Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin and you were listening to Here's the Thing.
Speaker 1: Jeffrey Horn is one of the greatest acting teachers ever
Speaker 1: to grace his craft. His classes at least Strasburg's Acting School,
Speaker 1: just off Union Square, my alma mater, have made him
Speaker 1: a legend, but he once achieved fame of a much
Speaker 1: broader sweep, scoring a lead role in David Lean's war
Speaker 1: epic set in the jungles of Burma Bridge on the
Speaker 1: River Quai. You're lovely, Lovely, that was, and he was
Speaker 1: twenty five years old. Then he seemed to disappear. Horn
Speaker 1: had a few roles in the sixties, but didn't resurface
Speaker 1: as a notable actor until the seventies in New York.
Speaker 1: Several why wives and children later, and having survived an
Speaker 1: addictionary crisis, ass Horn's career relaunched. Lee Strasburg, one of
Speaker 1: the three founders of method acting in the United States,
Speaker 1: asked him to teach some classes. Horn taught me at
Speaker 1: n y U in nineteen seventy nine. He had traveled
Speaker 1: a long way from a corseted and isolated childhood. You
Speaker 1: were raised in Argentina, born in Argentina, moved to Cuba.
Speaker 1: When I was five, I came to the stage to school.
Speaker 1: I got kicked out. It was an oil exact. My
Speaker 1: dad worked for a Sandra company which is now ex
Speaker 1: He had a good job. Were you close to your
Speaker 1: parents when you were young. I'm a mama's boy. AM
Speaker 1: more like my mother, and my father was more of
Speaker 1: a go getter. When I was young, tyrants, we were
Speaker 1: invited to lunch at Earn, a sending ways house and Havana.
Speaker 1: We went out to lunch there, my father, my mother
Speaker 1: and I and we had lunch. Oh this is good,
Speaker 1: you'll love is He taught me how to drink out
Speaker 1: of about the Spanish gored them thing good, good thing
Speaker 1: for a future alcoholic right. And my father was always
Speaker 1: talking about be a man. You gotta be a man.
Speaker 1: And I remember looking at my father and looking at
Speaker 1: him and I said, wait a minute, there's only one
Speaker 1: man in his room? Hemingway, was it? Yeah? Actually I
Speaker 1: got I was out in his home and catch him
Speaker 1: with my mother and his widow, and she showed me
Speaker 1: where he shot himself, right the spot. Terrible. What a
Speaker 1: man he was, though, what a straordinary. You would love
Speaker 1: to Cuba to go to school boarding school a boarding school.
Speaker 1: Did you go to Millbrook School for boys and you
Speaker 1: were there by yourself? Your parents overseas they were in Cuba.
Speaker 1: I felt like a complete alien up here. I remember
Speaker 1: the first time I met someone that I could talk
Speaker 1: to and I liked, and I put my arm around
Speaker 1: him like that. Ah, we don't do that in America.
Speaker 1: In Cuba, you did that with your friends. You walked
Speaker 1: with your friends with your arm around each other. That
Speaker 1: was in the wrong school. Did your mom come visit
Speaker 1: you when you were there? No, she came once, and
Speaker 1: everbody in the school got an award but me and
Speaker 1: then I got kicked out just before graduating. Your parents
Speaker 1: stayed there? How much longer they stayed there? No, My
Speaker 1: father moved to Venezuela with a different job. My mother remarried.
Speaker 1: They both remarried within three weeks. It sounds grand, but
Speaker 1: it was sort of difficult to stepfather were staying at
Speaker 1: the Gotham Hotel, which is on Fifth Avenue and street. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's something else. I forget the peninsula and my father
Speaker 1: and my mother. My stepmother was staying at the St.
Speaker 1: Regis across Fifth Avenue, and we went back and forth.
Speaker 1: My ci and I for the whole long weekend, and
Speaker 1: I want to write a short story about it. You know,
Speaker 1: it's it's just sounds too rich. It was my wife
Speaker 1: keeps saying rich, You're so you were so rich because
Speaker 1: she grew up poor in Alabama. And then I went
Speaker 1: to Stanford University, which was because I had a connection.
Speaker 1: You know who my first audition was with in New
Speaker 1: York because of a contact was Kazan. My first audition,
Speaker 1: you see, my career was that wasn't different than yours.
Speaker 1: It was Causetne who told me to study with Lee.
Speaker 1: I was an ignorant Twitter. It was for tea and
Speaker 1: sympathy for the road show, for the road company to
Speaker 1: get the job. No No. I read for fifteen seconds
Speaker 1: and he said, that's fine. You have a nice something.
Speaker 1: He said something pleasant to me, and he said, you
Speaker 1: need a good acting teacher. You know. It was I
Speaker 1: felt like a boy always, and so when I was
Speaker 1: playing a boy, I was okay. But if I was
Speaker 1: suddenly I had to be a man with the wife
Speaker 1: and kids, and I don't know how to do that.
