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Financing subject to credit approval. I'm Jane Pauley. Jeffrey Rush and John Lithgow together?
Yes. And they're talking with Tracy Smith. Jeffrey is just one of the great actors. I read the script and thought this is a hell of a double act. Actually, a triple act with this wonderful New Zealand actor. I thought I was reading for the doll.
I wasn't going to be carried around like that. But Jeffrey and I, you know, we're very much theater actors who turned into screen actors. And now we do both. And these are great, long, dramatic scenes. And it was just marvelous to play them with him. Same with James Ashcroft, the director. He started in theater school in Auckland as an actor and spent, I think, a long time there. And then about eight or 10 years ago, he decided to become a film director. He was so passionate about film as a form. And in that period, he made about eight short films to apprentice himself to be ready to make a proper film, you know what I mean?
Which he did with Coming Home in the Dark. I hope some people have seen that. It's on Netflix. And it's just a great genre film of dread. And so Jenny Peton was his proper second short story from the same writer. And he came in with a film called And He came out of theater management at that. So he's very good at running in the entire operation of creating a film, even though he's still pretty new to it. That makes sense. Yeah. And it's interesting that all three of you have that theater background.
And we'll go into, there's a lot of things that the two of you have in common. Do less, do less. Do less.
Well, it's a big jump. You know, before I got into any films, actors would say, who'd been working in films, you don't, you just think, you just be. And you'd go, all right, that's okay.
And then I'd be playing the Maquis de Sade or something. And I'd go, you can't say do less, because he's an eccentric freak. Yes, I always tell directors right up front, I will way overdo it. Just so you have that, I fully expect you to tell me do less.
And I will. But that way, you never know in the editing room whether you want more. That's very true. So you can always dial it back. Yeah. Was there a time when you way over did it? Oh yeah, almost constantly.
There's no dial big enough for either of us. The first time I was encouraged to do more was with the Australian director, George Miller of all the Mad Max films. Twilight Zone. And I did the Twilight Zone movie when I could never do enough. And until then, every film director I'd worked with had said, little less, John, little less. Suddenly, it was more, more, I want to see your face crack. And I said, have you ever got the right actor?
I've been waiting for five years to be told that. In Jenny Penn, you play a rather twisted guy. And this is not the first time you've played a rather twisted guy. What is it about these evil men that appeals to you?
I find them adorable. No, no. I'm a character man. I play people very different from myself.
And I guess by this time, I'm on a short list of people who will do that if you ask them. And so they come at me with these fascinating roles. This one terrified me. It terrified you. Dave Creeley is a terrifying character. But it was too frightening for me to even accept this role until I spoke to James on Zoom.
We immediately, we spoke for an hour and a half. And he was just so, first of all, he's a wonderful man and a very smart man and sensitive man. But he told me about the serious intent of this film, that it's much, much more than just a horror film. Dave Creeley is a horrific character, but it's a film about cruelty and bullying and just savagery between people. I'm the victimizer.
Jeffrey plays the victim. But it's- The hero, I'd like to think of it. And I think, of course, think of myself as the hero.
I just make friends with these diabolical men. In those early days in theater, what did you imagine your life would be like in your 70s? My goal was always to put on my tax form actor.
You know what I mean? I was different. I did not want to be an actor. But that's because I was growing up in an acting family, a theater family. And I wanted to be an artist, something equally unrealistic in terms of your future.
Actually, probably even more difficult. He gave us all the caricature of our character. I still noodle, but I'm just a hobbyist now and a professional actor. But my father produced Shakespeare festivals. And I grew up playing the kids in Shakespeare and then the teenagers and then the spear characters and then the little roles and nim, pinch, froth, all the one syllable roles. And by the time I got to college, I was an accomplished actor on stage by osmosis and fell in with the theater gang.
And that was pretty much it. I sort of went with the flow and did not become an artist. I went to college and then off to drama school. And both of you have had these moments where you're kind of catapulted into the spotlight. I mean, for you, John, there were two actually, but the first was the Broadway moment where you're in this play, The Changing Room. It's your Broadway debut. And two weeks in, you win a Tony. I think I must have the record for the quickest win sprint from Broadway debut to a Tony award. And before that, honestly, I was close to giving up on acting.
