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by Gordon Pinsent

  I think it’s safe to say that these archaic notions have been vanquished from the more modern and sophisticated social behaviour. Nothing would support that more clearly than my being invited, over the years, to so many lovely places. But with that kind of history, is it any wonder actors sometimes huddle together against the slings and arrows of outrageous agents?

  I never took an acting class, or a dance lesson. I didn’t have the money to go to RADA or any of those famous schools. I just had to pick it up as I went along. But I’m a big fan of theatre schools, because I think they can help you find out if you’re any good, and what you’re good at, much faster than you can find out on your own. You’ll still have to go through all the other stuff, digging ditches, waiting on tables, driving a truck, whatever it takes to keep you going while you look for your big break. And en route to your big break in this profession you have chosen – yes, I know, you believe it has chosen you – you learn to become intimate with rejection. I used to get the feeling that if rejection was a cereal, my picture would be on the box. Which is the way most actors feel most of the time. And which is probably why, no matter where we’re born or raised, we speak the same Creative language.

  I remember one time, in Beijing, when Charm and I were at a rooftop dinner hosted by the Canadian Consul, and among the invited guests were a number of Asian actors who were quite sullen and withdrawn. When we invited them to join our table they just ignored us – until their translator told them that Charm and I were actors too. And suddenly they brightened up, and opened up, and couldn’t have been more wonderful. And we knew exactly how they were feeling. At last, there is someone in the room with the same understanding, the same sensibility as me.

  Chalk it up to Chromosome 11. Someone once said that actors and writers and artists have a different chromosome. These are the people with attention deficit in school, the kids who are sure they are more suited to something else. Even if it’s not true, it means we should be forgiven. Because clearly we can’t help it.

  I’m very doubtful about whether I can analyze my technique as an actor. People are always saying, How do you approach a role? How do you do this? How do you do that? In my Winnipeg theatre days Tom Hendry regarded me as a naturalist actor, the kind of actor who uses a lot of sense memory from his past to build the character he’s playing. The thing is, I’ve always been conceited enough to say of myself that I’m an actor. It’s as simple as that. I can act. And all these days later – years later – I’m an actor. I scratched and clawed to find other fossils in me which might have suggested that, down through the ages. there would have been others. At least one. A Pinsent, Pinson, Pincon.

  I did find that we had all hailed from a German bird, by the name of Finch-sen and – how’s this? – that according to an elderly retired Doctor Pinsent in London, we had flowered, remarkably, from no less than the captain of the Pinta, an ancestor by the name of Martin Alonzo Pinzon.

  The Captain, no less! This had me hoping like hell that the good old doctor was just that, and not an inmate. I might not even have to be that good an actor, with that on the CV. And apparently there have not been a whole lot of dissenters to that connection. Not that I’ve looked for one. Plus the fact that my brother Haig had been blessed and stamped with the middle name of, get this, Alonzo. (Come on now, you surely don’t think you can talk me out of that one?) But I would have been pleased as punch to locate one who had called himself Legitimate where theatre was concerned. A messenger for one of the Henrys, say, or a servant to Burbage in anything. I’d even settle for a relative down through the ages who might have taken tickets.

  I always resented the rule in Canada that, yes, you could try your hand at this, but you better learn to do something else as well. But I still thought that was the richest part, to be able to do all these things. I thought, Well, I’m not going to sit here like algae on a pond. So I was a painter before I was an actor, and I was an actor before I was a writer, so I knew I could dabble in all three. That made sense to me. Acting was what I really wanted to do, and when you’re an actor, you get a lot of spare time. So I would paint, but even when I was painting I would have to stop and go back to Waiting. Because I was a Waiting actor – waiting for the phone to ring. Acting is a truly wonderful profession, but it is not an easy one. Whenever it looks easy you can be sure that we are working very hard to create that particular illusion.

