It took Hal Holbrook more than 40 years, but he's finally starting to feel comfortable acting in movies -- and he has Sean Penn to thank for that.
Two years ago Holbrook gave an unforgettable performance for director Penn in "Into the Wild." Holbrook played Ron Franz, a widowed loner who befriends a young adventurer (Emile Hirsch) who eventually moves on and perishes in Alaska. Holbrook received an Oscar nomination for the role and, perhaps even more important, got a shot of needed confidence.
The way Penn treats actors made him a better one, says the 84-year-old Holbrook.
"After a few shots you begin to realize that anything you do is going to be OK. Instead of retakes and retakes, he maybe will do one or two takes and then he would go like that" -- Holbrook proffers a thumbs' up -- "and go on. The little buzzing, faint quiet thing inside of an actor that always creates a little anxiety when you are creating a role, he took that right away because you realized he cast you and he trusted you."
Working with Penn, he says, he could finally understand what Sidney Lumet told him on the set of his first film, "The Group," in 1965.
After disliking what he had done in a scene, Holbrook begged the director to see the dailies.
"I saw the scene I did and after the thing was over I said, 'Oh, my God, I was acting, acting. I was awful.' Sidney said, 'Yes, you were, but we can get around it in editing. But what you have to remember in film is that the camera can read your mind.' It took me most of my life to really believe that and I believe it now. I don't have to add or throw in any kind of stuff; you just need to live the life of the person."
The idea that this beloved American actor, who in his six decades in the business has won a Tony and multiple Emmys, worries about his acting chops is a bit startling. So is the fact that he's waited this long to get solo star billing in a feature film -- "That Evening Sun," which opens Friday.
"I had a chance to be a movie star with Goldie Hawn," recalls the lanky Holbrook. He shared top billing with Hawn in the 1974 box office bomb "The Girl From Petrovka," but his most vivid memory is the reaction told to him later by Dixie Carter, who took her two young daughters to the movie when it opened in New York.
"She didn't know me then," Holbrook says with a twinkle in his blue eyes, referring to Carter, who later became his wife.
