Lawrence, Chastain, Riva in Oscar battle of youth versus experience

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – A young widow, a bayou girl, an elderly woman, a mother and a CIA agent battle it out on Sunday for the Best Actress Oscar, a race that includes the youngest and oldest nominees in the category’s history.

Jennifer Lawrence of “Silver Linings Playbook,” 9-year-old Quvenzhane Wallis from “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” 85-year-old star of “Amour” Emmanuelle Riva, “The Impossible” lead Naomi Watts and “Zero Dark Thirty’s” Jessica Chastain are competing for their first Academy Award.

“Any one of these five can win, it’s one of the most hotly contested races in recent memory,” Scott Feinberg, lead awards analyst for The Hollywood Reporter, told Reuters.

In the long movie campaign season, awards have been split between Lawrence, Chastain and Riva.

Lawrence, 22, who picked up her first Oscar nomination in 2011 for “Winter’s Bone,” was nominated for her portrayal of an endearing young widow in quirky comedy “Silver Linings Playbook.”

The actress won the Golden Globe and Critics’ Choice awards in the comedy acting categories, and bested Chastain for the Screen Actors Guild trophy.

“Jennifer Lawrence fits the perfect profile of a winner. (The voters) love an ingenue at the peak of her career,” Tom O’Neil of awards website GoldDerby.com told Reuters.

“She is queen of popcorn pictures with ‘The Hunger Games’ franchise and she is delivering the kind of dramatic performance in ‘Silver Linings Playbook’ that merit her the ultimate crown,” he added.

Chastain, who landed her first Oscar nod for supporting actress for the 2011 film “The Help,” has picked up the Critics’ Choice Best Actress award, and the Golden Globe for drama actress.

Yet Chastain, 35, an early Oscar front-runner for her role as dogged CIA agent Maya in the Osama bin Laden manhunt thriller “Zero Dark Thirty,” has seen some of her support wane in the wake of criticism for the film’s portrayal of torture, and director Kathryn Bigelow’s omission from the Oscar director’s race.

The race between Chastain and Lawrence has been fueled by reports of a rivalry between the two, which Chastain was forced to deny through her Facebook page last week, calling Lawrence “utterly charming and a great talent.”

But with French actress Riva winning Best Actress at Britain’s version of the Oscars this month, the star of foreign-language entry “Amour” could pull off an upset.

AN OPEN RACE

At age 85, Riva is the oldest Best Actress nominee for her performance as a retired music teacher felled by a series of strokes in “Amour.” Many pundits believe this year is an opportune time to recognize the French actress for her five-decade film career.

“Riva may be helped by the fact that people want to do this now. They’re not going to put it off for her as they might for the other nominees, who are all considerably younger,” Feinberg said.

Chastain and Watts, 44, are nominated for playing characters based on real people. But Feinberg suggested that Watts, who plays a mother torn from her family by a tsunami in “The Impossible,” had another advantage.

“(Voters) like to see that kind of physical transformation and Naomi is playing a real person, which they think is a taller order … you need to provoke more than respect, you need to provoke awe or enthusiasm,” Feinberg said.

“The problem with Jessica Chastain, as good an actress as she is, the part is very cold. It’s hard for people to get excited about it,” he added.

O’Neil noted that the 5,800 members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences – a predominantly male, over 50s group of movie professionals who select the Oscar winners – often vote for younger, attractive actresses in a close contest.

That would give Lawrence or perhaps child star Wallis an edge.

Wallis was a surprise Oscar nominee for her first acting role in mythical drama “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” playing a defiant young girl in an impoverished Louisiana bayou community.

“Oscar voters love little girls,” O’Neil said, citing Tatum O’Neal and Anna Paquin who won in the supporting category when they were children.

“Just because she is an adorable 9-year-old does not mean we should dismiss her as a contender. Oscar voters have historically shown that they love to give big hugs to little girls,” O’Neil said.

(Reporting By Piya Sinha-Roy; editing by Jill Serjeant and Stacey Joyce)

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Ask an Expert: Questions About Hearing Loss? A Help Desk

This week’s Ask the Expert features Neil J. DiSarno, who will answer questions about hearing loss. Dr. DiSarno is the chief staff officer for audiology at the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. From 1998 to 2012 he was chairman of the department of communication sciences and disorders at Missouri State University. Following are the types of questions that Dr. DiSarno is prepared to answer.

Neil J. DiSarno of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.

