Austin Pendleton Net Worth

Austin Pendleton's Quotes

• I think every actor who's any good is the Method. Whether they know it or not. You either develop a capacity to believe what you're doing or you don't. And great actors who forswore the Method, John Gielgud, people like that, the man believes everything he's saying, so however he arrives at that, to me that's the Method. That's all it is, a technique to know what you're talking about and mean what you say. I don't make those distinctions. You get Marlon Brando and Vivien Leigh, two very different traditions of acting in a movie together and they both believe what they do.
• All the comedies I've done have been hard to film. Film is an anomalous environment for it because you don't know whether they're gonna laugh or not. So you're doing this stuff in total silence. Also comedy is hard to master. In theater when you do a comedy, you rehearse for a few weeks and you begin to feel the rhythm. In film it's an arbitrary rhythm usually that has to look like a truthful one to work. It's very pressured and difficult. I'm not complaining, I've been in some of the best comedies ever made. But I have never been on the set for a comedy where you don't feel like you were in trouble all the time. This is true of bad comedies I've been in and the good ones. You're just exhausted.
• (2009, on Mr. & Mrs. Bridge (1990)) That's my favorite movie that I've been in. Everything about it. First of all, the movie itself. Secondly, the experience of doing it. That afternoon, acting with Joanne Woodward in that scene in her living room is the best four hours I've ever had working on-no, it was eight hours, because James Ivory is a very meticulous director. It was, I think, the best time I ever had on a movie set. First of all, she's just a great actress. But also, just the way Jim Ivory allowed that scene, the way he edged it along, that's the happiest I've ever been in a movie. And I think the movie, itself, is essentially flawless. I think it utterly does completely what it was trying to do. And their two performances are just brilliant. And with the exception of a couple of indies I've made recently, it's the work of mine I had the least amount of discomfort watching. Paul Newman was the ultimate sweet fellow. I didn't have anything opposite him in that film, but I'd known him slightly before that. He was just the nicest person you've ever met. He was very funny and thoughtful, and when you had a conversation with him, it was an actual conversation. He never in my presence uttered an uninteresting word. He was just fascinating. His outlook on things. And he was famously generous.
• (2009, on The Muppet Movie (1979) and landing Starting Over (1979)) That was just after I'd had, as an actor in New York, a disastrous season on the stage, where every role I played... I went from being one of the highly praised actors in New York to the most reviled in a period of three months. There were reviews that were actually advising me to leave the profession. It was like free-fall. And indeed, for years after that, I couldn't get a job in a play in New York. But then they began to happen again. I just didn't know it could happen that quickly. I thought every actor goes through ups and downs, but this, I was like hiding under the sofa. And in the middle of this comes this call for The Muppet Movie, and by this point, I was so depressed. I read it and it was sort of a nowhere little part, from the script I read. So I said to my agent, "I'm turning this down." And she said, "Dear, it's a movie. You could use this." It was just that I had played some really good parts in movies, and I didn't want to play this part. I wanted to wait. And then the director, his name was Jim Frawley, called me at home and asked what my problem was. I told him "The part doesn't do anything; he doesn't go anywhere. He just drives the car and occasionally makes some offhand remark about it." I told him I'd just had a rough time and I didn't want to do that. He said, "I know you've had a rough time. I've been following it." And his tone was "You really better do this." And I told him I heard him; I did hear him. But I said I wasn't up to it right then. So then he called me in about a week and said he'd added a lot to my part; he'd given him a whole arc. I said, "That's very kind of you." Then he said, "Now will you do it?" And he described how he'd built the role. So I said okay. It would have been just plain rude if I didn't. That was a very unhappy set, because Jim was very unhappy directing that movie. And I noticed that was the only time the Muppet people used an outside person to direct a Muppet movie. They never did that again. After that, it was either Jim Henson or Frank Oz. And I would have liked to have been in one of those, because those sets were very harmonious. But this was not. All my scenes were with Charlie Durning, whom I already knew, because he had a part in Fiddler On The Roof when I was in it, but his part got eliminated out of town. We got to know each other during that. And now of course he's having quite a film career. So at the L.A. airport, just after we were through with The Muppet Movie, on my way back to New York, I called Charlie from the airport and said, "I loved working with you, and I don't know how I would have gotten through that movie without you." Just hanging out with him really pulled it together for me. He said, "Well, we can hang out some more, because I'm about to go to New York and do a film." I asked what, and he said, "An Alan J. Pakula film." I said, "Oh fuck, you lucky dog." And so he said he'd get me into the film, and he did. It was that Alan Pakula movie with Burt Reynolds (Starting Over). I had to audition for Alan, but I got the audition because of Charlie. So that's what The Muppet Movie led to. I got a call to come in and meet Alan again at the end of the day, because he wanted to have a long talk. He said he wasn't going to have me read again, but he didn't understand why I wanted to be in the film. I said, "What do you mean?" And he said he didn't think it was my kind of material. "In what way?" He said, "This is like a regular human being in life." And I said, "Oh, well, I think maybe I can do that." He said, "I don't know if you can. People enjoy you on film because you're like from some other place. And that would really hurt this film. Besides, it's not your gift. I don't know why you'd be interested in this." But he was saying all this very benignly. And he was taking the time to have this conversation with me. It didn't just come through my agent that they weren't going to use me, which is what usually happens. So he asked why I wanted to be in it, and I said, "First of all, I love the script, and I would like to play a part like that." Although the part did emerge pretty eccentric. But underneath that there was another reason, and I said, "All The President's Men [which Pakula directed] has more good performances in it than any movie I've ever seen. That's why I want to be in this movie. I want to see what you do. I want to experience it." I thought since I was clearly not going to get the job anyway, I might as well say that. "I won't blow the part by being too manipulative, because I've already blown it, so I've got nothing to lose." And he said, "Oh, that's fair, and nice to hear." I said, "I understand if you don't want to cast me, although I do think I can do what you want, but that's the real reason: I just want to work with you." So then he called me in for another reading, this time with Burt Reynolds, and I got the part. But it turned out it was all because of one line-reading I did that they loved. But of course when it came time to shoot that scene, I couldn't reproduce that line-reading. I just couldn't do it, and I thought "Oh God, they cast this dude for one moment, and the guy can't do the moment anymore." He got openly worried about it, and finally I said, "Alan, I can't. I've lost it. I don't know. That was just an impulse in the reading. I don't even know where it came from. I'm trying to do it, but I can't do it." He finally said okay, but he was disappointed. But other than that, it was a great shoot. I loved that shoot.
• (2009, on The Front Page (1974)) That was wonderful. Billy Wilder just offered me the part. I hadn't even met him. He'd seen me, I guess, in some plays, and he wanted me for that. And in fact, I had to leave a play in the middle of a run to go and do the film. I arrived on the set, and we started to do a scene, and he said, "Austin, I respect you too highly to print that take". That was the way he would tell me he's unhappy. The whole shoot was like that. He and Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau weren't getting along. And both Jack and Walter said independently of each other: "We're never gonna work with him again". Well, they did. I asked why, and they said he was just impossible. I didn't see that. But of course I had no previous experience. He was being very sweet to me. He wouldn't print anything until he was happy with it, but he was very encouraging. And I got to know Carol Burnett, which was wonderful.

