listen to the Pinter actor
The New York Times has a nice piece up about David Hodge, a British actor playing the drag queen character in an upcoming production of La Cage Aux Folles, opposite Kelsey Grammer. The actor is a protege of Harold Pinter’s:
That changed in 1993, Mr. Hodge said, when the director David Leveaux cast him as the bodyguard Foster in Pinter’s No Man’s Land, in which “Pinter himself starred as the alcoholic intellectual, Hirst.
Harold and I became great friends, and the truth is he became a second father to me,” said Mr. Hodge, who went on to act in or direct the Pinter plays Moonlight,Betrayal and The Caretaker.
“He was someone I could talk to and confide in very easily,” Mr. Hodge added. “And I felt I was very like him. I just didn’t have his genius.”
Look what he has to say about how he has come to understand acting:
“For a time I really thought acting was just impersonating,” he recalled. “But impersonation is just big brush strokes, really. What makes acting different is empathy.“
I couldn’t have said it better myself.