¶My wife has told me she believes I’m not hearing as well as I used to. What sort of specialist should I see and what can I expect?

¶I’ve been told that I should consider using hearing aids. If I decide to, how much better am I likely to hear?

¶I’ve noticed that my 2-year-old granddaughter’s speech is not developing properly. Neither her mother or the pediatrician seem to be concerned, but I suspect there is a problem. What do you suggest?

¶I use hearing aids, but still have great difficulty hearing conversation in restaurants and in large group settings. Is this common and is there something more that I can do to improve my ability to function in those settings?

Please leave your questions in the comments section. Answers will be posted on Wednesday, Feb. 27. (Unfortunately, not all questions may be answered.)

Booming: Living Through the Middle Ages offers news and commentary about baby boomers, anchored by Michael Winerip. You can connect with Michael Winerip on Facebook here. You can follow Booming via RSS here or visit nytimes.com/booming and reach us by e-mail at booming@nytimes.com.

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DealBook: Office Depot and OfficeMax Announce Plans to Merge, After Erroneous Release

11:12 a.m. | Updated

Office Depot and OfficeMax announced plans to merge on Wednesday, just hours after an erroneous news release about the deal surfaced briefly.

Under the terms of the deal, Office Depot said it would issue 2.69 new shares of common stock for each share of OfficeMax. At that level, the transaction would value OfficeMax at $13.50, or roughly $1.19 billion, a premium of more than 25 percent to the company’s closing price last week.

The deal has been anticipated, as the companies face an increasingly difficult competitive environment. Both companies, which are burdened with big real estate footprints, have struggled against lower-priced rivals like Amazon.com and Costco. By uniting, the two companies should be able to reduce costs and better negotiate prices.

“In the past decade, with the growth of the Internet, our industry has changed dramatically,” Neil R. Austrian, chairman and chief executive of Office Depot, said in a statement. “Combining our two companies will enhance our ability to serve customers around the world, offer new opportunities for our employees, make us a more attractive partner to our vendors and increase stockholder value.”

While the deal has been years in the making, it was initially announced prematurely. A news release announcing the merger of the companies was posted on Office Depot’s Web site early on Wednesday morning, but it quickly disappeared.

Several news organizations reported the terms disclosed in the errant news release for Office Depot’s earnings. The details were buried on page four of the release, under the header “Other Matters.”

As the details filtered through the market, shares of the companies jumped. In premarket trading, Office Depot’s stock rose more than 7 percent, while OfficeMax shares were up more than 8 percent.

In a call with analysts, Mr. Austrian said that Office Depot’s webcast provider “inadvertently” published his company’s fourth-quarter earnings “well ahead of schedule.”

The episode is reminiscent of other times that companies’ earnings releases were published prematurely. Last fall, Google‘s third-quarter earnings were published three hours early, which the technology giant blamed on a mistake by R.R. Donnelley & Sons, the company’s printer.

Representatives for Office Depot and OfficeMax were not immediately available for comment on the erroneous release.

Strategically, the deal makes sense, as the companies face a changing competitive environment.

Combined, the companies reported about $4.4 billion in revenue for their third quarter of 2012; in comparison, Staples disclosed $6.4 billion in revenue for the same period.

Office Depot has also been under pressure from an activist hedge fund, Starboard Value, which sent a letter to the retailer’s board last fall. In it, Starboard called for more cost cuts and a greater focus on higher-margin businesses like copy and print services. With a 14.8 percent stake, Starboard is the company’s biggest investor.

In announcing the deal, the two companies emphasized their new financial heft.

With the merger, the retailers expect to generate $400 million to $600 million in annual cost savings. The combined entity would also have $1 billion in cash, providing additional firepower to invest in the business.

“We are excited to bring together two companies intent on accelerating innovation for our customers and better differentiating us for success in a dynamic and highly competitive global industry,” Ravi K. Saligram, chief executive of OfficeMax, said in a statement. “We are confident that there will be exciting new opportunities for employees as part of a truly global business.”

Each company will have an equal number of directors on the board of the combined retailer. Before the deal closes, OfficeMax will pay a special dividend of $1.50 a share to its shareholders.

OfficeMax was advised by JPMorgan Chase and the law firms Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom and Dechert. Office Depot was counseled by Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, while its board was advised by the Peter J. Solomon Company, Morgan Stanley and Kirkland & Ellis. Perella Weinberg Partners provided financial advice to the board’s transaction committee.

