser in See Jane Run. He portrayed Bobby Kennedy in the BAFTA Award-winning miniseries Kennedy with Martin Sheen, and then sang with Lenny Henry in the BBC road movie Coast to Coast. He got laughs with Jack Lemmon and Dudley Moore in Weekend in the Country and then terrorized Mimi Rogers in Ladykiller. Among his many television credits are the lead role in Grant Tinker's ensemble drama series WIOU for CBS and guest starring roles on Sex and the City and Law and Order. He also starred with Ellen Burstyn in the miniseries A Will of Their Own and with Patrick Bergin and Virginia Madsen in the international thriller The Apocalypse Watch. Shea's New York theatre work is also marked by diversity. At the age of 26 he made his Broadway debut in Isaac B. Singer's Yentl opposite Tovah Feldshuh garnering the Theatre World Award for Most Promising Actor. Among his many theatre credits since are Arthur Kopit's End of the World, directed on Broadway by Hal Prince; the MTC production of Steven Poliakoff's American Day (Drama Desk nomination as Best Actor); Peter Parnell's romantic comedy The Sorrows of Stephen at the Public Theatre; the London West End production of Larry Kramer's AIDS drama The Normal Heart; and A. R. Gurney's Off-B' Way hit The Dining Room, later recorded for PBS' Great Performances. Classical theatre productions include England's National Theatre production of Ibsen's Rosmersholm at La Mama with Suzanne Bertish; Long Day's Journey Into Night at the Goodman Theatre (Joseph Jefferson Nomination, Best Actor); Philip Barry's The Animal Kingdom, co-starring Sigourney Weaver; Romeo and Juliet at Circle in the Square and Brecht's Man is Man with Estelle Parsons at the Yale Rep. Shea made his Carnegie Hall debut as the title character in Stravinsky's The Soldier's Tale, directed by Tom O'Horgan. Shea is also a filmmaker. He co-wrote and directed the independent film Southie, starring Donnie Wahlberg, Rose McGowan, Amanda Peet, Laurence Tierney and Anne Meara. A drama set in Irish-American South Boston, Southie won the Jury Award for Best Independent Film at the Seattle International Film Festival and was distributed by Lions Gate. After directing Southie, Shea returned to the New York stage, performing Off-Broadway in Nancy Hasty's The Director, which earned him rave reviews for his portrayal of a Machiavellian avante-garde theater director; Down the Garden Paths, a dramatic comedy by Anne Meara about a quantum physicist with borscht-belt comedian parents, co- starring Eli Wallach and Anne Jackson; and the Pulitzer Prize-winning How I Learned to Drive opposite Molly Ringwald. Grey Lady, a romantic thriller that he wrote for Beacon Pictures and will direct, is currently in preproduction. He has also completed The JunkiePries t a screenplay based on the life of Daniel Egan, the crusading Franciscan friar. For many years Shea has read for Selected Shorts live from Symphony Space on NPR; for his work reading audio books was nominated for the Audie Award as Best Male Narrator for performing Ted Bell's international thrillers Hawke, Assassin, Spy, Pirate, Nick of Time and Czar. A native of Massachusetts, John Shea received his B.A. from Bates College where he performed on both the varsity debating and football teams. He then earned a Masters in Directing from the Yale School of Drama studying with mentors including Ming Cho Lee, Jerzy Kosinski, Arthur Penn, Sidney Lumet, and Robert Brustein. Shea lives with his wife, the painter Melissa MacLeod, and his family in New York and on Nantucket Island where he is a founding member of the Nantucket Film Festival and the Artistic Director of the Theatre Workshop of Nantucket. He was given the John F. Kennedy Award for outstanding cultural contribution by a person of Irish-American descent.
© Covering Media
Excerpt from Hollywood Reporter 5/7/11: John Shea
An Invisible Sign: Film Review
4:30 PM PDT 5/7/2011 by Todd McCarthy
Painfully withdrawn, reticent and lacking in confidence since her genius mathematician father (John Shea) began to go nuts, Mona Gray (Jessica Alba) is cajoled into taking a job as a first grade math teacher despite a lack of credentials.
© Hollywood Reporter
Excerpt from DVD Talk 6/23/11: John Shea
An Invisible Sign: IFC Films // PG-13 // June 24, 2011
Review by Brian Orndorf | posted June 23, 2011
A gifted child, Mona Gray (Jessica Alba) has always found herself drawn to mathematics, staying as close as possible to her beloved father (John Shea). When her dad falls into an indeterminate state of psychological fracture, Mona is devastated, swearing off the pleasures of life to assist his recuperation.
© DVD Talk