Interesting Facts about Austin Pendleton

1. An alumnus of Yale University.
2. Was nominated for Broadway's 1981 Tony Award as Best Director (Play) for directing Elizabeth Taylor in a revival of Lillian Hellman's "The Little Foxes." Years earlier he played Leo in said play on Broadway.
3. Began a lifelong association in 1957 with the Williamstown Festival Theatre in Massachusetts. Met actress/wife Katina Commings a year later while they were both interns there. Years later she appeared in the Broadway production of "The Runner Stumbles" which Austin directed.
4. Developed a stutter when young but it never affected his acting work. He didn't find a working cure for it until the 1980s.
5. In the 1970s he joined the Steppenwolf company as an actor and director. The company also produced a few of his plays.
6. Gave Philip Seymour Hoffman one of his first acting jobs at a New Jersey theatre company.
7. In the early 1990s, Austin inspired the then doorman of his building, Shane Perez, to try his hand at writing. Perez took his advice and began tooling a drama which he hoped Pendleton would one day star in. That dream became a reality when his script for Men of Means (1998) was eventually purchased and produced.
8. Is a Professor at the HB Acting studio in New York.
9. Was considered for the role of Fredo Corelone in The Godfather (1972).
10. He was nominated for a 1976 Joseph Jefferson Award for Best Director of a Play for "Misalliance", at the Academy Festival Theatre in Chicago, Illinois.
11. He was nominated for a 1980 Joseph Jefferson Award for Director of a Play for "Say Goodnight, Gracie", at the Travel Light Productions Theatre in Chicago, Illinois.
12. Joshua Schmidt, Jan Tranen and Austin Pendleton were awarded the 2009 Joseph Jefferson Award for New Work or Adaptation of Musical for "A Minister's Wife", at the Writers' Theatre in Chicago, Illinois.
13. He studied drama at HB Studio in Greenwich Village in New York City.
14. Appearing in the plays Love Song and The Sunset Limited at the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago. [2006]
15. Performing with Meryl Streep and Kevin Kline as the chaplain in the New York Shakespeare in the Park production of Bertolt Brecht's "Mother Courage and Her Children". [August 2006]
16. Performing in "The Lives of Bosie" as Lord Alfred Douglas at the Arts Bank in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. [September 2004]
17. Currently playing the part of Judge Danforth in the Steppenwolf Theatre (Chicago) production of The Crucible. [October 2007]
18. Performing in "The Lives of Bosie" as Lord Alfred Douglas at the Hedgerow Theatre in Media, Pennsylvania. [August 2004]
19. He and his family drove to Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts to visit the college in the spring of 1956.
20. Named after his grandfather, Austin Campbell Pendleton (1881-1921).