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Four dead, including suspect, in series of Orange County shootings

Orange County sheriff's officials said they don't know what prompted a series of shootings across multiple cities early Tuesday morning that left at least four people dead and others wounded.

Authorities believe the violence began in Ladera Ranch, south of Mission Viejo.

The first call came at 4:45 a.m. reporting a shooting on Red Leaf Lane, where deputies discovered a woman shot dead at the scene.

The suspect, described as a man in his 20s, fled the area in an SUV.

Sheriff's Department spokesman Jim Amormino said “multiple incidents” then occurred in Tustin and another at the Santa Ana border before the suspect apparently shot and killed himself in Orange.

“There’s a lot to sort out,” he said.

Tustin Police Lt. Paul Garaven said the suspect attempted to carjack multiple vehicles in Tustin, with  each shooting occurring a few minutes apart.

Police received a report about 5:30 a.m. of a carjacking near Red Hill Avenue and Nisson Road near the 5 Freeway in Tustin, Garaven said.

The carjacking suspect opened fire and wounded a bystander, he said.

Soon after that, another carjacking was reported near the 55 Freeway, Garaven said. The victim of that carjacking was killed, Garaven said. A body lay covered by a yellow tarp on Village Way near the McFadden Avenue freeway entrance.

Another shooting was reported on Edinger Avenue near the Micro Center in Tustin, Garaven said. Officers confirmed that another carjacking had taken place, he said.

One person was killed and another was taken to a hospital. Officers spotted the suspect in a stolen vehicle, followed him into the city of Orange and initiated a traffic stop near the intersection of East Katella Avenue and North Wanda Road, Garaven said.

The suspect then shot and killed himself, Garaven said. Garaven said there is “no threat to the community” because the suspect is deceased.

Bill Myers, who works at Allied Refrigeration at Edinger Avenue in Tustin, said he passed numerous police vehicles on his way to work early Tuesday.

The Micro Center, across the street from Allied Refrigeration, was roped off, and police were at the scene, Myers said.

Myers arrived at work at about 6:20 a.m. and said there was "a bunch of activity going on. It was pretty crazy."

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Daniel Day-Lewis as Abe Lincoln makes unstoppable Oscar force

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – If there is one sure bet in this roller coaster movie awards season, it is that Daniel Day-Lewis will take home the Best Actor statuette at the Oscars on Sunday.

Day-Lewis, known for his meticulous preparation, would become the first man to win three Best Actor Oscars, and awards pundits say it’s not hard to see why.

The tall, intellectual actor has swept every prize in the long Hollywood awards calendar for his thoughtful, intense portrayal of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln in Steven Spielberg‘s movie “Lincoln.”

“No-one has emerged to take him on. I don’t think he has lost a single (pre-Oscar) race. We have 25 experts and every single one is betting on Daniel Day-Lewis,” said Tom O’Neil of awards website Goldderby.com.

More surprising perhaps is that Day-Lewis will also be the first person to win an Oscar for playing a U.S. president. And it has taken a Briton with dual Irish citizenship, portraying one of America’s most revered leaders, to do it.

Although “Lincoln” started the Oscar race with a leading 12 nominations, its Best Picture front-runner status has dimmed in recent weeks with the ascendance of Iran hostage drama “Argo.”

But Day-Lewis’s star has only risen with Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild and British BAFTA trophies, along with a slew of honors from film critics.

LINCOLN FOR A NEW GENERATION

Day-Lewis, 55, plays Lincoln in the last few months of a life cut short by his 1865 assassination in a film that focuses on the president’s personal commitment to abolish slavery and end the bloody four-year U.S. Civil War.

He’s not the first actor to play Lincoln on screen. Yet his quiet assurance, his adoption of a high-pitch voice rather than the booming tones associated with Lincoln, and the movie’s focus on complex political debates have shone new light on a man that many Americans thought they already knew well.

“It’s a performance that is subtle. It’s not the Lincoln you expect. It’s a different interpretation of Lincoln than we have seen and we feel, wow! This could be the way Lincoln was,” said Pete Hammond, awards columnist at Deadline.com.

“We are seeing a real human being played out here for the first time and that is extraordinary. Day-Lewis is bringing the character to life in a way we haven’t seen in years,” Hammond told Reuters.

