ML - Michigan Avenue

2013 - Issue 6 - October

Michigan Avenue - Niche Media - Michigan Avenue magazine is a luxury lifestyle magazine centered around Chicago’s finest people, events, fashion, health & beauty, fine dining & more!

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"I don't want the day to end; I don't want the scene to be over; I don't want the script to be finished; I don't want the season to be completed." Delicatessen on 71st between Yates and Jeffery Boulevard, where we would go for lox and bagels every Sunday morning. One day my father came stumbling out, and he was almost off balance, and I go, "What's the matter, dad? Are you okay?" He's having a heart attack, and he's saying, "Oh my god, oh my god," and I'm going, "What, what, what is it?" And he said, "Lox, Nova Scotia went up to $3.59 a pound." The only good thing about my father being dead is it's like $20-some per pound today. He'd vaporize on the spot. You mention falling in love with theater at the Youth Center. What was the first role you remember playing on stage that made an impact on you? It was at the Young Men's Jewish Council Youth Center. Bob Condor was the director of our youth drama group, and in the second play we did— Carousel by Rodgers and Hammerstein—Bob cast me as Billy Bigelow. I'll never forget it. It was a seminal moment of my professional life. We were rehearsing in the same room I went to nursery school in. The cast was in a semicircle, high school kids from about 13 to 19, and Bob asked us what the play was about. We raised our hands and started saying it's about a guy who made a mistake, about a guy who gets a second chance, about a guy who goes to heaven, it's about a guy, it's about a guy, it's about a guy—and Bob looks at all of us and says, "Well, I think you're all right, it's about all those things. But it's also about something else." He said, "It's about when you love someone, tell them, tell them." I was in the synagogue every day of my life that I can remember, and I have wonderful parents and was raised in a good home. But I never heard anything like that phrase. That just hit me. If you love somebody, tell them. It was so simple. And I just got it. At that moment I thought to myself, "If this is what musical theater is, I'm going to hang out for it." I went to the University of Kansas to chase a girl— by the time I got there she was gone with somebody else. I was told I should go to a professional school, so I applied to the Goodman School of Drama in Chicago and the Juilliard School in New York. By that time I was 18 years old, and I wanted to get as far away from home as I could. So I went to New York, and that's where my life ended up. I've been in New York since 1972. Your cousin Sheldon was one of the cofounders of The Second City. Was being a performer encouraged in your family? Absolutely not. My parents didn't want me to be a performer. They didn't discourage it because they saw that I loved it, but they were very nervous about it. So they weren't about to wave the flag for cousin Sheldon and give too much attention to that. They were more interested in Mandy getting a business degree like my father got from the University of Chicago. I didn't want a business degree. They kept saying, "So you have something to fall back on," and I kept saying, "I don't want to fall back on anything—if I don't make it, I'll figure out plan B when I get there." Then when I got to New York, Sheldon was already there, and he became a very dear, close, cousinfriend to me and mentor and helper. We talked a lot about acting in those early days, and the purity and truth that he was interested in. Now fast-forward to your time in New York and your debut on Broadway in Evita in 1979. What was that period of your life like? Well, a little before that in April of '78, I met my then fiancée, later to be my wife for 35 years, Kathryn Grody. We got engaged a year later, and it was the week after I won the Tony Award for Evita that we got married. My life was more about getting married and starting my family than it was about Evita, believe it or not. It was a wonderful balance. I wanted a family more than anything in the world, and I found this wonderful woman to make a family with. I remember it was bittersweet because I won this award and my dad had passed away, and [years before] he had taken me to New York as my bar mitzvah present to show me the Jewish Quarter in Williamsburg, the Statue of Liberty, and Ellis Island, and a couple Broadway shows. He was a big fan of Angela Lansbury in Mame, so we waited outside the stage door to meet her. Little did he know he was taking me to where my home would be: My life began in NYC with my wife and with my relationship with Joseph Papp and the Public Theater, where I did a lot of plays. And then Evita took me into this other world where it was a bigger stage, and then Milos Forman hired me to do Ragtime, and I started doing some films, and somebody asked me to do a record, which led to a recording career and concert career, and every little place along the way I never wanted to let go of my roots, which were being on the stage at the Youth Center in Chicago. That was my greatest love. It's been a wonderful life, and I hope I have a good deal of life left. But it always comes back to memories of Chicago. One of your most iconic roles is Inigo Montoya from The Princess Bride. Looking back, what does that role mean to you? That role was about bringing my father back to life. Rob Reiner asked me to play the part, and on the first page of William Goldman's novel, it said "the greatest sword fighter in the world," so I knew my job was to learn how to be a great sword fighter. I found Henry Harutunian, who was the US Olympic fencing coach in 1984 and the longtime coach at Yale, and Bob Anderson the British Olympian fencer, and they trained me for six months. We did all the sword fighting ourselves, and that was wonderful fun. But the film to me was really about wanting to play this guy. The reason I wanted to play him was that my mind immediately clicked that if I could find the six-fingered man, then my father would come back to life.... The man in black was the pancreatic cancer that killed my father; I wanted to revenge my father's life. Years later in Philadelphia before a concert, The Princess Bride was on, and in the last scene Inigo all of a sudden says to the man in black, "You know, I've been in the revenge business for so long, now that it's over, I don't know what to do with the rest of my life." That MICHIGANAVEMAG.COM 110-115_MA_FEAT_CoverStory_October13.indd 113 113 9/17/13 11:52 AM

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