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My professional life has been, ostensibly, immersed in culture. But at the end of a film or TV project, the word that describes how I feel is not necessarily “renewed.” The most fulfilling experiences I’ve had as an actor have been in the theater, the only medium I could count on for a reliably satisfying artistic result. It was the only place I could bring what I had to offer and believe that it mattered. Often in filmmaking, the people in charge don’t even understand what you do, let alone appreciate it. Movies and TV are, primarily, commercial enterprises. And although the theater (Broadway in particular) is not without its commercial imperatives, the work there is more thoughtful and deliberate. More important, it is where you have the chance to grow in some meaningful way.
Performing onstage in Prelude to a Kiss was the first time I ever believed that I had any talent for acting. Working with people as smart and nurturing as Norman René and Craig Lucas, as well as the incredibly talented cast, was a classroom, especially coming off the shoot for Hunt, which was a different sort of education. That growth continued in Streetcar three years later. Performing a role as iconic as Stanley, I truly believed that the result, the critical reception, didn’t matter. Just to play those scenes, say those lines, and rehearse with Greg Mosher could only help me grow. On closing night, tears rolled down my cheeks at the curtain call, as I knew I would never play that role again. To the young actor I say take those chances. Fall on your ass. Fail. It will only benefit you.
By the time we closed Macbeth at the Public Theater in 1998, I had learned a great lesson about keeping my focus on my own work by watching Angela Bassett, who played Lady M. Trained at Yale, where she received her undergrad and master’s degrees, Angela was intense, kind, and intelligent. But above all, she was prepared and this was instructive. She reminded me that acting is work. It’s unique work. It can be enjoyable. But it requires an effort and precision that can’t be faked or bypassed with good looks and charm. Just as I did with Loot and the likes of Joe Maher, Charlie Keating, and Zeljko Ivanek, I usually found something to learn from the people I worked with onstage, some of whom had decades of experience performing the theater’s greatest roles.
Unlike working in film and TV, which nearly always requires complex scheduling, with everyone coming and going, in the theater there is a chance to share an experience like no other. As I got older, I wanted to pass on whatever I had to share by making myself available onstage and off, in both rehearsal and performance. Quite often, however, the younger cast members had longer résumés than mine and didn’t need my advice. In fact, I welcomed any they had for me! I also had one or two situations in which someone in the company was eager to take me on. In the movies, I was never a bankable star. That alone can make you feel a tad illegitimate. Similarly, in the theater, there was the occasional actor or director who wanted to test me, confront me, as they thought I wasn’t his or her equal onstage. When I performed in the Broadway production of Orphans in 2013, Dan Sullivan, a director I had looked forward to working with, appeared to be uninterested and it seemed as though there were other places, other rehearsal rooms, where he’d rather be. The production was a nightmare. And yet I learned a few things on Orphans. I learned that once you ascertain what the play is really about, you want to know the director’s relationship to that theme. Orphans was, for my character, about parenting, about being a father. Sullivan, it turned out, seemed like he didn’t want to do a play about fatherhood. But fortunately, those situations are rare. Rehearsing with someone like Walter Bobbie (Twentieth Century) and Scott Ellis (Entertaining Mr. Sloane) is the norm, and that is heaven.
The scheduling for me to work onstage has been tricky, and I’ve had to pick and choose those engagements carefully. Telling people in film and television that you are either unavailable or unwilling to come at their call is never easy. The guiding principle seemed to be to pick plays and playwrights whose words I would never tire of saying (that means a strong reliance on revivals), and to accept the risk that I might never get it right. Each night that we did Equus, in 2010, my goal was to embrace the nougaty text of Shaffer’s play, line by line, in an effort to understand Dysart, the psychiatrist, and the anesthetization of his own sexuality. I literally never said all of Shaffer’s lines properly. During the Sunday afternoon matinee that was our final performance, I transposed two lines and crashed my final run at a perfect show, in terms of the text. But what a mountain to ski down!
Other choices were made purely based on the hope of having fun. When I performed Twentieth Century with Anne Heche, it was an opportunity to enjoy Hecht and MacArthur’s great comedy, which required as much energy, timing, and focus as anything I’ve ever done. Audiences loved the show. And what a cast. So many great veteran actors, for whom Hecht and MacArthur were a staple, came to see the show and visited backstage afterward to say the kindest things to me. They included Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, and Chris Plummer. When Shirley MacLaine materialized at my dressing room door, my castmate Stephen DeRosa practically hyperventilated.