It took Spielberg three attempts to convince Day-Lewis to play the role. Explaining his decision last month to take the part, Day-Lewis noted that “it was an actor that murdered Abraham Lincoln. Therefore, somehow it’s only fitting that every now and then, an actor tries to bring him back to life again.”

The London-born actor threw himself into the role with the same devotion that marked his Best Actor Oscar-winning performance as quadriplegic Irish writer Christy Brown in “My Left Foot” in 1989, when he spent weeks living in a wheelchair.

In “Gangs of New York,” he sharpened knives on sets between takes to capture the menace of Bill “The Butcher” Cutting, earning another Oscar nomination, and in 2008 he won his second Best Actor Award at the Oscars for his turn as a greedy oil baron in “There Will Be Blood.”

TEXTING LIKE LINCOLN

Sally Field, who plays his screen wife Mary Todd Lincoln, said Day-Lewis sent her text messages that were completely in character and in 19th century vernacular over a seven-month period prior to shooting “Lincoln.”

Joseph Gordon-Levitt who plays Lincoln’s son Robert, said he didn’t get to know Day-Lewis until after production wrapped.

“I never met Daniel in person,” Gordon-Levitt told reporters. “I only ever met the president, only ever heard the president’s voice. I called him sir, and he called me Robert.”

With four Academy Award nominations and two wins before “Lincoln,” Day-Lewis appears to have barely set a foot wrong in his 30-year career. Yet there have been missteps, including the box-office flop of star-laden musical “Nine” in 2009.

“He was sorely miscast as Guido, the adorable gigolo, and he was not convincing at all. He brought the whole film down,” recalled O’Neil. “‘Lincoln’ is a spectacular career rally for him after that disaster.”

While others are betting on Day-Lewis to take home a third Academy Award on Sunday, the actor has been modest about his chances.

“Members of the Academy love surprises, so about the worst thing that can happen to you is if you’ve built up an expectation. I think they’d probably be delighted if it was anybody else,” he told reporters after winning the Screen Actors Guild trophy in January.

Those “anybody elses” in the running are Bradley Cooper for “Silver Linings Playbook,” Denzel Washington’s alcoholic pilot in “Flight,” Joaquin Phoenix for “The Master” and Hugh Jackman in musical “Le Miserables.”

(Reporting By Jill Serjeant; Editing by Todd Eastham)

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Well: Susan Love's Illness Gives New Focus to Her Cause

During a talk last spring in San Francisco, Dr. Susan Love, the well-known breast cancer book author and patient advocate, chided the research establishment for ignoring the needs of people with cancer. “The only difference between a researcher and a patient is a diagnosis,” she told the crowd. “We’re all patients.”

It was an eerily prescient lecture. Less than two months later, Dr. Love was given a diagnosis of acute myelogenous leukemia. She had no obvious symptoms and learned of her disease only after a checkup and routine blood work.

“Little did I know I was talking about myself,” she said in an interview. “It was really out of the blue. I was feeling fine. I ran five miles the day before.”

Dr. Love, a surgeon, is best known as the author of the top-selling “Dr. Susan Love’s Breast Book” (Da Capo Press, 2010) now in its fifth edition. She is also president of the Dr. Susan Love Research Foundation, which focuses on breast cancer prevention and research into eradicating the disease. But after decades of tireless advocacy on behalf of women with breast cancer, Dr. Love found herself in an unfamiliar role with an unfamiliar disease.

“There is a sense of shock when it happens to you,” she said. “In some ways I would have been less shocked if I got breast cancer because it’s so common, but getting leukemia was a world I didn’t know. Even when you’re a physician, when you get shocking news like this you sort of forget everything you know and are scared the same as everybody else.”

Because Dr. Love’s disease was caught early, she had a little time to seek second opinions and choose her medical team. She chose City of Hope in Duarte, Calif., because of its extensive experience in bone marrow transplants. At 65, Dr. Love was startled to learn she was considered among the “elderly” patients for this type of leukemia.

She was admitted to the hospital and underwent chemotherapy. Because her blood counts did not rebound after the treatment, her stay lasted a grueling seven weeks.

She went home for just two weeks, and then returned to the hospital for a bone-marrow transplant, with marrow donated by her younger sister, Elizabeth Love De Garcia, 53, who lives in Mexico City.