  One of the great showbiz stories – and don’t stop me if you’ve heard it – is sometimes attributed to the celebrated Shakespearean actor Edmund Kean but most commonly attributed to the film actor Edmund Gwenn, who popped up regularly on the silver screen at the Nickel when I was a boy. According to Hollywood folklore, the ailing thespian, then eighty-two, was about to take his last breaths on earth, surrounded by his family at his bedside. Distressed by the sight of the old man’s discomfort, one of Gwenn’s young grandsons leaned forward and rested his hand gently on the actor’s arm.

  “Grandpa,” said the young man, “is dying hard?”

  The old actor slowly shook his head.

  “Dying is easy,” he replied softly. “Comedy is hard.”

  How many different ways have I died onstage? Onscreen? Not that often, actually, unless you count those deaths I might’ve deserved through performance. I didn’t mind being killed, but “lying” dead while the play went on was far more difficult than I had expected, due to my incurable giggling.

  The first and most memorable time: Rainbow Stage, the fifties, melodrama, The Pitfalls of Pauline. The hero Allan Allworthy leaves the villain (that would be me) as he intones the historic line, “I shall remain to see that he expiates his diabolical depravity.” All the while my supposedly inactive corpse is bubbling and choking with laughter, for my own amusement. The giggling, by the way, was a joyous one, brought on mainly, as I lay there, by counting my blessings for having been accepted and nurtured by my marvellous discovery, theatre.

  I died a few film deaths, and maybe a couple more on TV, but never after I became established enough to play the good guy. My absolute favourite death scenes on film all belonged to James Cagney. If you look at his films, there were three beauties – Public Enemy, Tomorrow Never Dies, and White Heat – and in all three, when he hits the floor, his feet lift off the ground, for a last bow. In those days stars really knew how to die.

  Why do we do what we do? Yes, the applause is sweet, but that’s only part of it. We are gamblers playing the ego lottery, and we know the odds are against us. Still, somebody’s got to win. And maybe this time we’ll get that series. Granted, the thrill of landing a series is frequently greater than the thrill of doing a series, playing that same character over and over again. But offer us a guarantee of twenty-six weeks and we’ll jump at it. Because now we don’t have to keep wondering if we’ll ever work again, because now we know we will, if we don’t screw it up, for at least another twenty-six weeks. And if the series should run five or six or seventeen years, we’ll complain about it, and moan about having to play the same character again and again, and send our kids through college, and love every minute of it, and on our good days, on our very good days, be just as grateful as we should be. And then we’ll suddenly find ourselves “on hiatus.” And then we will have to wait and wait and frequently wait some more before we can actually find out if we’re just “on hiatus” or just out of work.

  The regular working man has a nine-to-five existence; he quite rightly assumes that he will be working from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. for pretty much the rest of his life. As actors we don’t have that. We have these gaps. Down time. Hiatus. And meanwhile, you just keep working on the dream.

  choose me

  NO MINOR MUSICAL STATESMAN, THE BRILLIANT American lyricist Stephen Sondheim said it with music:

  Even when you get some recognition

  Everything you do you still audition …*

  I’m almost getting used to tuning into a new series and not recognizing anybody on it. Or going to an audition with a lot of new faces – well, n
ew to me, anyway – with Kenny Welsh sitting in the corner.

  We’ve all been there. Prepping the resumé. Shining up the ol’ curriculum vitae. Putting our best face forward. Doing our damnedest to get the job.

  Some corporations hire you on a trial basis – a three-month let’s-see-how-we-get-along period, ostensibly. But of course what it is really is a three-month test drive, so they can see if you can do the job and you can prove that you were only fibbing about half the accomplishments on your CV.

  People in my business don’t get a three-month trial period. Sometimes, if we’re lucky, we might get three weeks. We call it “rehearsal.” And by then of course we’ve already got the job.