Speaker 1: Even though I might be married the kids. It was
Speaker 1: very alien, which is maybe why some of those marriages
Speaker 1: didn't work out so well. But in that heyday of
Speaker 1: your film career, in these massive directors you worked with,
Speaker 1: you felt awkward and clumsy and pathetic. And the first
Speaker 1: part when I was on live TV in the first days,
Speaker 1: those are great days. At fifty six, before I got
Speaker 1: any good jobs. I did Billy But on television. I
Speaker 1: played Billy but the Boy live on TV. George roy
Speaker 1: Hill directed. It was terrific, with Luther Adler and Joseph
Speaker 1: Wiseman and a wonderful cast of pe. Well, that was fun.
Speaker 1: I did feel free. Then what do you think made
Speaker 1: Kausanne Kasinne? What was different about him? I auditioned for
Speaker 1: Cazanne that first time. Then I auditioned for him again
Speaker 1: for Splendor in the Grass with Jane Fonda Warren Beatty's part,
Speaker 1: and we'd read the scene and we were okay. So
Speaker 1: he said, well, let's try something. He put his arm
Speaker 1: around me, and even though he was not big man,
Speaker 1: he seemed a giant. And I always thought that he
Speaker 1: was like this Greek guy who smelled of olive oil.
Speaker 1: I don't know, he smells a strong smell from him.
Speaker 1: And he said something to me, you probably have to
Speaker 1: cut this but he said, you know in the scene
Speaker 1: and said this when you're talking. He said, it's it's
Speaker 1: like somebody's fucked your mother. And I don't know why
Speaker 1: it happened, but it was if he had pressed a
Speaker 1: button inside me. And I gave really a good audis
Speaker 1: and I didn't get the part. Warren got it. Bill
Speaker 1: walked in with Warhut right after. If he did my audition,
Speaker 1: but it felt better. That audition felt as good as
Speaker 1: anything else I ever did in acting. And that's what
Speaker 1: it was like. Incidentally, years later, I figured something out
Speaker 1: that it's not that he knew me so well that
Speaker 1: he picked the right thing to say to me to
Speaker 1: get me going. He was talking personally about himself and
Speaker 1: his mother. We loved it was lending that to you,
Speaker 1: and it happened to work. He complained about Marlin because
Speaker 1: Marlin would hear three words and walk away from him,
Speaker 1: and he said, God, it would drive me crazy. He
Speaker 1: just walk away. I was saying something, and I realized
Speaker 1: that's all he needed was those three words. He didn't
Speaker 1: need a long speech. Okay, So all right, So at
Speaker 1: Lee Strasbourg five, I said, Lee, I've been studying with
Speaker 1: you for a year kind of auditioned for the actor's studio.
Speaker 1: He said, you can, but you're not ready. That's how
Speaker 1: he talked. After two years, I said, link an audition
Speaker 1: for the actor's studio. He said, what's senior doing? And
Speaker 1: I told him. He said good. So the part was
Speaker 1: tea and sympathy. I don't know if you remember that play.
Speaker 1: There's a boy in prep school who feels different. He's
Speaker 1: accused of being gay. He's not gay, he's just different.
Speaker 1: He's a little more sensitive than the other ones and
Speaker 1: so forth, and he gets kicked out of board in
Speaker 1: school for whatever it was. Guess what. Jeffrey went to
Speaker 1: boarding school, felt different, He came from Cuba, got kicked
Speaker 1: out of boarding school. It was a good part for me,
Speaker 1: and I got in my first audition. Harvey content took
Speaker 1: six auditions. He's a much better actor than I do,
Speaker 1: much better action different. I know he's much better than
Speaker 1: I ever was. I think I can't even imagine you,
Speaker 1: if I may say so, Master Bainy against the side
Speaker 1: of the car as an evil detective in Bad Luten.
Speaker 1: There's things that Harvey does. This he does that very well,
Speaker 1: empowered him. And there's other things you do well anyway.
Speaker 1: So I got in because I was right for it,
Speaker 1: and I understood it, and I got it and I
Speaker 1: was moved by it. That was the peak of my career,
Speaker 1: twenty three years old. Everything went downhill after that. I
Speaker 1: played your lawyer one day on the soap opera and
Speaker 1: I say, he's my goddamn student and I'm playing his
Speaker 1: lawyer and have three lines. But look at your Your
Speaker 1: life in my life very different. You grew up on
Speaker 1: Long Island. I grew up in Cuba. You went on
Speaker 1: a soap opera. You worked at NBC. That's where you
Speaker 1: did the soap, wasn't it. I remember somebody told me.
Speaker 1: He said I was great. He knew everybody in this building.
Speaker 1: He knew how to push himself. What happened to me
Speaker 1: was just the opposite. I was able to live at
Speaker 1: my mother's apartment, my mother and stuff. They lived on
Speaker 1: Fifth Avenue, so that's where I lived in New York.
Speaker 1: So I started not really hardship, and I got a
Speaker 1: lead on a television show. Rod Stigger was my father
Speaker 1: and I was his son. That was my first job,
Speaker 1: a lead, and then I was doing these leading roles
Speaker 1: on television. Before you made a movie. How long was it?
Speaker 1: I didn't make a movie six I was in TV
Speaker 1: for six years, and and so I went from there
Speaker 1: to a movie, to a Broadway play to the big movie.
Speaker 1: So I didn't have to do six years of terrible television.