Although the transplant itself was uneventful, the next four weeks were an ordeal. Dr. Love developed pain and neuropathy from the chemotherapy drugs. Dr. Love’s wife, Dr. Helen Cooksey; daughter, Katie Love-Cooksey, 24; and siblings offered round-the-clock support. Ms. Love-Cooksey slept in the hospital every night. “I wasn’t very articulate during that time, but I always had my family there,” Dr. Love said. “They were great advocates for me.”

The transplant “is quite an amazing thing,” Dr. Love said. Her blood type changed from O positive to B positive, the same type as her sister. She also has inherited her sister’s immune system, and a lifelong allergy to nickel has disappeared. “I can wear cheap jewelry now,” she said. She returned to work last month.

Dr. Love has been told her disease is in remission, though her immune system remains compromised and she is more susceptible to infection. So she avoids crowds, air travel and other potential sources of cold and flu viruses.

While Dr. Love has always been a strong advocate for women undergoing cancer treatment, she says her disease and treatment has strengthened her understanding of what women with breast cancer and other types of cancer go through during treatments.

“There are little things like having numb toes or having less stamina to building muscles back up after a month of bed rest,” she said. “There is significant collateral damage from the treatment that is underestimated by the medical profession. There’s a sense of ‘You’re lucky to be alive, so why are you complaining?’ ”

Dr. Love says her experience has emboldened her in her quest to focus on the causes of disease rather than new drugs to treat it.

“I think I’m more impatient now and in more of a hurry,” she said. “I’ve been reminded that you don’t know how long you have. There are women being diagnosed every day. We don’t have the luxury to sit around and come up with a new marketing scheme. We have to get rid of this disease, and there is no reason we can’t do it.”

People who remain skeptical about the ability to eradicate breast cancer should look to the history of cervical cancer, she said. Decades ago, a woman with an abnormal Pap smear would be advised to undergo hysterectomy. Now a vaccine exists that can protect women from the infection that causes most cervical cancers.

“We need to focus more on the cause of breast cancer,” she said. “I’m still very impressed with the fact that cancer of the cervix went from being a disease that robbed women of their fertility, if not their lives, to having a vaccine to prevent it.”

Dr. Love, who wrote a book called “Live a Little!,” said illness has also made her grateful that she didn’t put off her “bucket list” and that she has traveled the world and focused on work she finds challenging and satisfying.

“It just reminds you that none of us are going to get out of here alive, and we don’t know how much time we have,” she said. “I say this to my daughter, whether it’s changing the world or having a good time, that we should do what we want to do. I drink the expensive wine now.”

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Media Decoder Blog: NBC News Hires David Axelrod as Political Analyst

NBC News announced Tuesday that it had hired David Axelrod, the chief political strategist for both of Barack Obama’s presidential elections, as a full-time political analyst for the news organization.

He will appear on news programs for NBC’s broadcast network and for its cable news channel MSNBC. That channel has positioned itself aggressively as the liberal counterpart to the conservative-leaning Fox News Channel.

Mr. Axelrod’s hiring at MSNBC emulates Fox’s hiring of Karl Rove, who filled the similar political post for George W. Bush.

The path from political adviser to expert commentator on television has been well trod. George Stephanopoulos, who advised President Clinton , joined ABC News as a journalist. He is, of course, now the anchor of “Good Morning, America” for ABC.  And MSNBC already employs Steve Schmidt, the senior strategist for the losing campaign of Senator John McCain.

Mr. Axelrod most recently was named political director at the Institute of Politics as the University of Chicago, his alma mater, and a Distinguished Fellow at the Harris School of Public Policy.

He began his career as a journalist, working for the Chicago Tribune. He began in politics in 1984 and founded a media and consulting firm, Axelrod and Associates.

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Jerry Buss dies at 80; Lakers owner brought 'Showtime' success to L.A.

Longtime Lakers owner Jerry Buss has died at the age of 80. Last week, it was revealed that he was hospitalized with an undisclosed form of cancer.

When Jerry Buss bought the Lakers in 1979, he wanted to build a championship team. But that wasn't all.

The new owner gave courtside seats to movie stars. He hired pretty women to dance during timeouts. He spent freely on big stars and encouraged a fast-paced, exuberant style of play.

As the Lakers sprinted to one NBA title after another, Buss cut an audacious figure in the stands, an aging playboy in blue jeans, often with a younger woman by his side.

PHOTOS: Jerry Buss through the years

"I really tried to create a Laker image, a distinct identity," he once said. "I think we've been successful. I mean, the Lakers are pretty damn Hollywood."

