The Actor Within: Intimate Conversations with Great Actors

Elliott Gould

172 i Elliott Gould After Elliott Gould’s meteoric rise in the late 1960s and early 1970s, his superstar status plummeted after a rare opportunity to work with Ingmar Bergman in Bergman’s first English-language film The Touch (1971) was panned by critics and dismissed by Bergman. Though shaken, Gould returned from Sweden to produce his next film, A Glimpse of Tiger, but problems quickly erupted on set and production was shut down. With two strikes against him, Gould’s reputation and career were nearly destroyed. Two years later, Robert Altman cast him as Philip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye (1973), reviving his career. Gould went on to appear in more than one hundred films and continues to be regarded as one of America’s most accomplished actors. As he sat in my studio for a portrait, I doubled as a hair stylist, attempting to tame his famous unruly curls now mixed with strands of gray. Then pointing my Canon at him, he responded with a smile that I recognized as belonging to Trapper John. Click! ‘‘In 1970, Time magazine featured you on its cover with the banner ‘‘Star for an Uptight Age.’’ Did you try to personify a new kind of cinematic hero?’’ ‘‘If I had understood what I was doing, I probably wouldn’t have accomplished as much. This profession is not like a game of golf where here’s the ru√ and over there are the traps and all those things are laid out in relation to par. It’s completely unpredictable and made more complicated by commerciality. Very few actors live without doubt or fear or questions about what they’re doing. Even very accomplished actors, Academy Award winners, can have a problem with identity and the burden of having to live up to what is expected of them unless they want to live a lie. I’ve never wanted to live a lie. One of my greatest fears has been to be misinterpreted and therefore misjudged. But I now realize that I am what people think I am, whether I like it or not.’’ ‘‘How did you come to the profession?’’ ‘‘I was a performer from the time I was a kid. My parents took me to a song and dance school in Manhattan when I was around nine because I was an extremely shy child. The dysfunction between my parents and my 174 The Actor Within relationship with my father caused me to withdraw into myself. I rationalized that if I memorized song and dance routines I’d be able to express myself and therefore communicate better. When I was twelve, I was performing in the chorus of a show at the Palace when I met Billy Quinn. Billy was the headliner’s dance teacher and would become one of the most important influences in my life. Billy was a transient, an incorrigible black Irishman, not a successful performer in his own right, but he was brilliant. He took me on as one of his dance students, beginning with the fundamentals of tap dancing. He was the only one to get through to me, helping me overcome my inhibitions, and never treated me like a baby when I cried.’’ ‘‘How did Billy influence your acting?’’ ‘‘The key to my acting is movement. In my mind I’m always dancing. Through dance, he impressed on me the importance of timing, that time is always now and that life is fundamentally about being—being true to who we are, comfortable with oneself, at ease, at peace with and in harmony with one’s own skin. One of the things that I’m most proud of in my work is my ability to be present, vulnerable, and transparent.’’ ‘‘Did you and Billy Quinn remain close throughout your life?’’ ‘‘We reconnected later around the time I was about to make Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969). I found him down on his luck and brought him in to live with me. When he died, I kept his false teeth, his tap shoes, and his memory.’’ ‘‘When did you begin to pursue a serious acting career?’’ ‘‘When I was eighteen, I got into the chorus of Rumple (1957), my first Broadway show. It was at the Alvin Theatre, now renamed The Neil Simon Theatre. The smell of this theater was amazing, so real. Every inhale was like breathing in its history and tradition. One...