Speaker 1: You said, this is not what I want to do.
Speaker 1: I don't want to be on not Slanding the rest
Speaker 1: of my life. But anyway, that's a lot. Seven years
Speaker 1: or six years. Well, that was the beginning of some
Speaker 1: weird choices for me, because I was offered a television film,
Speaker 1: Fatal Vision, that Joe McGuinness book about Jeffrey McDonald jffintal
Speaker 1: murder case. I went into a bar on Eighth Avenue
Speaker 1: and knocked down two huge shots of whiskey before I
Speaker 1: want to do that interview, and I fucking nailed it.
Speaker 1: I nailed it, and I got that part, and then
Speaker 1: I turned it down. And I try to say to people,
Speaker 1: you know what you gotta do when you have a career,
Speaker 1: As you reach a point where you make peace with
Speaker 1: those decisions that you made, you make peace with them.
Speaker 1: You know where I am now, right where I want
Speaker 1: to be. I got married to a wonderful woman. I
Speaker 1: got four great kids, I work when I need to work.
Speaker 1: Everything's going pretty well. That thing about drinking I sent.
Speaker 1: I auditioned for Period of Adjustment in London at the
Speaker 1: Royal Court Theater and I went into a bar have too.
Speaker 1: I made the best. Oh it was good. I got
Speaker 1: the part, and then British Equity didn't let me work
Speaker 1: because I tried to do it another time after that.
Speaker 1: It didn't work. It just worked once. I mean, I
Speaker 1: drank a lot, but I didn't that In my book,
Speaker 1: I wrote all about my own situation. And now I
Speaker 1: think to myself with Trump, if I was drinking now,
Speaker 1: oh my god, oh my god, you and I would
Speaker 1: be in that bar on sixe when I watching the
Speaker 1: ball game. We wouldn't go anywhere. Let's face it, Drinking
Speaker 1: is fun, you know, That's why we do it. I mean,
Speaker 1: I drank a lot. Do you think that affected your career?
Speaker 1: Defect affected my life so much that that affected my career.
Speaker 1: My life is so. I have a son who is
Speaker 1: a drug addict, and he says, it's fun. You forget
Speaker 1: you don't, don't forget that it's fun for a period
Speaker 1: until it's not fun. And when it was not fun
Speaker 1: anymore than I stopped. Thank God, I was able to stop.
Speaker 1: Some people can't. Um I want to ask you, you know.
Speaker 1: For me, one of the most memorable moments in my
Speaker 1: life was when I did the movie The Aviator, because
Speaker 1: it was my first time working with Marty and I
Speaker 1: always dreamed about working with the greatest directors and I
Speaker 1: didn't have that chance. I remember that was a problem
Speaker 1: that I could I had to fight to get over,
Speaker 1: which was I almost couldn't concentrate on my work as
Speaker 1: I was so intimidated to be on a set with Marty.
Speaker 1: But you're there, and you're gonna be that next guy.
Speaker 1: Everybody thinks you're so handsome when you know, up to
Speaker 1: do Bridge on the River, requiring you with Lean. God,
Speaker 1: you're with a god making a film. Were you ready?
Speaker 1: I was so frightened. I was so terrified Lean was
Speaker 1: he was. He was not an actor's director like Kazan
Speaker 1: or like some of them are wonderful with actors, but
Speaker 1: he was so sensitive to people. He was always moving
Speaker 1: things around. And I asked David about it, and he said, oh, oh,
Speaker 1: I don't want to make the actors self conscious. So
Speaker 1: I'll take a glass and I'll move it three inches
Speaker 1: to the left and they'll think, oh, I guess I'm okay,
Speaker 1: the glass is fine. I'm okay. And it was a
Speaker 1: little technique that he worked out to make people feel comfortable.
Speaker 1: But when I had lines, I remember I was sick
Speaker 1: to my stomach the first day and I had to
Speaker 1: throw up. It was so panic stricken because it was
Speaker 1: all action at first, getting the bridge and training, the
Speaker 1: stuff and all that stuff. I was fine doing throwing
Speaker 1: people in a box with doing that, I could do that.
Speaker 1: But River Choir was in the early sixties, seven fifty seven.
Speaker 1: But I'm assuming even then and someone like Lean had
Speaker 1: his own financial edicts that in order to make the
Speaker 1: movie he wanted to make, he needed a star. Yea.
Speaker 1: So Holden was the was the ace in the hole?
Speaker 1: Carry Grant they talked about they wanted, but they wanted
Speaker 1: to star in one of these roles. Or they had
Speaker 1: Guinness who was a movie star, but not the same acount.
Speaker 1: Jack Hawkins was actually a bigger star in England at
Speaker 1: the time, bigger than Guinness. But Holden is the ace
Speaker 1: in the hole in the movie start him. Was he
Speaker 1: the same with Holden as he was? Did he treat
Speaker 1: everybody like a company, or did he treat his star
Speaker 1: just saying he was the same. Just did you become
Speaker 1: pals with any of those guys? Alec Guinness was very
Speaker 1: nice and Jack Hawkins was a big snob, which was
Speaker 1: really peculiar. Who would have thought that, like a like
Speaker 1: a like a tough guy, like an English tough guy,
Speaker 1: not like a gangster tough guy, but like a man.