Buss died Monday of an undisclosed form of cancer at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, according to his longtime spokesman, Bob Steiner. Buss was 80.

Lakers fans will remember Buss for bringing extraordinary success — 10 championships in three-plus decades — but equally important to his legacy was a sense of showmanship that transformed pro basketball from sport to spectacle.

Live discussion at 10:30: Reflect on the legacy of Jerry Buss

"Jerry Buss helped set the league on the course it is on today," NBA Commissioner David Stern said. "Remember, he showed us it was about 'Showtime,' the notion that an arena can become the focal point for not just basketball, but entertainment. He made it the place to see and be seen."

His teams featured the likes of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Magic Johnson, Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O'Neal and Dwight Howard. He was also smart enough to hire Hall of Fame-caliber coaches in Pat Riley and Phil Jackson.

"I've worked hard and been lucky," Buss said. "With the combination of the two, I've accomplished everything I ever set out to do."

A Depression-era baby, Jerry Hatten Buss was born in Salt Lake City on Jan. 27, 1933, although some sources cite 1934 as his birth year. His parents, Lydus and Jessie Buss, divorced when he was an infant.

His mother struggled to make ends meet as a waitress in tiny Evanston, Wyo., and Buss remembered standing in food lines in the bitter cold. They moved to Southern California when he was 9, but within a few years she remarried and her second husband took the family back to Wyoming.

His stepfather, Cecil Brown, was, as Buss put it, "very tight-fisted." Brown made his living as a plumber and expected his children (one from a previous marriage, another son and a daughter with Jessie) to help.

This work included digging ditches in the cold. Buss preferred bell hopping at a local hotel and running a mail-order stamp-collecting business that he started at age 13.

Leaving high school a year early, he worked on the railroad, pumping a hand-driven car up and down the line to make repairs. The job lasted just three months.

Until then, Buss had never much liked academics. But he returned to school and, with a science teacher's encouragement, did well enough to earn a science scholarship to the University of Wyoming.

Before graduating with a bachelor's degree in chemistry, when he was 19 he married a coed named JoAnn Mueller and they would eventually have four children: John, Jim, Jeanie and Janie.

The couple moved to Southern California in 1953 when USC gave Buss a scholarship for graduate school. He earned a doctorate in physical chemistry in 1957. The degree brought him great pride — Lakers employees always called him "Dr. Buss."

He was hired by Douglas Aircraft Co. in February 1958, part of a team that developed rocket fuel and other classified material. But the idea of a career in the aerospace industry did not appeal to Buss. As the 1950s drew to a close, he and a Douglas colleague, Frank Mariani, decided to try their hand at real estate.

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Veteran British actor Richard Briers dies aged 79

LONDON (Reuters) – British actor Richard Briers, best known for the 1970s TV sit-com “The Good Life” but also for his Shakespearean roles, has died at the age of 79, prompting a flood of tributes for “a national treasure“.

The actor, who spent a lifetime on the stage, had recently spoken publicly of battling a serious lung condition for years, saying that “the ciggies got me” after a lifetime smoking habit.

He said his health was failing after being diagnosed with emphysema five years ago even though he gave up smoking 10 years ago.

“I was diagnosed five years ago and didn’t think it would go quite as badly as it has,” he told a newspaper interview last month. “I used to love smoking. It’s totally my fault.”

His agent said he died on Sunday at his London home.

Briers’s career ranged from television, to theatre, to film and radio with the actor, trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, making his West End debut in the late 1950s.

In “The Good Life”, he played alongside actress Felicity Kendal as a married couple who decide to drop out of the rat race and try out a life of self-sufficiency.

His film credits included “A Chorus Of Disapproval” in 1989 and “Watership Down” in 1978 in which he was the voice of Fiver. He also narrated the children’s cartoon series “Roobarb and Custard”.

But he won wide acclaim for his Shakespearean work after joining Kenneth Branagh‘s Renaissance Theatre Company. He appeared in a list of Branagh’s films including “Henry V”, “Much Ado About Nothing” and “Hamlet”.

Briers, who was married with two daughters, was awarded an OBE in 1989 for services to the arts.

Branagh paid tribute to Briers, telling reporters: “He was a national treasure, a great actor and a wonderful man. He was greatly loved and he will be deeply missed.”

Actor Stephen Fry on Twitter described him as “the most adorable and funny man imaginable”.

