When veteran actor Lane Smith was in the Army, he was assigned to Tracking Station #8 in Santiago, Chile to help track the orbit of the first American space satellite, Explorer I. But then the U.S.S.R. beat the Americans into space by launching Sputnik I and II, giving them arguably the most coveted first place win in history. And Smith was there to help to track the orbits of all three historic satellites.
Such were the beginnings of the rocketing space race--and of Smith's enduring affection for the space program, which has itself continued to orbit his career. Years after his tracking stint in Chile, Smith found himself working in NASA's Houston command center for the 1990 ABC drama Challenger, based on the horrific explosion that claimed the lives of seven astronauts. And just last year, Smith spent several months in Cape Canaveral working on the 12-hour Tom Hanks-produced space spectacular, From the Earth to the Moon, a history of the U.S. space program up until Apollo 17 airing Sunday nights through May 10 on HBO.
"It's a very emotional thing for me to have been there from the very beginning and now to have come full circle," said Smith of the recurring role the space program has played in his career. For his own part, Smith has been acting for 36 years, with five television series under his belt (the most recent being Lois & Clark, on which he played Daily Planet editor Perry White) and 28 films.
But he was originally trained as stage actor, working in New York from 1960 to 1978, doing mostly new plays Off-Broadway. In 1964 he joined the renowned Actors' Studio and was actively involved in it until he moved west.
"I'm a believer in studying the art of acting," said Smith. "I just don't think it's hitting your mark and saying your lines. There's so much more that goes into it that becomes fulfilling for an artist if they know their craft and have worked on it, particularly the inner aspects of the emotional work. It's one of the hallmarks of the so-called Method, which is really the re-creation of emotions and work with the sensations and imagination."
While Smith makes no distinction between various media--"acting is acting," he said--he admitted that television has its special demands.
"My agent once called and said, 'I have good news and bad news,' " Smith recalled. " 'The good news is, you're going to play Richard Nixon (in The Final Days on ABC, 1989). The bad news is, you have to start in a week!' With From the Earth to the Moon, I found out on a Friday that I was doing it, and I had to start the first show on Monday night. These things come up very quickly. But after all these years, one is prepared for it. You just throw yourself into it and give it everything you've got."
But how do you throw yourself into the historic role of Nixon with so little time?
"Well, how much research can you do in a week?" Smith chuckled. "The biggest danger in playing a role like Nixon, who's so well-known, is that you fall into caricature and unintentional parody. It's like walking a tightrope.
"I was watching some tapes and I saw that Nixon wore his belt way up high on his pants, like my father, like they did in that era. And I jumped up off the couch, pulled my pants up, and it changed my particular center of gravity. Now I had the whole physicality of the character; the voice, the emotional life, the conservative outlook were all easy to arrive at."
In From the Earth to the Moon, Smith's acting and space interests intersect again in the role of Emmet Seaborn, a newscaster based on the likes of Walter Cronkite and David Brinkley.
"What's so nice about the series is that I was originally contracted to do four hours," said Smith. "I star in the ninth hour, which is Apollo 13, but everybody knows that story--so instead they have a network-induced power struggle between me and a younger, blonde-haired, blue-eyed newscaster who's after my job. But Tom Hanks was so impressed with what I brought to the project, he wrote an episode for me as an old man reminiscing about the space program.
"Then they weren't happy with episode #7, so they added me to that. The fax started running one day, and 21 new pages of dialogue, newscasts and interviews rolled off. It was a wonderful, creative experience."
If the Army taught Smith how to watch and wait, his performing craft has prepared him to act quickly.
--Terri Robert