Early in your career, you worked with legendary director Robert Aldrich on Ulzana's Raid. What was the wise advice he gave you, and that has stayed with you ever since?
Basically, I got a great deal of success when I was 19 or 20, which is too young for a person to have success. And I found myself sort of like Pinocchio on Pleasure Island in Hollywood. I was co-starring with Burt Lancaster in a Western shot by one of the great directors, Robert Aldrich. He said to me, "Kid, come over here. I'm going to give you some advice, and you're not going to like it, but you don't want to be a leading man. If you become a leading man, you will do six pictures and you will be washed up at 30. Nobody will ever hear from you. You'll be like..." And he named a few actors that that had happened to. And it certainly wasn't advice that I wanted to hear at the time, because I was basking in the glory of all the success I had as a young man.
Did he give you any more insight into a possible career plan?
He said, "You're a good actor. You can be a character actor — play the supporting roles, you know, the villains, the victims, the doctors, the lawyers. Of course, you'll never be rich, but you can raise a family in this town. Otherwise, you can get rich for a few years and then never work again." That was the best advice I ever got. I didn't take it to heart at the time, but that's what happened to me. So here I am, like 400 pictures later, and still working.
While you've had a lot of standout supporting roles, you've also starred in several projects. In fact, the year before Ulzana's Raid, you played the lead in the box-office hit Willard. Is it true you auditioned with a rat on your shoulder to get the role?
No, that's a little mixed up. What happened was, I auditioned, and then they said, "Well, that's all very good, but you have to meet your co-star to see if you two get along." So they drove me out to Van Nuys, where this man who was training the rats had them all in his garage in a very cool, air-conditioned place. He took this big one, the size of a rabbit, and put it on my shoulder. The rat sniffed my ear, and I just sort of petted him. And they said, "Okay, you got the part."
What is the story behind the filming of the ending that involved peanut butter?
This film was made in 1971, back before any special effects could be done on computers. We did many takes that were improvised because you never know what a rat's going to do, but they were trained to run from one place to another if they heard a buzzer that meant food. So they would open up the suitcase, put the buzzer in there, set up the camera, and the rats would all run into the suitcase—things like that. They saved the last shot of the movie, where I get eaten alive by rats, and smeared me with peanut butter, which these animals love. Then they told me to get down on the floor, surrounded me with chicken wire, and dumped 600 rats on me. (laughs) They figured they could save it for the last shot in case anything bad happened to me.
Then, in 1974, you co-starred in Mame, based on the Broadway musical of the same name. I heard the reviews were quite harsh. Bea Arthur was kind of embarrassed by it, and Lucille Ball never returned to the big screen. Did you anticipate that kind of critical reaction?
I think both Lucy and I felt it during the course of the shooting. I think she realized that she was a little too old for the part, and given that Angela Lansbury had originated it on Broadway, she knew she would be compared to her. But she was a gutsy lady who risked that chance and took it. Sometimes we take chances and we fall off a cliff; sometimes you take a chance and you get an Academy Award. The film is still around—people still love it and watch it. And, you know, critics are of the moment. She probably felt that it would last beyond that period of time and that it would be worth something to somebody who isn't going to compare her to someone else. It's like, you know, who did the best Hamlet? You would have to go back 300 years, and still, you'd never know.
Many years later, in 1989, you played a gay man during the AIDS crisis in Longtime Companion. How did you navigate that shoot given the uncertainty surrounding the syndrome and its portrayal in the media?
I was in New York at the time, and my then-wife had worked with Craig Lucas and Norman René, who were basically stage directors and writers. I auditioned for them and got the part, and a lot of people said, "You shouldn't go near this." 1990 was quite a scary time to be a gay man living in New York City. It was a time when Ronald Reagan had still not even mentioned the word AIDS. During the course of the shooting and until the time it was released, my agent, my commercial agent, and my manager all died of AIDS and didn't get to see the finished product. The film was shot for public television and paid nothing, but it showed at the Sundance Film Festival, Samuel Goldwyn Jr. bought it, and the rest became history.
