It didn’t occur to me to try acting it until I was, for an actor, relatively pretty old — 22 or 23. I was working selling tickets and popcorn in a revival movie theater and I was seeing movies from the ’30s to the ’80s and taking note of certain performances. I started to wonder, What was their trick?How do they affect me so strongly, transport me to places far from the movie house? I wanted to try it.
The first teacher I had was a man named Warren Robertson in New York City. He ran scene-study and exercise classes. I didn’t really know anything; I hadn’t had any kind of acting training so I didn’t even know what I was doing. I actually looked in the yellow pages and thought I would try out for a play. I found a listing that said Actors Repertory Theater — yeah, okay they must do lots of plays with actors! So I called them and I said “I want to try out. What’s the story you’re doing, should I prepare?” They said, “Just come in Monday at 8 o’clock and bring two pieces.” I go, “Two pieces of what?” It’s a miracle they even let me come in. I cobbled together dialogue of a character from a story by Karen Blixen, the Danish writer Meryl Streep played in Out of Africa. And also, for some reason I prepared the lyrics to an Irish song. I performed those two texts and they said, “We will get back to you.” Then, a couple of days later they called and said, “Okay, you are accepted.” It turned out to be an audition for an acting school, not a play. So that’s how I got started.
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