Like many great character actors, John Carroll Lynch is the kind whose name escapes your average filmgoer or TV viewer but whose face is entirely familiar. Such was the case when I recently watched The Good Girl, in which Lynch is perfectly cast as Jennifer Aniston's lackluster boss at the equally unfashionable Retail Rodeo.
I later looked up Lynch's numerous credits and knew why he was so recognizable--I'd seen him in about a dozen projects, most notably as Frances McDormand's stable, loving husband, Norm, in the Coen brothers' 1996 hit Fargo. Though Lynch did not have very many lines in that now-classic film, his subtle, comedic reactions were a great sounding board for McDormand.
"Fargo was the turnaround for me, in terms of film, because it was a part; it wasn't a line," recalled Lynch, who in between the occasional, forgettable bit part onscreen, was making a steady living as a stage actor in the Midwest, most notably at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, where he worked as a member of its repertory company for eight years. Jane Brody, a local casting director based in Chicago, where Lynch had moved right after college, had been hired by the Coens to work with casting director John Lyons to help assemble Fargo's cast. "People don't know this, but two thirds of that cast was local hire. Peter Stormare, Steve Buscemi, Bill Macy, Fran, and Harve Presnell were pretty much the only people hired from out of town. So it was a great boon for actors there."
Brody had great advice for Lynch, then a relative novice to film acting. "She put it so succinctly and perfectly that it's served me in good stead since. She said, 'The difference between a theatre audience and a film audience is that a theatre audience knows they're in a group of people watching someone and they know they're separate from that person. When you're watching a film, you're alone and there's no separation between you and the character.' All you have to do on film is think and the camera picks it up. So the fineness of the work was a surprise to me."
Admittedly, Lynch was a bit spoiled by his terrific experience on Fargo. "Other sets were a rude awakening--where I wasn't working with people who knew what they were doing or who had agendas other than work. Fortunately most of the people I've worked with are really good at what they're doing," said the actor, whose credits include Volcano, Face/Off, A Thousand Acres, Anywhere But Here, Waking the Dead, Bubble Boy, the TV movie Tuesdays With Morrie and HBO miniseries From the Earth to the Moon. Fans of The Drew Carey Show probably know Lynch best for his still-regular stint as Drew's brother, Steve.
The Drew Carey job led Lynch to move to Los Angeles; he and his wife, actor Brenda Wehle, now split their time between L.A. and New York. Though Lynch has been in L.A. since 1997 and has continued to do work in theatres around the country, including South Coast Repertory's original stage production of Donald Margulies' Pulitzer Prize-winning Dinner With Friends, this week marks the actor's first appearance on an L.A. stage. He'll appear in the Geffen Playhouse's West Coast premiere of David Eldridge's Under the Blue Sky, about the after-hours liaisons of three pairs of teachers.
Like many East Coast actors, Lynch looked down upon theatre in Los Angeles when he first moved West. "Coming here I had the same exact snobbery as everybody else. I thought, People are just doing it to do something while they're waiting. They're really waiting for the casting director to show up. Then I was introduced to various people who took it very seriously, and I also found out that there are 1,200 productions a year in the Greater Los Angeles area. I did something like 40 productions at the Guthrie while I was there. I would say 10 percent of them were really good, 80 percent of them were between good and not so good, and then 10 percent sucked. So if you do 1,200 productions a year, there's going to be 120 really, really good productions." (I'm not sure Back Stage West's critics would agree; they'd probably say that's too high a figure, but you get his point.)
Continued Lynch, "I saw Big River at Deaf West [which the Mark Taper Forum will restage in November]. Un-believable. The best play I've seen in years. It was in a 99-Seat theatre in North Hollywood."
Lynch's advice to L.A. actors waiting for their breaks is to do what he's about to do--get involved with theatre in town. "Work begets work. Just work. If you work, people will find out about you and want to work with you if you're good. So work anywhere you can. That's why I've changed my mind about these theatres where people work for free or have to pay money. I think it's kind of terrible that they feel they have to, but you know what? They're working."
It's that no-nonsense mentality that has made Lynch such a success--and it's a quality that makes his work stand out.