What led you to play a homosexual character at that time? Because in the early '90s, there was such homophobia and prejudice that it could have marked the end of your career...
I was doing a play at the time, and Holland Taylor was playing my sister. I remember giving her the script and letting her read the scene in which I tell my lover to let go — you know, that he could pass. I remember seeing tears streaming down and wetting her blouse. This was just before we went on stage, and I thought, you know, something that touches humanity in such a basic, visceral way is something I have to do. It's not a gay story; it's a story about the human experience that all of us go through at one time or another when we are with a loved one and have to tell them, "You don't have to hang on any longer." I had personally experienced that with my mother, so it resonated deeply with me.
You won a Golden Globe for the role, and you were also nominated for an Oscar. What can you tell us about your speech on the night when you won that award?
It was really off the top of my head, which is amazing because I thought I was going to lose to Joe Pesci, who went on to win the Oscar. He gave the best performance of his life in probably one of Martin Scorsese's greatest films of all time, which was Goodfellas. At the time, the Desert Storm was raging — the war, fighting Saddam Hussein — and I thought that so much had been put on about the cost of this war, and so little had been said about this plague that was going on, that it occurred to me at the time that to compare the two might be a good thing to do. You know, if we can spend this much fighting for oil, we certainly can spend this much on fighting against a holocaust that is affecting all of humanity.
How do you recall your kind of strange audition with Robert Altman that led to your role in Short Cuts?
It's very funny that you mention that. Hollywood is a funny business, because you could be in the best agency, with six of the agents sitting in your trailer talking about a six-year plan. And then you don't win, and you can't get one of them on the telephone anymore. So, I was at one of these Hollywood parties during the course of the campaigning for Longtime Companion, and I ran into Mr. Altman. I had seen him on the street before in New York, but he looked like he was angry and pissed off, and having a fight with somebody — so I never went up to him. But I walked up to him at this party, and I said, "Listen, I've been afraid to approach you when I saw you last time, but I'm not going to be afraid this time. And I want to say, I would read the newspaper for you for free. I would do anything to work with you."
That's a great approach — it probably made a good first impression on him...
The next day, my then-agents called me up and said, "Well, we've been working on this Robert Altman film for a long time, and we've got you an audition with him tomorrow." And I thought, "Yeah, I bet you did." So they said, "Go down and meet him at his house." I think it was in Malibu. So I knocked on his front door, and he was in his robe and slippers. He looked at me and said, "I'm making some bread. You know how to make bread?" And I replied, "No..." And he said, "Well, come on in, and I'll show you." So he was basically showing me how to make bread. Suddenly, he turned to me and said, "Oh, by the way, Jeff Daniels fell out of my film. You want to do it?" And I replied, "Yes." He said, "Well, don't you want to read the script or anything?" I said, "No, no. I just want to do whatever you wrote."
Did he provide more information about the role or just leave it there?
He said, "Well, Andie MacDowell plays your wife. I told her that I'd let her have approval over who played her husband. I'll give her a call. OK, get out of here." So I did, and that's how I got the part. He was wonderful. And more than any other director I think I've ever worked with, Robert Altman loved collaborating with actors and letting them improvise. And he would use microphones on all actors in the scene at the same time, so they would overlap dialogue. That was something he got fired for by Warner Brothers, back when he was doing television. They didn't usually do that. They did it in one movie called The Thing, which, you know, everybody noted, "People are talking over each other. I can't hear everything." Well, you know, that's the way real life is.
What was it like working among such a strong cast?
Great. It was a great opportunity to work with Jack Lemmon, who plays my father in that. And Altman at one time says, "I'm just going to shoot this on you, Jack. A close-up." And I said, "No, no. You don't see what's going on. I might not have a word for 10 minutes, but I certainly have a reaction to what he's saying to me. So you shoot two angles." And years later, I ran into him in a restaurant; he was sitting with somebody, and he said, "You know, this kid — he told me to shoot this two ways and he really made that scene work, because if it was only shot on Jack, it wouldn't have had twice the power that it had when we put it together. So I got to raise my glass to you, kid. You really helped me with that."
