An Oscar-winning producer once said, "The only thing more miserable than an out-of-work actor is a working actor." Well, I have been a professional actor for 40 years, a director and writer for 20 years, and an acting teacher on and off for more than 30 years. In that time, no one has ever brought up the idea of playing the same character five years in a row -- no conversation, no discussion, no guidance. Yet I had the good fortune and blessing (or curse and burden, if you like) to have such a thing happen to me twice in my career, to be a working actor with extremely steady work. The first time, I was on the TV series Lou Grant -- 114 episodes as Joe Rossi. The second time, I was on Brothers, the cable sitcom, playing Joe Waters for 116 episodes.
Please don't get me wrong: I've been extremely fortunate to have had steady, well-paying work in highly regarded, well-awarded TV series, with a parking place on a studio lot all mine for 10 years -- 11 if you include a year on The Bold Ones back in the early 1970s. But playing the same character for years at a time can be a real challenge. Indeed, friends, colleagues, and students have asked me over the years, How do you stay interested, alert, hungry, ambitious, inventive, motivated, and sane?
Well, you have to find ways to fulfill your contract, satisfy your employers, try to be professional, use every technique from every class you've ever taken, risk turning scenes upside down and inside out, and then see if you can manage to hold it all together -- and keep your head high -- when the script hits the wall. I'm talking about repetitive demands and story lines, similar scenes staged the same way on the same set. I'm talking about 12-hour days or longer, the lack of growth and behavior in your character, the 10-month schedule. Again, these are not complaints. They're realities faced by those lucky enough to have to solve these problems -- and who thrive in doing so.
On Lou Grant, the phrase "Rossi at his desk" must have appeared in the script 1,000 times or more. Now, unless it's pivotal to the story, it's not the writer's job to say exactly what Joe is doing at his desk. As I knew my character better than anyone else, it was my job and obligation to come up with what I did, how I did it, and how it would best serve the story while feeling alive in the scene. That Rossi was a reporter helped -- it enabled me to start a scene from where I really was that day. For example, he might have been working on more than one story at a time, up all night, frustrated with where a story was going, buoyant over a story's progress, or simply mulling the mot juste for whatever sentence he was writing. So I could use my own thoughts and feelings as a jumping-off point. It was real and could be honest and true for the character.
There was also research, my favorite part of acting. I actually received offers from people I knew to write for newspapers -- a stunt, perhaps, but an opportunity for me. I found out how it feels to be under the pressure of a deadline, to be stared at, mocked, criticized as I took chances and actually wrote some stories at high-profile publications. I learned a lot and was never stuck for behavior for "Rossi at his desk."
Lou Grant also had terrific writing, a superb cast, superior directors, and my wonderful character, a man full of flaws, dreams, wounds, and needs. I do remember telling the show's creators, Allan Burns and Jim Brooks, after I read the initial script, "This character is so obnoxious that unless he's young and can grow, it's almost unforgivable." So I played Rossi as young as I could, to justify his brio, his rudeness, and the needs of his ego. Writers learn how to pick up on what actors are searching for -- or revealing in dailies. When I first read for the role, I remarked that the only way I could justify coming down so hard on a veteran reporter who drank a lot was if Rossi's father were an alcoholic. Making this choice justified Rossi going overboard and getting in the reporter's face.
I got the role and decided Rossi never drank. While all the characters had beers or liquor at the show's local watering hole, my character nursed orange sodas. Two seasons later, there was a terrific episode in which Rossi's father shows up. Turns out he's an alcoholic and Rossi sends him checks every month but wants nothing to do with him. The writers and producers remembered what I'd said. The orange sodas had become meaningful.
Fresh and Direct
But playing one role for a long period of time still has plenty of challenges. Consider my friend and fellow actor Ed Asner, who, between The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Lou Grant, played Lou Grant for 12 years. He says the difficulty wasn't transferring the character from a sitcom to an hourlong drama; it was "the nature of the position Lou Grant had -- city editor -- that became frustrating. Realistically, he had to stay behind the desk in the city room." Remarking that Rossi and the character of Billie Newman (played by Linda Kelsey) "got to go outside and do all the good stuff," Asner recalled that "someone told me the only solution was to demote me." Not going to happen.
Kelsey, though, says her biggest challenge "was that I found directors deferred to me more than what was helpful. They thought because I played the role, I knew it. But I love direction and need direction in order to grow. And I love to be challenged. So I found myself having to advocate strongly for direction, especially when we had some of our better directors who were good with actors." She also told me, "I kept it fresh by trying to bring my evolution as an actor to the role. I was learning a lot because I was in front of a camera every day. I was also making discoveries about the role that I'd bring to the writers. Sometimes they'd use it, sometimes not, but it kept the dialogue open."
And then there are actors who inspire you by the examples they set. For instance, I talked to David Hyde Pierce, who played Niles Crane on Frasier for 11 years and is now playing another long-running role -- Lt. Frank Cioffi -- in the Broadway musical Curtains. "For me, long runs in TV and on stage have two things in common," he says. "First, your ability to stay fresh and grow is dependent on the quality of the writing and the talent of your fellow actors. Second, if you and your castmates have the gift and the skill to be happily and simply in the moment, it becomes irrelevant whether that moment occurs in the first preview, closing night, Season 1, or Season 11. The longer you've played a character, the less you have to play the character and the more you can just play."
This sentiment is echoed by my friend Stuart Margolin, who played Angel Martin on The Rockford Files for five years in the 1970s, winning two Emmys, and later reprised the character in a string of TV movies in the '90s. "I looked forward to every single one" of the episodes, he says. "I couldn't wait. They let me be in about every fifth episode, because I was already into directing. Actually, I'd been waiting for a chance to do a guy like Angel for years. He was based on all those con men I saw working the streets of Dallas when I was a kid. So, no, it wasn't a challenge or a chore. And look who was writing the show: David Chase, Stephen J. Cannell, and Juanita Bartlett. It was wonderful."
Robert Walden has been acting, directing, writing, and teaching most of his life. He has three Emmy nominations, two CableACE nominations, four Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Awards, and five Drama-Logue Awards. He's a lifetime member of the Actors Studio and on the faculty of the New School for Drama in New York. He also coaches privately.