  Actors audition. We read for a part. We get the part or we don’t get the part. A terrifying process, really. Ask anyone – except me. From the very beginning, overall I had the same feeling going in for auditions whether they were good or not, and I had the same feeling about them whether I got them or not. I was not afraid of them. Certainly there were a number of things generally agreed-on about auditions, that they were terrible and demeaning and everything else. But I’ve never felt that way. For some reason I always felt that if I didn’t give them exactly what they wanted, I wouldn’t get it, thank you. Because their idea of what it is wouldn’t necessarily be mine. But no, it didn’t bother me, the possibility of failing at an audition. And no, I don’t know where that confidence came from. I think it came from stirring up, at the last minute, just enough stuff of my own, to make the thing work for me, even if it didn’t work for them. It was a very odd thing. In a strange way it was like painting with me. And I’d had the experience of painting before that. And I could layer it. I could do my layers and get in there and say, Well, that was interesting, even if I came out and didn’t get the part. Because I was always happy to find out a little something more.

  I’ve always been excited by life around me. Even when I was a little kid I admired adults who had lived a certain life, I remembered the businesses they were in, the drama of the workaday world around me. And I was happy to take part in it. I didn’t want to have to be the leader of anything. That didn’t bother me at all. So not to get something, to feel like it was going to be the end of the world if I didn’t get it, wasn’t really an issue. I knew that they had an idea of what they wanted, and that maybe I could give it to them. Or maybe I could if I went back a second time. I didn’t always get that chance. But I was part of something that I was glad to be part of – this business, this work, this stuff. Fitting in and getting things done and feeling good about it and having somebody say that you’re right for the part, that you’re good for the business. In times when nothing was happening I felt like I was still part of the club.

  I’ve always wanted to be part of the club. I’ve always wanted to be part of a going thing with a lot of fine people to talk to. All of that would make a great deal of sense. I wasn’t thinking of any kind of stardom. Tony Curtis said, “Fame is an industry unto itself.” And a different world. But the working world, the world you’re part of until fame happens, well, you’re either going to have great fun in it, or say, What a waste of time!

  And you learn things, because there are lessons to be learned. You need to learn how to say Yes. Barry Morse told me that he always said yes to everything. You can always say no later, he said. This also made sense. So I learned to say Yes, as if I knew what they were talking about. And people thought they could depend on me. Maybe they thought I had something really important to say. What I had to say was, nothing. But I guess they thought I did.

  All these characters – who do you see yourself playing? All of them, I said. Because I was just so anxious to get into that wonderful place called the rehearsal studio. Wouldn’t it be fun? Bring in coffee, have a cigarette. It’s all about that. Beats working for a living, absolutely.

  When I auditioned for a role in Last of the Mohicans, a TV series that was shooting in Toronto, the casting director asked me if I knew how to ride a horse.

  “English or Western?” I replied somewhat grandly.

  I didn’t know how to ride a horse.

  I got the part.

  I think this boldness came from situating myself in the life around me, whatever was going on. And seeing the value in it. And watching it, and appreciating it. And everything was new, so I was seeing it for the first time. For the longest time, everything was new.

  A lot of people had learned far more than I had in the same amount of time. But I was not dismayed because I didn’t know how to swim or ride a bike, because there was plenty of time to learn.

  I never did learn some things. I’m still not a great swimmer. And I still can’t ride a bike.

  Some of the parts you audition for, you get. Some you don’t get. Sometimes you’re not right for the part. Sometimes you’re not who they have in mind. They are secretly looking for someone taller/shorter/fatter/thinner/older/younger than you. Sometimes it’s so secret that they don’t even know it themselves. And then, every once in a while, you just do yourself in. When The Godfather was announced, I had a meeting with one of the producers, Al Ruddy. I wanted to play Thomas Hagen, Brando’s consigliere, a role that eventually went to Robert Duvall. But when I read for Ruddy I was just too confident. Overconfident. Which of course is a clear indication of low self-esteem, a condition that has plagued me all my life.

  You can also be overprepared.