(Reporting by Belinda Goldsmith, editing by Paul Casciato)

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Well: Certain Television Fare Can Help Ease Aggression in Young Children, Study Finds

Experts have long known that children imitate many of the deeds — good and bad — that they see on television. But it has rarely been shown that changing a young child’s viewing habits at home can lead to improved behavior.

In a study published Monday in the journal Pediatrics, researchers reported the results of a program designed to limit the exposure of preschool children to violence-laden videos and television shows and increase their time with educational programming that encourages empathy. They found that the experiment reduced the children’s aggression toward others, compared with a group of children who were allowed to watch whatever they wanted.

“Here we have an experiment that proposes a potential solution,” said Dr. Thomas N. Robinson, a professor of pediatrics at Stanford, who was not involved in the study. “Giving this intervention — exposing kids to less adult television, less aggression on television and more prosocial television — will have an effect on behavior.”

While the research showed “a small to moderate effect” on the preschoolers’ behavior, he added, the broader public health impact could be “very meaningful.”

The new study was a randomized trial, rare in research on the effects of media on children. The researchers, at Seattle Children’s Research Institute and the University of Washington, divided 565 parents of children ages 3 to 5 into two groups. Both were told to track their children’s media consumption in a diary that the researchers assessed for violent, didactic and prosocial content, which they defined as showing empathy, helping others and resolving disputes without violence.

The control group was given advice only on better dietary habits for children. The second group of parents were sent program guides highlighting positive shows for young children. They also received newsletters encouraging parents to watch television with their children and ask questions during the shows about the best ways to deal with conflict. The parents also received monthly phone calls from the researchers, who helped them set television-watching goals for their preschoolers.

The researchers surveyed the parents at six months and again after a year about their children’s social behavior. After six months, parents in the group receiving advice about television-watching said their children were somewhat less aggressive with others, compared with those in the control group. The children who watched less violent shows also scored higher on measures of social competence, a difference that persisted after one year.

Low-income boys showed the most improvement, though the researchers could not say why. Total viewing time did not differ between the two groups.

“The take-home message for parents is it’s not just about turning off the TV; it’s about changing the channel,” said Dr. Dimitri A. Christakis, the lead author of the study and a professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington.

“We want our children to behave better,” Dr. Christakis said, “and changing their media diet is a good way to do that.”

Until she began participating in Dr. Christakis’s trial, Nancy Jensen, a writer in Seattle, had never heard of shows like Nickelodeon’s “Wonder Pets!,” featuring cooperative team players, and NBC’s “My Friend Rabbit,” with its themes of loyalty and friendship.

At the time, her daughter Elizabeth, then 3, liked“King of the Hill,”a cartoon comedy geared toward adults that features beer and gossip. In hindsight, she said, the show was “hilariously funny, but completely inappropriate for a 3-year-old.”

These days, she consults Common Sense Media, a nonprofit advocacy group in San Francisco, to make sure that the shows her daughter watches have some prosocial benefit. Elizabeth, now 6, was “not necessarily an aggressive kid,” Ms. Jensen said. Still, the girl’s teacher recently commended her as very considerate, and Ms. Jensen believes a better television diet is an important reason.

The new study has limitations, experts noted. Data on both the children’s television habits and their behavior was reported by their parents, who may not be objective. And the study focused only on media content in the home, although some preschool-aged children are exposed to programming elsewhere.

Children watch a mix of “prosocial but also antisocial media,” said Marie-Louise Mares, an associate professor of communications at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “Merely being exposed to prosocial media doesn’t mean that kids take it that way.”

Even educational programming with messages of empathy can be misunderstood by preschoolers, with negative consequences. A study published online in November in The Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology found that preschoolers shown educational media were more likely to engage in certain forms of interpersonal aggression over time.

Preschoolers observe relationship conflict early in a television episode but do not always connect it to the moral lesson or resolution at the end, said Jamie M. Ostrov, the lead author of the November study and an associate professor of psychology at the University of Buffalo.

Preschoolers watch an estimated 4.1 hours of television and other screen time daily, according to a 2011 study. Dr. Ostrov advised parents to watch television with their young children and to speak up during the relationship conflicts that are depicted. Citing one example, Dr. Ostrov counseled parents to ask children, “What could we do differently here?” to make it clear that yelling at a sibling is not acceptable.

He also urged parents to stick with age-appropriate programming. A 3-year-old might misunderstand the sibling strife in the PBS show“Arthur,” he said, or stop paying attention before it is resolved.

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