Speaker 1: He was kind of a snobbld Have you met this?
Speaker 1: He was a boy. He was thirty eight. He was
Speaker 1: only thirty eight, he looked much older, thirty eight year
Speaker 1: old boy. He was a boy he had He would
Speaker 1: get bored and so he'd throw firecrackers in the dining room.
Speaker 1: I mean, just like a one of my favorites, worship well.
Speaker 1: He was lovely. He was always very friendly and very
Speaker 1: helpful and nerve in his body on camera so relaxed.
Speaker 1: What was he like? Yeah, it was rough, but he
Speaker 1: when I went to Japan afterwards and he took me
Speaker 1: to a Geisha house. He treated me to a dinner
Speaker 1: at a Gisha house, a very classy, very lovely, lovely place.
Speaker 1: No sex, but proper and in fact, even in the
Speaker 1: middle of the dinner he got up and danced. He
Speaker 1: was eighty. I think at the time he did some
Speaker 1: Japanese dance. I remember all these things if I see
Speaker 1: the movie, I remember all the sensory things. I remember
Speaker 1: what the smell in the air was. I remember the trees,
Speaker 1: I remember the water, I remember where there was how
Speaker 1: hot it was. I don't think much about the movie itself,
Speaker 1: but the companionship, the friends you make. Oh and I
Speaker 1: had a girlfriend on the movie too. She one of
Speaker 1: the tie girls. That was great. She was lovely. What
Speaker 1: a great thing in your life. You got to make
Speaker 1: that movie with one of the greatest story to be
Speaker 1: The Jungle with Lean your career. When people take the
Speaker 1: time to examine your career, you're in that beautiful fold
Speaker 1: in live TV and films where you know you're the
Speaker 1: next James Dean. Okay, so you know my career was
Speaker 1: a disaster, right. I peaked at twenty three and I
Speaker 1: went down. You know after that. It's like Matthew Modine
Speaker 1: when he does his Full Metal Jacket diary and he
Speaker 1: writes a lot about working with Cooper con Full Metal Jacket,
Speaker 1: which I love because you can tell he just soaked
Speaker 1: it up and loved every minute of it. Knew I
Speaker 1: may never have it the school again as long as
Speaker 1: I live, you know, So it's funny when you think
Speaker 1: of that. My first thought when you were talking about
Speaker 1: how great it must have been in the jungle. I
Speaker 1: saw David Lean in Venice one time, the Italian fourth
Speaker 1: of July. We are an a gondola with bread and
Speaker 1: cheese and a huge thing of wine, and actually I
Speaker 1: brought that and it was absolutely lovely. He and his wife.
Speaker 1: And did I have a wife? Then? I think maybe
Speaker 1: there were four of us and apply because at the
Speaker 1: conclusion of your biographical material that our producer forwarded to me,
Speaker 1: sources differ on wives and children. He's either been married
Speaker 1: four or five times and has eight or nine children.
Speaker 1: We're gonna give you the opportunity now to clarify. How
Speaker 1: many times have you been married? Well, I've had for
Speaker 1: marriages and two long term relationships which I call marriages.
Speaker 1: So it makes six four legal men marriages. And how
Speaker 1: many children do you have? I have three daughters that
Speaker 1: are my daughters, and I have six adopted kids. Wait
Speaker 1: a minute, that's nine. Yeah, you have nine. Two of
Speaker 1: them have died, only seven left a nine children all together?
Speaker 1: You like kids? Where your wives like no act I
Speaker 1: did always like kids. I like kids. Yeah, And do
Speaker 1: you know the Dark of the Dark of the Stairs
Speaker 1: Lesa the young boy. He's Jewish, he doesn't fit in.
Speaker 1: He's at a military school and he's going to go
Speaker 1: to a party and he goes there and he's dancing
Speaker 1: with the daughter of the hostess and she comes and
Speaker 1: pulls her daughter away. My son, daughter is not going
Speaker 1: to dance with any dirty jew. And he goes back
Speaker 1: to his hotel that night and he jumps out the
Speaker 1: window and kills himself. And Bill Lynch in a little
Speaker 1: essay about the play, he said he had no sure connections.
Speaker 1: Bill Nch was the nicest man. And I thought that
Speaker 1: was so interesting and moving. And I thought about it
Speaker 1: a lot, because Bill Innch out in California, drove his
Speaker 1: car into the garage one day, left the gas on
Speaker 1: because he had no sure connections. In spite of all
Speaker 1: his success, all his place, he was so alone out there. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I only met him a little bit in California, actually,
Speaker 1: where he shouldn't have gone to live, where he e
Speaker 1: been prior to New York. In New York, you should
Speaker 1: have been, And why did you never move out there.
Speaker 1: I did move to California. How long thirteen long years?
Speaker 1: I said that for a long time. Why did you
Speaker 1: come back here? I wanted to act? And he did.
Speaker 1: Jeffrey horn packed up his Hollywood apartment and moved back
Speaker 1: to New York in nineteen seventy five. Another great artist
Speaker 1: who had a second act is Mickey Rourke. But first
Speaker 1: came a brutal into mission. Nothing fell on my plate.
