Ellen's Mandy Patinkin Page |
Cosmopolitan January 1988 |
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THE TWO SIDES OF PATINKIN
He’s the champion of The Princess Bride and the menace in The House on Carroll Street, while offscreen, on the Broadway stage, he’s a dandy musical Mandy. |
No one has to tell me that Mandy Patinkin has arrived. His gorgeous theatrical voice, which has been belting out the best love song from South Pacific on my stereo all week, is now causing shock waves in his publicist's outer office. Nor is the magnetic, thirty-five-year old actor a treat for the ears alone. Expecting the sexy, bearded young student who was Barbra Streisand's love object in Yentl, or even the immigrant-turned-moviemaker in Ragtime, I am instead introduced to a striking, cleanshaven if long-haired man who looks more like a composite of the two vividly contrasting characters he plays-to warm critical response-in the recently released The Princess Bride and The House on Carroll Street. Of prime concern, says Patinkin, settling into a chair opposite me, is "that my roles be continually varied. What attracts me most is when the next part is different from the last. The roles in Princess Bride and Carroll Street are absolutely nothing like each other and nothing like anything I've ever done before." And, in this instance, he was also turned on by playing the two distinctly different roles simultaneously. "It was refreshing, like doing rep," says Patinkin, alluding to his early work in the theater. The preparation was no less arduous. For The Princess Bride, which was shot in England, the well-built chameleon, cast as a Spanish swashbuckler, turned himself into "the world's greatest sword fighter" with six months of training, "just like a real athlete-but it was dangerous and we all got cut." Meanwhile, he would return periodically to a safer sort of research in New York for the role of a different kind of combatant in Carroll Street-a villainous McCarthy-era lawyer in pursuit of Kelly McGillis for reasons far from romantic. To lend authenticity to his portrayal, Mandy studied old tapes of the McCarthy hearings. The homework paid off: He turns in a performance that is the stuff of nightmares. The malevolent McCarthyite is the second of Patinkin's roles set in the 1950s. The first, in Daniel, was as a tragic figure based on Julius Rosenberg, the passionate Communist executed for treason. Sidney Lumet, who directed him in the film, said afterward that "Mandy is just a bolt of lightning. He's a giant actor, a blinding talent." The blinding talent surfaced early on-Mandy was a standout even as a boy, when he sang in his temple's choir in Chicago. His mother went on to encourage him to perform in plays at a local youth center, but when, as a young man, he chose acting for a career rather than the family scrap-metal business, his folks were a bit uneasy. "They were concerned about my security and suggested that I take business courses. But I didn't like the idea. I thought it was simply preparing myself to fail." Fear of failure is something that has plagued Patinkin off and on. His first Broadway break, which won him a Tony as the charismatic Che Guevara in the smash musical Evita, almost didn't happen, so reluctant was he to submit to the competitive ordeal of an audition. But audition he did, and with star-making results. Still, despite the raves for his onstage singing, Barbra Streisand did not call upon Mandy to raise his voice in song in Yentl, her one-woman movie musical. Mandy now concedes that working with Streisand was not easy, but it did allow him to show a whole new side of his character-the sensual romantic side. "I knew I was the romantic lead, but I wasn't aware of the extent of it until I saw the actual film," he says. "I must admit, I was a bit thrown by it all." Mandy has no overwhelming desire to become a matinee idol, though it is "not something I'm against. But if the romantic lead is boring, I'd rather play his buddy." Indeed, he does play a buddy of the alien persuasion-to James Caan's human in Outer Heat, an upcoming detective film that, in Patinkin's words, is "basically a twist on the issue of how immigrants assimilate into society." Two years ago, after a long run as the decidedly unassimilated artist Georges Seurat on Broadway in Stephen Sondheim's Sunday in the Park With George, Mandy was cast as Meryl Streep's philandering husband in the film version of Heartburn. But disagreement with director Mike Nichols over how the role should be played led to a parting of company, and Jack Nicholson stepped into the role. "Mike and I saw the character differently," Patinkin explains. "I deeply believed my interpretation would make the film better, and, in hindsight, I think I was right." The period following his exit from Heartburn, while filled with doubt, was also a time of healthy self-exploration, with Mandy seeking solace in his family. Even now, when he speaks of his wife, actress Kathryn Grody, and his sons, Isaac, five, and Gideon, two, his whole manner softens. He is even more dedicated a father than he is an actor, and it is clear that family will always come first. "A lot of my considerations about where I go and what I do," he says, "depend on how much it cuts into my family time." He has limited his stage appearances, he says, to New York, which is the Patinkins' home. "With a film, you may have to be away for twelve or fifteen weeks, and it is a strain on the family. But touring in a theater piece takes months, and I can't uproot my family like that." The marriage is a solid one, unusual in a business that entails not only physical separation but professional competition as well. "So far, it hasn't caused conflict," says Mandy. "We work hard at the marriage. Kathryn has more or less decided to be the primary parent, and if somebody's got to travel, it'll be me. Maybe when the kids are older, we'll split things." How would Mandy react if his sons decided to follow in their parents' theatrical footsteps? Would he be as anxious as his own parents had been? Mandy grins, his dark eyes shining with pride. "I'd let them follow their hearts!" By Nora Peck |
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