In the mid-1990s, after Short Cuts, you played Reverend Samuel Parris in The Crucible. Did you have the chance to meet the film's screenwriter, who is none other than playwright Arthur Miller, in person?
That is a great question — probably one of the best you could have asked me — because when I was in college, I was an art major at Penn State University, and I took a theater appreciation course just because I had an elective. We were given a little paragraph to read and memorize, and mine was from Arthur Miller. I can remember it to this day because it was so powerful.
Please recite it to me...
It goes, "There is a certain immortality involved in theater, created not by monuments or books but through the knowledge an actor carries with him to his dying day—that, in a dusty and empty theater, on a certain afternoon, he cast a shadow of a being that was not himself but a distillation of everything he had ever thought or felt. All the unsingable heartsong that the ordinary man may feel but never utter, he gave voice to and, by that, he somehow joins the ages." And I thought, "OK, that's what I'm going to do. That's what I want."
What a powerful statement. It certainly showed you the way to your career path...
Years later, I got the opportunity to do The Crucible, and I'm working with Arthur Miller, whose son is producing the film. He scared me to death, you know — this grim old guy sitting back there behind the camera, and I was afraid to talk to him. We sort of bumped into each other, and he looked at me and said, "I was just thinking about Parris. You know, you're doing things I hadn't thought about. It's good." I said, "Well, thank you, sir, because you're the reason I am an actor." I got to say that to him, and he said, "Oh, yeah. I wrote that about Lee J. Cobb when we were doing Death of a Salesman."
You're widely recognized for your role as Senator Robert Kelly in X-Men, where you were the first actor cast in the film. At such an early stage in the project, was it an easy decision to come on board, or did you have any hesitations?
No, I had no hesitations at all. I had worked with Bryan Singer before, in a film called Apt Pupil, with Ian McKellen and a young man named Brad Renfro. Now, Brad was a child actor who has unfortunately since passed away, but he was a very troubled little boy, and he came from a rough home. I worked with him when he was 12 years old, in a film called The Cure, where there was another young actor named Joey Mazzello. I came in during the last two weeks because the director was a friend of mine. I was going to work right after being picked up at the airport, and I asked the driver, "How's this going?" He said, "Well, one of the kids is driving everybody crazy because he's just uncontrollable. And we're at sort of the end of the shoot, and nobody knows how to deal with him."
What was your impression of him when you first actually met him personally?
As I walked up to the set, little Joey Mazzello ran up to me and said, "Bruce, how are you?" and gave me a hug. Brad sort of looked over at me and said, "So, who the fuck...?" And he didn't get anything more out. I grabbed him in a headlock and said, "Listen. I don't care if they fire me off this film, but if you pull any crap on me, I'm going to rip your head off. Got it?" I let him go, and he looked up at me and said, "I want to be a director, you know?" I said, "Well, that's a good thing to do." Then he said, "I have a guitar. You want to see it?" I said, "Well, yes."
You set the boundaries, and he understood it right away.
Time fast-forward — he's the star of this film with Bryan Singer and Ian McKellen, and he asks for me to play his dad. So, I played his father. It's not much of a part, but I played it. During the course of making films, everybody sort of sits together. This was early in Bryan Singer's career. And I did what I always do — I said to the director I was working with, "Well, if you ever get something good, don't forget to call me." And that's what he did. When they got X-Men, they called me first and said, "Do you want to be on this?" And I replied, "Oh, yeah." He said, "I don't know where it's going, I don't know what's going to happen, but it's this new film called X-Men, and it's from Marvel. It's kind of like cartoons and stuff — but maybe something big."
Is it true that Rebecca Romijn accidentally kicked you in the face during the scene where she reveals herself as Mystique?