Speaker 1: There was no work coming in because I was waiting
Speaker 1: for you know, Jimino or Copland. It didn't happen. So
Speaker 1: if it didn't happen, what happened was this piece of
Speaker 1: ship fell on my plate, and they offered me a
Speaker 1: boatload of money, and like a whore, I took the
Speaker 1: four million or whatever it was and bought a big
Speaker 1: fucking Elvis Presley house that I couldn't afford. And I
Speaker 1: remember doing this film and hating myself every day. My
Speaker 1: full interview with Mickey Rourke is in our archives that
Speaker 1: Here's the Thing, Dot Org. This is Alec Baldwin, and
Speaker 1: you were listening to Here's the Thing. We left Jeffrey
Speaker 1: Horn in he had moved back to New York after
Speaker 1: his career flamed out. In Hollywood. That ended up being
Speaker 1: his next lucky break. I had a revival of my
Speaker 1: career in my forties. I came back to New York.
Speaker 1: I did some plays off Broadway. I was in a
Speaker 1: musical Mary. We rolled along. When did the idea come
Speaker 1: that you were going to teach acting? I was asked
Speaker 1: by who at least do you recall what the year?
Speaker 1: That was a decade um. I always liked teaching. I
Speaker 1: always taught something. I taught yoga for a while, gardening.
Speaker 1: I taught horseback riding because I had all these kids
Speaker 1: around and I would do that. And I was working
Speaker 1: a lot at the Actors Studio during scenes a lot
Speaker 1: and Lisa, I'm into a play there and he said, oh,
Speaker 1: he wrudgingly said, all right, try one class. I never
Speaker 1: worked Monday night, since I always taught at Monday night class.
Speaker 1: That was my beginning. And then n y U and
Speaker 1: that's when you were there seventy nine. I don't even
Speaker 1: teaching for a year. God knows what miserable stuff I
Speaker 1: told you. I didn't know what the hell I was
Speaker 1: Do's what made me famous. I've lived on every word
Speaker 1: of her. I didn't know what to do, and I
Speaker 1: was crying during a sense memory exercise. You poked me
Speaker 1: in the stomach and you said, I want you to
Speaker 1: work on your insides as much as you're outside. It's funny.
Speaker 1: I remember that too. You told me that Milton could
Speaker 1: sell us said the same thing to you. Well, Milton
Speaker 1: could sell us walked when when I was with you,
Speaker 1: I was skinny, and when seven nine, I was lean,
Speaker 1: And then when I got with him, I met him
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty three, eighty four. But I'll never know you.
Speaker 1: The first thing you do when you're a poor kid
Speaker 1: and you make a lot of money is you start
Speaker 1: to eat whatever you want to eat. And uh, and
Speaker 1: you don't hesitate. You know what I mean. I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: I discovered sushi when I moved to l a and
Speaker 1: and I haven't turned back since. But I'll never could
Speaker 1: sell us walked up to me. He never said one
Speaker 1: thing to me the whole time. And he walked up
Speaker 1: behind me, and he whispered in my ear. He said,
Speaker 1: lose eight pounds eight. We were specific. He was a
Speaker 1: genius about about that kind of estimation. But when you
Speaker 1: began teaching, how's it changed for you over the course
Speaker 1: of that I feel liberated. It used to be what
Speaker 1: and what is it now? I'm not very confident, never
Speaker 1: have been. And I felt anxious all the time, and
Speaker 1: I'm worried that I wasn't doing it right and that
Speaker 1: I wasn't helping. And maybe five years, maybe longer, I
Speaker 1: suddenly felt liberated. I felt like I gotta be myself.
Speaker 1: I think really for the first time my life teaching,
Speaker 1: I never felt that as an actor, I could be myself,
Speaker 1: which is what you always had from the beginning. How
Speaker 1: have the students changed to come into these spaces that
Speaker 1: you teach them? It is the same the students. There's
Speaker 1: more diversity now, they're getting much more hip, They're much
Speaker 1: more knowledgeable about stuff the world. It's a little sometimes
Speaker 1: a little too political. They're like wary about what you say.