I couldn't buy any acting work, except working for my dad. And I wanted to move beyond that and do it on my own. So yeah, Changing Room was a total game changer. And I honestly, I haven't been out of work since.
It's just been going from one thing to another. I eventually got into the movie business and had to sort of learn the different discipline of that. But to be able to go back and forth from theater to television, to film, and even to entertaining children and dancing with the New York City ballet.
I mean, I'm ready for anything. And if you do enough of those different things, then you're called upon to do lots of different things. And different things has sort of become my strong suit, but that's what a character actor does. I got that news from Katherine Fitzgerald, who's the producer of our film from New Zealand. I was talking to her and said, oh, she said John's dancing in the New York City ballet as we speak. He's not available for press. He's got to do a ballet. And Jeffrey, your reaction to that? That'd be right.
No, if you describe John, there's only one word for John as an actor, ubiquitous. A little of me goes a long way, I might add. We'll have more from our Sunday Morning Extended Interview after this break. This episode is brought to you by PDS debt. Struggling with credit cards, personal loans, medical bills, or collections? It's time to stop worrying about that high interest debt you've got piling up. PDS debt can help you start saving money immediately. Their platform can analyze your unique situation and create a plan to get you out of debt. There's no minimum credit score required, and it takes 30 seconds to get your results. With PDS debt, you'll take back control of your finances.
Get a free debt analysis in just 30 seconds at pdsdebt.com slash Spotify. I want to go back to the catapult moment because Jeffrey, you had a moment like this. Also, a little bit later in life, you were in theater until what?
Age 43, and it's your second feature film is Shine, and you win the Oscar. Yeah. It still doesn't make sense.
It doesn't? No, but I started when I was 20. I really started when I was 15 because we, at the high school I went to, all of the wonderful female teachers we had who nurtured us in from grade school into year 10 or whatever, said, let's do a play. It was a sporty school.
It wasn't an academic or a theatrical school. Then for whatever reason, they got married or had children or got transferred or whatever. We said, let's keep doing it. We kept running it ourselves. That continued into university where it was a very volatile time on campus in the late 60s, early 70s, very countercultural vibe going on.
The theater scene was as prominent there as it was in the city. Then I got into a newly opened professional state theater company straight out of the exam room basically, finished on a Friday and started on a Monday. I was lucky that I got to work in a company for three years because that was my official training, I suppose, on the spot. That happened a number of times for the next few decades that I'd be in a company.
It's a good way to do it. How did life change after Shine? In some ways, I worked very hard for it not to change, but I was a very poor traveler. I just went, okay, you've got to spin your head around into that and enjoy getting on planes. My wife Jane and I, we had children, babies at that point.
I just said, well, a lot of my lifestyle is going to be on a plane. It kept going. I couldn't predict that that was going to happen.
I thought maybe this will stop and I'll always go back to the theater. Interesting things came up and DEI stuff came up. There were things that appealed and I went, I'm going to genre hop. It's like in the theater, if you're doing eight plays in a season, sometimes I'd be dinner is served and sometimes I'd be Figaro or Oberon in them.
You constantly, every six to eight weeks, you'd be doing something new. John so rightly said, we refer to ourselves as character. I was not a juve lead. I was not a leading man, except when you get to play Leah.
Which both of us have done. Both of you have gotten to play Leah. I think that's part of the attraction for this film was we could start acting our age because I used to be good at makeup from when I was 20.
The lash and the makeup is, you know, crepe hair, spirit gum. I was playing, you know, I said to James Ashcroft, how old is this judge in the film? He said, how old are you now? I said, I'm 73.
He said, let's make him 73. That's the first time I played my own age, all this stuff. But in Jenny Penn, the two of us are the youngest people in the cast. We act with all these marvelous New Zealand stage actors, all of them octogenarians and up.
Nonagenarians as well. Just tremendous actors who all knew each other and worked together throughout their careers. And they were so excited to enter into this world. What do you think you gained from that experience with working with all of these older actors? Well, it was it was kind of it was kind of gleeful. I mean, yeah, the whole theater experience. I mean, I say theater because it was more theater than film in many ways. But this is a very confronting film.
