From dinosaurs to democrats, Richard Schiff’s career has
spanned some fascinating territory in the past three decades. Now the Emmy
winning actor is in UK to judge Sheffield’s International Student Drama Festival
and is teaching the actors of tomorrow about researching roles, questioning
their profession and avoiding late night takeaways.
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| Schiff Happens |
Not many 57 year olds can get away with a fist bump as a
greeting. The gesture is in the domain of the young; the sort of thing that would
usually be used by rappers in gratuitously materialistic music videos, not by a
distinguished middle-aged New Yorker sporting a greying beard and trillby. However this is
exactly how Richard Schiff greets people as they approach him at the Crucible
theatre in Sheffield. As he extents his fist to me I see the reason for this
unconventional greeting; his wrist is
bandaged from a recent injury. We touch knuckles and he languidly smiles.
“A minor accident,” is all he gives in way of explanation.
Schiff has just come out of Newcastle University’s theatre
society’s production of Sweeny Todd, a performance that he gave a standing
ovation. He is one of three judges of Sheffield’s International Student Drama
Festival, which is running from the 22nd
-30th of June. The West Wing star is a major coup for the festival
which, for the first time in its 40 year history, will include international
productions and an international judging panel. By his side is the actor’s 18
year old son Gus, who diligently organises his father’s hectic schedule. It is
Gus who arranges for me to attend the next day’s Q&A session as Schiff
senior is swept away by a gaggle of excited theatre lovers.
With over 30 years
of acting experience - covering stage, TV and film - Schiff has carved out a
career as an acclaimed character actor. Starting out on Broadway in the 80s, he
made the leap to TV in the early 90s appearing in shows like LA Law and Doogie
Howser, M.D. before getting supporting roles in films such as the Coen’s
Brother’s Hudsucker Proxy and Spielberg’s blockbuster sequel Jurassic Park: The
Lost World (where he fell foul to the T-Rex).
However his most famous role came
at the end of the decade as dour White House communications director Toby
Ziegler in Aaron Sorkin’s acclaimed political drama The West Wing. Since then Schiff
has worked alongside Hollywood heavyweights such as Al Pacino (People I
Know), Sean Penn (I am Sam) and Jamie Foxx (Ray).
Even with
such an impressive resume and critical acclaim (he received two Emmy
nominations for Outstanding Supporting Actor for The West Wing) he has never
hit the heights of a superstar himself. He can walk down the streets of
Sheffield unmolested, but as soon as he steps foot in the Crucible bar, or any
other of the festival’s venues, he’s immediately mobbed by fans, budding actors
and festival staff. He is a celebrity that is beloved in the community of
actors and fans, but can still remain anonymous in public.
He seems content
with this level of recognition. During the following days Q&A he reveals
that the only reason he is envious of actors of a high stature – he singles
outs Philip Seymour Hoffman and Dustin Hoffman as examples – is they have will
have much more time to prepare a research roles. “With Philip Seymour Hoffman
as Truman Capote for instance, I’m sure he took six months to work on that
piece. For me, because of the tier I'm in, I won’t get that time to prepare
because movies won’t wait for my schedule.”
It’s clear research
is something that he feels passionately about. “I think you should
research forever. Al Pacino has been working on Richard III since he was three
and he’s still not ready to call it a day. He’s a little obsessed.” However he
believes that budding actors should look to the real world for inspiration
rather than other actors. “Some people say that acting is stealing; steal from
actors, steal from each other, steal and then make it your own. I don’t believe
in stealing from actors. I think living in the real world is so much more
enriching. If you’re going to steal from anywhere then take it from the real
world. Go up to some guy in the street. If you’ve got to play a southerner go
down to Alabama and meet a guy. Don’t steal it off some actor with a southern
drawl. Go hang out in a fucking trailer park in the swamps.”
For the young student actors at the festival, spending time
in Alabama trailer parks to research roles is perhaps out of their reach, but
he doesn’t forget his audience and has an impressive knowledge of England. He
first came to the country when he was 17 in 1972, when he was visiting London
as part of his travels around Europe. He had saved up a small amount of money
working as a cab driver in New York and subsequently had to live on the cheap. "All I could afford was eating at Whimpy burgers, and very cheap Indian
restaurants and takeaways, where I got odd looking dishes, some of which that
actually moved on your plate.”
Since then he has come several times, sometimes for work (he
was the sole performer in Glen Berger’s one man play Underneath the
Lintel in the West End in 2007) and sometimes for
pleasure. Why did he choose to come to Sheffield and do the festival? “I
still don’t have an answer to that. Except something in me loves to come here
and I respects the British tradition of theatre and acting. I think what I’m
going to get out of it is that it’s going to remind me why I became an actor in
the first place. It’s a question that I ask quite often.”
Questioning his craft out loud is something that Schiff does
frequently, even when he hasn’t been promoted to. Asked how he started acting,
he responds with hefty anecdote about the particulars off-off-Broadway in the early
80s before eventually coming to the conclusion: “I still don’t know if I’m an
actor. And I’m really not sure if I’m going to continue with it.”
What makes him not want to continue? “I admire those that are
committed to it and who decided at a very young age that they wanted to do it.
But I’m not one of those people. So I’m always asking the question; what compels
me to keep doing it? And what story do I have to tell?”
I ask if there is a difference between acting on stage and
acting on screen, expecting another existential, stream-of-consciousness
discussion on the nature of the craft. However his answer is surprisingly
prosaic. “One of the first TV shows that I did was LA Law. LA Law was very
quick and very fast work, because it was a machine by then. You had marks that
you had to hit so the camera could focus and know exactly where to go and on
stage I used to be much freer in how I moved. And a fellow actor pointed out
that I kept missing my mark so the guys behind the camera were getting really
annoyed. So it was hard. You had to work out how to talk and walk at the same
time and hit the mark. So there are all these little technical things about
acting in front of camera.”
One of the famous walk and talk scenes from The West Wing
Did this help you prepare for the famous walk and talk shots in the West Wing? “Oh yeah. There was a lot of walk and talk on the West Wing. As I worked more in TV I learned to become much friendlier with the camera and the camera operators. And then, as I got to do much more challenging, intimate, emotional, complex TV work, I learned to act with the cameras. You learn that your relationship with that camera is very important. It’s a very unspoken but intimate relationship that you learn to develop with the camera.”
So what’s next? He has several projects lined up including
starring in Eugene O’Neil’s Hughie at the Dublin gate and Lanford Wilson’s
Talley’s Folly on Broadway. There is also the small matter of Zack Snyder’s
Superman reboot Man of Steel coming out next year. Schiff plays the supporting
role of Dr. Emil Hamilton but, sadly, is contractually unable to provide many
details. “It’s going to be huge and exciting.”
Before he is bundled off by the ever time conscious festival
organisers eager to get him to his next appointment he says; “Somewhere in my
doesn’t want to write but I want to tell stories through other people’s words
and interpretation of other peoples characters. That’s what I want to do and
that’s what keeps me acting.”
He lifts his fist with a wry smile and we touch knuckles
again and then his is swept away, Gus diligently by his side, to watch the next
generation of British actors in action.
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