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He'd Rather Be in "Philadelphia": A Young Actor's Love for the Theater
by Robert Feldberg
The Record
September 23, 1994
Robert Sean Leonard is trying to catch his breath. He's just hustled uptown, through a mad Manhattan rush hour, from a press conference in TriBeCa to an interview on 45th Street. He's a few minutes late for the interview, at Broadway's Roundabout Theater, and he's apologetic. "The traffic was terrible," he explains.
The 25-year-old -- who gives a bold and funny performance at the Roundabout every night in the lyric Irish comedy Philadelphia, Here I Come!" -- is a young man on the move, ping-ponging between projects in a rising spiral of recognizability and acclaim.
"Safe Passage," a movie with Susan Sarandon and Sam Shepard, is being released shortly, and, after he finishes his run in "Philadelphia" in mid-October, he will begin filming "Killer," with James Woods.
Leonard doesn't, however, fit the Nineties image of a successful young actor. For one thing, there's the look. Wearing gold-rimmed glasses, a rumpled tan suit, white shirt, and tie, the boyish Leonard resembles a fledgling college instructor. The grunge is missing, along with any hint of attitude. He's polite, pleasant, and responsive. What's most distinctive about Leonard, though, is his passion.
If, as we've been told in memoirs, novels, and newsmagazine cover stories, the current crop of 20-somethings is a vaguely dissatisfied, alienated Generation X of emotional drifters, Leonard missed the boat. He speaks with wonder and excitement about his work, his friends, and his life.
"It's important to find your people," he says, referring to those who share outlook and enthusiasms. And Leonard, who was born and raised in Ridgewood, has found his in a kind of un-Brat Pack, a group of young New York-based actors and actresses who love the theater.
He and his cohorts, the best-known of whom is Ethan Hawke, have started a small stage troupe, the Malaparte Theater Company (which was the reason for the downtown press conference). The name, says Leonard, "is taken from a type of turn-of-the-century French novel -- Hawke didn't tell me which century -- in which the pages were removable."
Leonard says the group, "self-reliant and self-productive," is renting a small off-Broadway theater, and will present three plays for short runs later this season, with the emphasis on works by young writers. The group has already given readings of 23 plays at Vassar College.
"We want to do new plays that are right for us and our contemporaries," he says. "This isn't going to be a company of movie stars doing [classic] roles they always wanted to do.
"Working here at the Roundabout is fantastic, but there's nothing like creating things with people you stay up until 4 o'clock in the morning with, discussing [Sam] Shepard's early work compared to his current work."
Leonard became interested in acting when he was 12, and accompanied his mother to Ridgewood's New Players Company, where she was painting scenery. At 15, he began performing professionally, spending much of his time in the company of adult actors, who helped teach him his craft. (He spent two weeks at the famed HB Studio in Greenwich Village, but left because "I didn't understand what they were talking about.")
A turning point in his life, professionally and personally, occurred five years ago, when he made "Dead Poets Society," starring Robin Williams. Leonard played a sensitive student torn between his desire to be an actor and his father's wish that he become a doctor. It was his first big movie role, plus, says Leonard, "it was the first time I had performed with kids my own age."
Friendships formed from that experience, including the one with Hawke, are at the core of his circle. Among its other members are Jonathan Marc Sherman, a young playwright and actor from Livingston, in whose off-Broadway play "Sophistry" Hawke starred last season; Frank Whaley, who appeared in "Swing Kids," Leonard's starring film of last year; TV-movie actress Jenny Robertson; and Josh Hamilton, who starred in the recent Eric Bogosian play "SubUrbia," and appeared with Hawke in the film "Alive."
"We're a group of close friends with common interests," says Leonard. "There's a complete meshing. I'm just Bob to them. They know me; they know not to call me between 8 and 9 on a weekend, because I'll be listening to NPR [National Public Radio]. If someone mentions a moment in a Tom Stoppard play, everybody else instantly knows what he's talking about. It's all just very special."
The plunge into production intensifies for Leonard what are already very strong ties to the stage. Unlike films, where he tends to be cast as a sensitive young man, he's played an impressive variety of parts in the theater, from the romantic poet Marchbanks in Shaw's "Candida" (for which he won a Tony nomination) to a bubbly young Greek pianist in "When She Danced," a play about Isadora Duncan. Upcoming, in San Diego, is a portrayal of Prince Hal in both parts of Shakespeare's "Henry IV."
Currently, Leonard is revealing a rampant gift for comedy in "Philadelphia," where he plays the mouthy, sardonic alter ego of Gareth O'Donnell, an inarticulate young Irishman on the verge of leaving his village home for America.
Behind the smoothly buoyant performance, however, is an intense perfectionist. Leonard says it was a difficult role to grasp, and he wishes he had more of a commanding physical presence to bring to it.
"There is no definable personality," he says. "I had no idea how I was going to do it. At rehearsal, I said to Joe [Dowling, the director], `I'm sorry. I have no idea what I am.' "
The director's suggestion that the character, a collection of attitudes and opinions, was whatever he happened to be saying at the moment was some help, although Leonard still seems not totally happy with what he's doing, despite the fact that audiences enjoy his performance immensely.
There's also the burgeoning film career, which has recently included Claudio in Kenneth Branagh's "Much Ado about Nothing," and Daniel Day-Lewis' grown son in "The Age of Innocence." Leonard says, though, that he has no interest in living in California and pursuing movie roles full time.
"It's never crossed my mind to move to Los Angeles," he says. "For one thing, I wouldn't want to be that far away from my family" (which includes, in addition to his parents, an older brother and sister living in New Jersey). Leonard added that he finds movies somewhat daunting.
"I don't really understand film," he says. "It's still a very unfamiliar zone. I've spent 10 years doing plays, and I find them more satisfying."
As for the vastly greater money to be made in Hollywood, he says that, for now at least, it's not that important.
"All I really do is eat pizza and buy books," he says. "I don't have a wife. I don't have a fancy car, or a house in Nantucket, although that would be nice.
"I feel that I'm just starting out. I want to know what it is that I do. I think of myself as having spent eight years [of my career] fumbling wildly around. I remember exactly when things started tochange. It was two years ago, and I was doing `Long Day's Journey into Night,' and, for the first time, I felt very worthy to be there, on the stage. I stopped feeling lucky, and more grown up."
Referring to a scene in the play "A Man for All Seasons," in which Thomas More is lauded for pursuing his calling as a teacher, Leonard says, "If you know you're proficient in something you love, there's no reason not to keep doing it."