Haha. She may have. Poor Rebecca had to go through 12 hours of makeup during that time. And, you know, she's a beautiful woman, but she's all painted blue and nearly naked. She had her feet around my neck for half of it while they were setting up a camera. You don't know that those things take eight hours to shoot. And we were talking about children and raising our families. She has her legs around my neck, and she's kicking me in the face, and they say, "Well, we can't use that because the blue came off on your face." But it's very funny because what people finally see on the screen has an awful lot of backstory that one doesn't get to see. We became friends, and we even did another movie years later with her and her husband, Jerry O'Connell.
Were you surprised to be asked back for the sequel, considering your character had died in the first film?
Well, first of all, I said to Bryan, "You know, when I melt and explode, all you've got to do is shoot one scene of water running down a drain, and then I have a life. I can escape. I could come back later." And he says, "No, the machine's got to kill you..." or some bullshit I wasn't sure about. But anyway, I think he felt guilty. So, he put me in the second part of the second film, in which I am Mystique pretending to be me.
You also had some memorable roles on television. Going back in time, from 1985 to 1987, you appeared in 16 episodes of the beloved series Hunter. Why were you chosen to take John Amos' place?
Oh, I don't really know why. I know that a year into it, they tried to fire me, and Fred Dryer said, "You're not going to do that," because we had become friends during the course of the shoot. It was a cop show, and I had the same part that every police boss has in every movie you've ever seen. I would say, "Don't get involved with blah, blah, blah," and then, "You solved the case, but don't let it happen again or I'll have your badge." And every week they'd change "blah, blah, blah" to something else. (laughs) So, as an actor, it wasn't very fulfilling. It was nice to have a steady job and make some money, but I got to the point where that really wasn't as important to me as it is now. Now, I'd be glad to step in there and say the same things over and over again, because we get older and the parts get limited.
What about Harry and the Hendersons in the early '90s?
The series had the same actor as in the original film playing the Bigfoot character, Kevin Peter Hall. And Kevin came to me and said, "Would you do this with me? John Lithgow's not going to do it, so do you want to do it?" And I said, "Well, okay." He said, "Because we could do five minutes getting me through a door." He was a great physical comedian, and the suit was built for him. I thought this could be something we could go on forever with. Unfortunately, a very short time into that, Kevin contracted HIV. And this was at the same time that I had already done Longtime Companion. I called Kevin and said, "I'll see you at the Christmas break." And he said, "No, no..." I asked, "Where are you?" He replied, "I'm in Century City Hospital. I'm not going to be coming back."
Were you able to see him one last time?
Yes, I went over and saw him at the hospital. I said, "I feel so guilty now because I'm getting nominated for Longtime Companion. I'm going to all these rubber chicken dinners, and I'm getting awards and things. And I feel so guilty being a straight man and doing this..." And he looked at me and said, "No, don't you dare feel like that. You get to tell my story. That's your job." He died shortly after that.
What a meaningful thing to say in the midst of that tragic situation...
A few years later, Tom Hanks was nominated for Philadelphia, and I was at a ceremony or something, and I remember him saying how guilty he felt getting all these accolades while people were in oxygen masks, dying at his feet. I told them the story of Kevin. I said, "It's your job. That's what we do as actors. You get to tell that story — the unsingable heartsong that the ordinary man may feel but never get a chance to utter." And time is like crests of waves. Sometimes you catch the wave, and sometimes you miss it. And soon after, Tom Hanks won the award for Philadelphia.
With over 250 credits to your name, you've also made memorable guest appearances on famous series, including an Emmy-nominated performance in Touched by an Angel. What are some of your memories of shows like Seinfeld or Lost?
