scene-stealing

See also: scene stealing

English

WOTD – 4 March 2018

Pronunciation

The scene-stealing actress Katharine Hepburn (left), with Spencer Tracy in the 1967 film Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. Hepburn has won the Academy Award for Best Actress more times than any other actress, for this film and for Morning Glory (1933), The Lion in Winter (1968), and On Golden Pond (1981).

• (Received Pronunciation, General American) IPA^(key): /ˈsiːn ˈstiːlɪŋ/

• Audio (AU)

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• Hyphenation: scene-steal‧ing

Adjective

scene-stealing (comparative more scene-stealing, superlative most scene-stealing)

1. That steals the scene (“dominates a performance through charisma, humour, or powerful acting”).
   • 1942 August 10, “Cinema: New Picture [film review of The Pied Piper]”, in Time‎^[1], archived from the original on 25 August 2013:

     The Pied Piper (20th Century-Fox) pipes sumptuous Monty ("The Beard") Woolley out of his wheel chair for the first time since he began playing The Man Who Came to Dinner (TIME, Jan. 26) three years ago. The change is good for him. The belligerent old nanny goat turns into a very human portrait of a crotchety, kindly Englishman caught in France by the Nazi invasion. But kindliness does not prevent elegant Actor Woolley from walking off with the picture against the trying competition of six scene-stealing children.

   • 2017 July 7, Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, “The Ambitious War For The Planet Of The Apes Ends Up Surrendering to Formula”, in The A.V. Club‎^[2], archived from the original on 27 November 2017:

     They are also very sympathetic, especially Caesar's orangutan advisor, Maurice (Karin Konoval), who takes a shine to a human moppet (Amiah Miller) he finds hiding in the back of a shack, and the poignant Bad Ape (a scene-stealing Steve Zahn), a mangy chimp who was beaten so often in his zoo-animal days that he came to believe what his handlers were shouting was supposed to be his name.

Synonyms

• show-stealing

Related terms

• scene stealing (noun)
• steal the scene

Translations

that steals the scene

See also

• steal the show