  In the early nineties Robert Redford, who had already won an Oscar as a director, was putting a film together called A River Runs Through It, about a minister and his two sons. Redford had a keen eye for fresh talent. He had cast Brenda Blethyn as the mother, Craig Sheffer as one of the sons, and as the other son, a young up-and-comer named Brad Pitt.

  So far, so good.

  Redford saw a demo of mine from A Gift to Last and asked me to read for him. And Larry Dane was also going to read for him, for another part. So he and I were both preparing to go to New York for this meeting with Redford, and Larry said, “What are you going to do?”

  “Well,” I said, “I will read whatever he gives me to read, and we’ll see where it goes from there.”

  “No, no!” said Larry, “no, you’ve got to prepare for this!” And Larry is always right. “Okay, Gordon, here’s what we’re gonna do. Go over to CBC wardrobe and borrow a priest’s cassock – get the collar, get the whole thing. Then get a haircut.” As if I was four years old. “And then we’re going to set you up, in a nice little corner of the house here, and we’re going to shoot some video of you in the role. And I’ll direct it.”

  So I did. And he did.

  “That’s right, turn in your chair. No, a little more to the right. No, not that much. Okay, now say what you have to say. Okay, that should do it. Because you know, the better you’re prepared …”

  So that’s what we did. We prepared. And I prepared myself right out of the movie. Oh yes.

  Down I go to New York City, a clean white shirt tucked into my carry-on. I was staying at the Paramount, I think, and I went into one building, and I was way early, and waited for ages, and it was the wrong building.

  “No, you want the Times building,” they said, and then added reassuringly: “It’s okay – it’s not that far.”

  But it was that far, and by the time I got there I was a total wreck, sweating like a pig, and meeting Robert Redford for the first time. And I could see that he was very busy, but he saw me waiting and came over and said, “Hello Gordon, thanks for coming, I’ll be with you as soon as I can.” Which was very nice of him, very professional.

  And then I got to read for him. And I don’t remember if Redford has dark brown eyes, but after we started they turned pale, and I think he was catching up on a little bit of sleep while I was reading for him. And after we finished I said, “Would you like me to do it again?” And Redford said, “No thanks, Gordon, that was enough.”

  Tom Skerritt, who I worked with on The Silence of the North, got to play the minister. And I never did that kind of prepa
ration again. Because it’s great to be prepared, but it’s always a good idea to leave a little room for the director!

  Actors audition. It’s what we do. When we’re not auditioning, we’re thinking about auditioning.

  Or, in my case, writing about auditioning.

  THE AUDITION

  “Perform!” she’d said. “You’re an actor. Use it, where you are overwhelmed! If your well-known anxiety stops you at the door – any door – where the unknown threatens to swallow you up, then perform. You’ve still got the merest black Irish twinkle left. Use it. Use it on strangers, who will like you if you don’t reveal your entire litany of ailments, and on your friends, who think they know you. Perform. I don’t have a whole lot of time for this, being as dying has cost me patience when it comes to such things as nerves. But this I know, and want you to know. You have a lot more death ahead of you than life. So get the fuck on with it!”

  I showed myself to a mirror in a thick large sweater half pulled over my frame, as if I’d been halted in dressing completely for the day. From inside the sweater, I thought: I like this. I see only fragments of noon through the weave; and the day – and those few old friends of ours who lived to see this far – could see nothing of me, except hair sprouts through the neck of the turtle, and lower body.

  Another glance of casual interest. Yes, there’s something about him that might suggest strength, but try and look beyond that.

  I was sure that my steel-blue eyes and steady countenance were intimidating my fellow auditioners, which suited me fine as it could throw them off; and I could use that. They would not take long, their voices, high and shaky next to my profundo, able to peel the walls of the corridor. By now, I could safely race through the amount of French I would need for the audition. Fine too was the fact that I would be the last to go in. For now, be bold, for God’s sake; and try and act as though you know that you must have learned something in your long career compared to these youngsters, first time out.