Well, Seinfeld — I got very lucky. I mean, I actually met my wife, who was with another actor at the time. But years later, we met up, and we have a 19-year-old daughter. I've worked a lot with Jason Alexander. I just saw him do a wonderful production of Fiddler on the Roof, which I was really sorry that they didn't get to take to Broadway because I thought he was superb in that. Lost was another job that I just happened to get lost into. It was one of those calls that somebody said, "Come to Hawaii for a week, and we'll pay you this money, and you've got these lines, and you're Hurley's psychiatrist in what may be a dream, what may not be." So I just hopped on a plane and flew there. Being a character actor, I just happened to be the psychiatrist that week. (laughs)
More recently, in 2022, you worked on the fourth season of Netflix's hit Ozark. How does it feel to be involved in such major projects at this more seasoned stage of your career?
Jason Bateman created a basically incredible show. The acting was superb. I had a lot of friends working there, you know — Harris Yulin and Janet McTeer. And I auditioned for the part, got it, and was very grateful to be on it. It was difficult for me because a show of that precision and that beautiful writing — that's a fast-moving train. And every time I had to be in it, I had to run alongside that train at 60 miles an hour and jump on. I'd be on for two days to shoot a scene, then jump off and wait for the next month to happen. But in the meantime, that train keeps going. So it was difficult.
Could you elaborate on that?
It was difficult to bring my game up every time I had to be in that show because a lot is expected of you. And if everybody else is part of that family that's running along, and then you've just got to jump in every once in a while, you're always the new kid in school, you know — and that's scary for an actor. It was scary for me to try to come up to their level every time I was there because I'm always in the senator's office and separate from the story that's going on.
What's your take on having to audition despite already being a very well-known actor, and on the fact you just mentioned about not getting as many roles now as you used to when you were younger?
That's interesting because, like I say, I'm still working. Most of the people I started with — who were stars at the time — are forgotten or just gone. But I've got to hustle my ass every time, because I've got to knock on the same doors that a lot of other character actors who could play that part are also knocking on. And you never know, in a group, what's going to be needed — maybe somebody a little balder, somebody a little older, somebody fat or chunky, or somebody more muscular who needs to look like a Marine guy. You're always up against that when you're a character actor who's still hustling for a job.
What is one of the biggest lessons you've learned while going down this road?
I started as a painter in college, and I gave it up. Back in the '70s, just before Mame, I was doing The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial with Henry Fonda, who was also a great painter and actor. He said, "Well, let me see some stuff you did." I showed him, and he said, "This is good. Why did you quit?" I replied, "I knew I could play Rembrandt, but I could never be a Rembrandt. I knew that in my heart." And he said, "Well, that's what's wrong with your acting. Because it's not about the result — it's about the journey. It's about the joy of doing it." So, that was a great lesson in my life. I remember meeting Jane Fonda years later, and I told her that story. She said, "I wonder why he never told me that." And I said, "Because you were his daughter."
I imagine it's hard indeed when you have to tell this to your own children...
Now that my daughter is pursuing the same kind of path, it's hard to talk to your children about it because, I think Hemingway said it best when he was talking about F. Scott Fitzgerald's talent: "His talent is like the dust on the wings of a butterfly. Breathe too hard and you've destroyed it." It's that delicate, especially with your loved ones and the children you love. So, I understand that now more than when Jane asked me that question.
What are your personal and professional projects for the near future?
I've got two films coming out. They're both small independent films, so you never know, because you can make 20 of them and they can just evaporate into the ether — or one of them could be Longtime Companion. I've done one called 25 Miles to Normal with Dee Wallace and Ed Begley Jr., who introduced me to my wife 20 years ago. And I just finished another film that I did with Frances Fisher called Out of the Woods, which is a love story for my age and what it's like when things start to come apart. So those are two films that you may see, or they may disappear. But also, I'm still looking for work.
Is there a final message you want to give to my audience?
Just enjoy what you do. I think the most important thing is: if you don't have a passion for it that overwhelms everything else, then you're in the wrong place. Gotta find the work that you love, the work that fills you; otherwise, you're just wasting your time making money or having a life of quiet desperation. It's better to be falling off a cliff that you decided to jump off of than just lying in the dirt and sitting there till you rot.