Speaker 1: You're like, I can't you should be able to say that,
Speaker 1: you can say this, you can't say that. I know
Speaker 1: there's some things probably they were massively offensive fifty years
Speaker 1: ago or forty years ago and I started teaching, but
Speaker 1: that we can't say now. But I think sometimes I
Speaker 1: gets a little excid, like they're looking for something. I
Speaker 1: mentioned suicide one time in class and a girl said,
Speaker 1: trigger and her friend said, oh, that's right trigger, and
Speaker 1: I thought that's stupid, and I got really upset and
Speaker 1: I said, my eldest son committed suicide. I can't talk
Speaker 1: about that. Well, it might hurt someone. Does the institution
Speaker 1: tell you that you have to honor that? When they
Speaker 1: say that, not yet, why don't you just get up
Speaker 1: and leave? That's it perfect. There was a girl in
Speaker 1: class who obviously had some issue about a scene because
Speaker 1: it hadn't involved sexual assault, and she said, I think
Speaker 1: I'll sit this one out, and she left the class
Speaker 1: right fine, and she works very well, she's very good,
Speaker 1: she's very talented, says she said. I can't deal with
Speaker 1: that now. The thing I noticed, and I don't expect
Speaker 1: you to agree or whatever, but I did interested to
Speaker 1: get your thoughts. Is that when I would teach school
Speaker 1: and I would guess at n y you, I'd walk
Speaker 1: into a class for a day and I'd give my
Speaker 1: thought about whatever. And then I did the full semester,
Speaker 1: which was very interesting, and we had eleven pairs for
Speaker 1: a scene study and we had people come. What I
Speaker 1: realized was that now in the modern world, there are
Speaker 1: young people who come to acting school who have the
Speaker 1: cumbs and the s A T s to go to
Speaker 1: law school or medical school, the Creme de la creme academically,
Speaker 1: and they're coming here to study acting. But a lot
Speaker 1: of them aren't very talented. They're not very talented. They'd
Speaker 1: be better lawyers, right. And I said to this school,
Speaker 1: I said, they're all very smart. I said, I'm in
Speaker 1: a room full of really smart people who aren't very
Speaker 1: adventurous actors or artists. And I said, what I would
Speaker 1: encourage you to do? And they and you could see
Speaker 1: them twitching, and say, you need to take two slots,
Speaker 1: one man, one woman, and lower it to a certain
Speaker 1: floor like nothing below a three, oh nothing below a
Speaker 1: specific s a T. But tear out two coupons and
Speaker 1: invite people in her you think are just purely talented,
Speaker 1: that you think gave an audition that just blew you away.
Speaker 1: And it's not just for their it's for the benefit
Speaker 1: of the other kids to see what good is and
Speaker 1: who can take direction, because in the studio at Strasbourg
Speaker 1: where I went, when I studied with you, it's a
Speaker 1: lot more, you know, less result oriented, and so which
Speaker 1: is good. I'll never forget. Um. There was a guy
Speaker 1: I won't name his name. I'm so tempted to, but
Speaker 1: he does Oberon in the class, and when he's done,
Speaker 1: the teachers are stands there and stares at him, and
Speaker 1: she literally looks over her shoulder at the rest of
Speaker 1: the class, like there it is. He's just fantastic. I
Speaker 1: saw him twenty five years later. He's a conductor on
Speaker 1: the subway and amazing. I'm not mocking that. I'm just
Speaker 1: saying he's not. What happens in the classroom and what
Speaker 1: happens in the outside world is a very very different
Speaker 1: thing for me. The kinds of people that are going
Speaker 1: into the business they want to be famous. I didn't
Speaker 1: really get that that much when I was. It's changed
Speaker 1: a lot. And you know, and of course, back in
Speaker 1: fifty four when I was in my first class, I
Speaker 1: didn't know anything like Nicholas was in the class. Um
Speaker 1: Elanagan was in my class. Um. Everybody in the class
Speaker 1: worked professionally. There were fewer actors and more jobs, and
Speaker 1: a lot of them were really good and had really long,
Speaker 1: wonderful careers. I think that's changed, that's changed a lot.
Speaker 1: Why do you stay here? Why? Why? Oh my god,
Speaker 1: I don't want to go anywhere. I have sure connections.
Speaker 1: Now I have this job, a great job. I'd love
Speaker 1: going to work every day. I only work three days
Speaker 1: a week, such as nice because I am eighty five.
Speaker 1: Those a long days, eight hour days, and then gray
Speaker 1: I feel great. I have four days off a week.
Speaker 1: I have a wife who's great. She reads to me
Speaker 1: at nighttime. Every night. We read Anna Karen and I.
Speaker 1: We read Warren Peace, We read wonderful books. She's what
Speaker 1: created this Shakespeare company out of her imagination. And so
Speaker 1: I get the director of Shakespeare play every year. We're
Speaker 1: doing Hamlet this year. When in June, we have an
Speaker 1: apartment that I love. We had a cat that we love,
Speaker 1: both of us, a wonderful cat. But the cat died recently,
Speaker 1: and so suddenly you feel a little bit diminished. You
Speaker 1: have have four sure things and now I only have three.
Speaker 1: Have you ever been tempted to teach somewhere else? Strasburg
Speaker 1: works for you based on what what's the belief? Uh?
Speaker 1: I think that the hurts we have in childhood, and
Speaker 1: the hurts we never get over the wounds of the
Speaker 1: spirit that never heal. Tennessee Williams writes about it beautifully.
Speaker 1: So I can't say it as beautifully as he says it.
Speaker 1: No matter how famous, no matter how rich, no matter
Speaker 1: how successful, it never goes away. Martin Brando is as
Speaker 1: hurt the day he died as he was when he
Speaker 1: was a child with a brutal father. Um Strasburg stressed
Speaker 1: childhood memory emotion. If you get in touch with the
Speaker 1: hurt of your childhood through memory, the emotion will be there.
Speaker 1: When I would teach acting, i'd hire a piano player,
Speaker 1: so I have a guy who was local that come
Speaker 1: and play the piano, and we'd have a range of
Speaker 1: this very basic song you'd sing, climb every mountain, the
Speaker 1: sun will come out tomorrow. And I made them get up.