That's James's word for it. It's a it sort of falls into two categories, psychological suspense, thriller and horror. It is a horrific film with a tremendous compassion and point to it.
But but you just had it. Considering how dark the film is in so many ways, it was a thrilling experience just because it was such a wonderful acting experience. The man who burns up in the film is a great old actor and director in New Zealand theater. A world, of course, that I knew nothing about. And I was just entering into it and joining their extraordinary ensemble. Has there ever been a role that the guy sitting next to you had that you looked at and said either, wow, that was perfect or, oh, I wish I could have played that? I don't know when I defer to to an actor who does a much better job than I could possibly do in that role. I was the second choice for Hannibal Lecter. If Tony Hopkins had turned it down, it was coming to me.
And there's no way I could have played that part as well as he did. Wow. That's a bold, bold statement.
Yeah, it's true. They had just offered it to him the moment I went in to meet with Jonathan Demme, who told me right up front, we're waiting to hear from him. And if it's not him, it's you. And I have no regrets whatsoever because nobody should have played Hannibal Lecter other than him.
And I feel that way about Jeffrey and Shine. That was his role. It belonged to him.
And there's no point being... John doesn't know, does it? I got offered most of the roles if he's got first. No, I had that experience with Colin Firth. There were scenes in that where I thought, I'm learning a lot now about being another actor in a scene because I'm just listening.
In the King's speech. Oh, he would come in. We would have 11-page scenes sometimes. And I'd say to the director, is this going to hold? This is a very theatrical notion of big, long scenes. And I said, this is two middle-aged men sitting in a room talking a lot. One of them stutters. Is that a trick? But Colin was... I would just go, I would just go, oh my God, I can't wait to see what this performance looks like.
Because in this room, a meter away from him, he was just so immersed in the revealing, the internal dilemmas and problems in that royal person's life. You know what I mean? Yeah, it's good. And it's a great way to dial back yourself.
You go, just listen. That's what this is about. There's no acting required, as they used to say. Yeah, it's been an embarrassment of riches. My acting partners over the last couple of years, Jeffrey, Olivia Coleman, Ralph Fiennes, these are people who just give so much. It's like playing tennis with a better tennis player than you are.
You always prefer that, because it ups your game. Do you think that having, I don't know, that support at home, or do you think that a long marriage has anything to do with a long career? Well, I am very, very grateful to my long marriage.
My wife is the most important important person in the world for me. We are very different. She's a professor and I'm an actor.
God never intended them to get married. Our lives have completely different rhythms. We operate in different ways. She keeps my feet on the ground. She makes me far more disciplined. And I lend a little lunacy to her life.
That's the difference between an actor's life and a professor's life. But it's just been a superstructure for me that I completely rely on. I go off to New Zealand to do a film, New Zealand, and I can't get through the day without checking in with her three times. It's just, it's kind of an essential part of my life.
Jeffrey, how about you? Well, my wife, we met. She's an actress, so there's no professor-actress excuse. You both are in it. Well, she understands what you're doing. When children came along, Jane became, she kept working, but she really became a stalwart wife and mother to our two kids, who suddenly now, being older, they're both kind of in the biz that we didn't think they'd end up in. Yeah. One theatre designer and one aspiring filmmaker.
So it's great. It means you kind of, you want a mentor as a parent, but also you can't help giving them notes. I've always thought it's very important to have something in your life that's more important to you than acting. Just because acting is a business that is so prone to disappointment, failure, rejection, depression, you have to have something else that sort of eases the feeling that, uh-oh, what's going to happen next? What's my next job? A franchise, that's what you want. You know, the most awful phrase is nobody wants me, and an actor has to be wanted, has to be hired.
So you just have to have some other resources in your life. I'm Jane Pauley. Thank you for listening, and for more of our extended interviews, follow and listen to Sunday Morning on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. Survivor 48 is here, and alongside it, we're bringing you a brand new season of On Fire, the only official Survivor podcast. If you're a Survivor superfan, you won't want to miss this deep dive into every episode where we break down how we designed the game, the biggest moves, your burning questions. It's the only podcast that gives you inside access to Survivor that nobody else can. Listen to On Fire, the official Survivor podcast, with me, Jeff Kropst, every Wednesday after the show, wherever you get your podcasts.