Speaker 1: I made him sing, and I said, if you can't
Speaker 1: do this, you can't act. You gotta pull your pants
Speaker 1: down here. You're you're you're not a singer. So what
Speaker 1: I always remember this that Maury Yeston, who wrote nine,
Speaker 1: was at a party. I was at a benefit for
Speaker 1: like the Roundabout or something, and there was Nathan Lane
Speaker 1: and this one and that one, and they're all talking
Speaker 1: about Broadway musical Tonight. Don't sing And Maury Yeston said
Speaker 1: to me, he said, you don't sing I said, I
Speaker 1: really don't sing, and I wish I did. I can't sing.
Speaker 1: I really can't. I don't have the equipment. And he said,
Speaker 1: you know, Dustin Hoffman said the same thing to me.
Speaker 1: And I said, to Dustin, sing the star Spangled Banner
Speaker 1: in the style of Jimmy Duranty and dust and said,
Speaker 1: oh see, can you see? He said, now I want
Speaker 1: you to sing Happy Birthday in the style of Louis
Speaker 1: Armstrong Happy. He said, you see, you're on key, and
Speaker 1: you can sing when you're imitating somebody else because you
Speaker 1: don't have your own style, because we have to find
Speaker 1: your style, and you're gonna wind up doing an impersonation
Speaker 1: of someone that doesn't exist to actually, which is the
Speaker 1: style we're going to create for you to sing. I
Speaker 1: thought that was fascinating what he said that about singing.
Speaker 1: You know, my my wife we did bus stop. I
Speaker 1: directed bus Stop. There's wonderful part for her. She was
Speaker 1: very good. But she can't sing at all. She sings
Speaker 1: one note a hundred times. It's the same note. It
Speaker 1: doesn't go up, doesn't go down, doesn't go faster than
Speaker 1: go slower. I cannot do it now. Maybe someone could
Speaker 1: get it. No, She even went to a singing coach. Nothing. Nothing.
Speaker 1: Do you think everybody can act? I think I think
Speaker 1: some people have a Meryl Streep as a wonderful actress, right,
Speaker 1: and she can do almost everything, but not everything. Yes,
Speaker 1: Marlon Brando, David Lean offered him the part of the Buddha.
Speaker 1: I'll make a movie with you the Buddha. He said,
Speaker 1: I'm not right for the part. He knew himself. Well,
Speaker 1: I don't think it was just laziness on his part
Speaker 1: that he said, I'm not right for it. I don't
Speaker 1: want to go to India. Jack Nicholson is a wonderful actor.
Speaker 1: He can't do everything. This girl in my class just
Speaker 1: yesterday she worked on two scenes and the first one
Speaker 1: she was so terrible it was just painful to watch.
Speaker 1: And then she did another one and she was just
Speaker 1: couldn't have been better to the right part. You have
Speaker 1: to find something you connect to and then eventually, uh,
Speaker 1: you keep putting it out there. I really believe this,
Speaker 1: and this is very you know, kind of metaphysical maybe,
Speaker 1: but you keep putting it out there, It's going to
Speaker 1: come back to you. Do you feel the same way.
Speaker 1: So I remember with Gregory Peck my second wife was
Speaker 1: in a to Kill a Mockingberg. She played the girl
Speaker 1: that accused the black Eye of rape, Mayell Violet, And
Speaker 1: that was my second wife. Your second wife played Mayella? Yes, yes, yes, yeah.
Speaker 1: Where did you meet with the studio? We were on
Speaker 1: the same TV show and then we both remembers of
Speaker 1: the studio and then whatever whatever marriage? Yeah that I
Speaker 1: think I was still married, but never mind. Anyway. Gregory Peck,
Speaker 1: who I just meant to say hello, I shook his hand,
Speaker 1: who was actually the most beautiful man I've ever seen
Speaker 1: in my life. He and his wife. I walked into
Speaker 1: an elevator and they were standing there. I think I
Speaker 1: stood there with my mouth opened like an idiot. I
Speaker 1: felt like I was this big and they were these giants.
Speaker 1: He said when he was eighty, I should have taken
Speaker 1: more risks. And then just yesterday I read this in class.
Speaker 1: One of my students sent it to me. It's a
Speaker 1: the Actors, something that Kazan wrote, and one of those things,
Speaker 1: don't be timid. That's the thing that I don't like
Speaker 1: it when people say if you're shy, you can't be
Speaker 1: an actor. Well, I don't think that's true. I think
Speaker 1: I remember meeting Robert de Niro. He was famous, but
Speaker 1: he was not in his element. He was at a
Speaker 1: party and he felt awkward, and he seemed really shy,
Speaker 1: painfully shy. So does that mean he can't be an actor?
Speaker 1: If anybody had said that, no, Bobby, forget it, to
Speaker 1: forget to do something else. You're too shy. I think
Speaker 1: that's why I like Strasburg is that there's no rule
Speaker 1: about how you're supposed to be well in my career,
Speaker 1: and I don't like that word, but I'll use it
Speaker 1: anyway because it's handy in my career. There's two people
Speaker 1: who I studied acting with who said things to me
Speaker 1: that were pivotal. One was Elaine Aiken, who, when I
Speaker 1: went to meet her with her privately gets a little
Speaker 1: bit of coaching. I did about a five or six
Speaker 1: sessions with her about street Car street Car. I remember
Speaker 1: when we did the play, I had an instinct like, oh,
Speaker 1: I want to not just work with Gregory who is directing.
Speaker 1: I wanted to go to get a little private thing,
Speaker 1: to get a little jump on it. And we're there
Speaker 1: in her apartment on Central Park West, and she said
Speaker 1: to me, when we've reached a juncture, in the scene
Speaker 1: and she said to me, she said, baby, this part.
Speaker 1: You know, he's an animal. He just wanted he wants something,
Speaker 1: he just takes it. He's going to go right through
Speaker 1: who's ever in his way. She goes, and really, you're
Speaker 1: either sexy or you're not. There's nothing we can work
Speaker 1: on there. You've either got that or you don't. And
Speaker 1: then of course you who said I want you to
Speaker 1: work on your insides as much as you're outside. I
Speaker 1: saw you, of course in street car whatever it is
Speaker 1: that she how she coached you work because you were
Speaker 1: very sexy and I know it all to you, and
Speaker 1: you were very funny. You were very funny. Is there
Speaker 1: any part you want to do? I kept thinking of
Speaker 1: what part should Ale do that he hasn't done well?
Speaker 1: I think to myself, you know, obviously, I think about
Speaker 1: my age. I have an unshakable interest in trying to
Speaker 1: master After the fall by Miller Coud, that take on
Speaker 1: his marriage to Monroe is what's in the relationship between
Speaker 1: a man and a woman and that attraction we have
Speaker 1: to the wrong woman, and a woman's gonna kill us
Speaker 1: if we if we hang on there, we're gonna go
Speaker 1: down with her. We're gonna sink on that ship with her.
Speaker 1: I was intrigued by that. Maybe not so much anymore
Speaker 1: because I'm very happily married, but when I was coupling
Speaker 1: with the wrong person, almost addictively, I was obsessed with
Speaker 1: that piece and then the other pieces. Iguana. I just love.
Speaker 1: I just love when they roll that old man out
Speaker 1: there and he says the poem and he drops dead.
Speaker 1: I just want to play that ornery, alcoholic, fornicating madman.
Speaker 1: I want to play Shannon. Yeah, but the problems. It's
Speaker 1: a great but the problem is that then the Williams Cannon.
Speaker 1: Everybody plays Shannon. You play Chance, you play Stanley, you
Speaker 1: play Brick, you play all the young parts, and then
Speaker 1: there's nothing until Shannon, and then after Shannon, there's only
Speaker 1: the last Top is your big daddy, right, So I
Speaker 1: mean every guy in my age plays Shannon's. I've kind
Speaker 1: of backed off of it, but I'd like to do
Speaker 1: it one day. One day. You want to direct me
Speaker 1: and Shannon. That's a hard play. I don't know. I
Speaker 1: you know, I only work with my students. Well you,
Speaker 1: as a former student, I could direct you. Everybody that
Speaker 1: I worked with that I directed that I've taught, and
Speaker 1: so I don't have to. I don't have to cater
Speaker 1: to anybody. Sometimes actors, even though they've never done a
Speaker 1: job in their lives, you can have to cater to
Speaker 1: them a little bit, but it'd be hard from you.
Speaker 1: I do you know? You know who? Very I don't see.
Speaker 1: He was the Shakespeare guru at the Public and now
Speaker 1: he's in Santiago artistic director, and he was coaching some
Speaker 1: very well known actors in his technique verse technique, and
Speaker 1: he's really very good. He's extrauditt and knowledgeable about verse.
Speaker 1: And they were arguing with him because they were more
Speaker 1: famous than he was, and I thought, fuck that. I
Speaker 1: don't need that. I don't want to do that. I
Speaker 1: want to get an argument with anybody. Not that I
Speaker 1: think you would argue or be a pain, but I'm
Speaker 1: thinking of other people that i've known, because actors are
Speaker 1: always insecure when they go into a job, aren't they.
Speaker 1: And they, yes, they are always and they and they
Speaker 1: need someone to let them know they're gonna be okay.
Speaker 1: You know, you're smart, you're insightful, but you're kind, and
Speaker 1: I feel that's essential. I'm not going to name names,
Speaker 1: but remember teachers there at Strasbourg, Who you do the scene?
Speaker 1: They go, why did you bother? My mother was nice,
Speaker 1: so I learned that she was kind. Thank you for
Speaker 1: doing this with me. Thanks very What a nice thing
Speaker 1: to do. Jeffrey Horn from lonely child to movie star
Speaker 1: to obscurity and a spectacular second act. As you heard
Speaker 1: his teaching isn't his only gift to New York theater.
Speaker 1: The theater company he started with his wife, Billy Anderson
Speaker 1: is called Shakespeare Downtown. Tickets are free. They rely on
Speaker 1: donations at Shakespeare Downtown dot org. The Hamlet we discussed
Speaker 1: opens June and runs through I'm Alec Baldwin and you're
Speaker 1: listening to Here's the Thing