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From Law & Order, via NBC Television
November 15, 1940– Sam Waterston:
“I’m too old to be governed by fear of dumb people.”
I will never forget my first glimpse of Sam Waterston. He was on a vintage bicycle, in summer whites, making his entrance as Benedick in A.J. Antoon’s enchanting ragtime-themed Much Ado About Nothing, performed in Central Park in summer 1972. I was struck by his terrific, skilled, comic performance, and I also fell in love with his aristocratic good-looks, distinctive profile, and oh, that rich voice.
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Photo by Marie Debuskey, 1972, NY Shakespeare Festival, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Four decades later, when Netflix debuted their comedy Grace And Frankie, I wanted to love it because of the leads, Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, two women that I worship. Yet, I wasn’t quite buying it. The series seemed to veer into the Nancy Meyers’ older-gal rom-com genre in the 2000s (It’s Complicated, Something’s Gotta Give), with the designer kitchens, furniture and linens. It was tough to tune in to the so-called problems the characters might be having. So, your husband is gay, wrap yourself up in an expensive alpaca throw.
I was slow to embrace it, but once the show warmed up and I had made it to episode five of season one, I was totally onboard. Grace And Frankie generating real emotion has everything to do with its stars two great stars’ chemistry and Martin Sheen and, especially, Waterston overacting entreatingly as Robert and Sol, a sort of Chandler and Ross from Friends finally openly embracing their gayness 50 years after viewers had met them.
Waterston was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His father emigrated from England and was a Semantics professor, and his mother was a landscape painter. As a kid, he performed in school productions and acted in plays directed by his father. Waterston made his first stage appearance when he was seven-years-old in Jean Anouilh’s Antigone, directed by his father.
He attended the Groton School, a prestigious preparatory school, where he continued doing theatre. At Yale University, he studied French and History but couldn’t stay away from the theater. He became a member of the Yale Dramat, second oldest college theater company in the country, and performed in many plays. During the production of Waiting For Godot, Waterston claims he had an epiphany: he must become a professional actor.
During his junior year, he studied in Paris where he began taking classes at the American Actors Workshop, organized by John Berry, an expatriate American director, who taught theory based on the techniques of Stanislavsky.
Waterston graduated from Yale in 1962 and spent his summer doing shows at the Clinton Playhouse, in Connecticut. He then moved to NYC where he was cast at the Phoenix Theater’s Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mama’s Hung You In The Closet And I’m Feelin’ So Sad by Arthur Kopit. He did the national tour of the show, and in 1963, it moved to Broadway.
In the next decade, Waterston appeared in many plays in regional theatre, and Off-Broadway, including the world premiere of Sam Shepard’s La Turista. On Broadway, Waterston acquired an impressive list of credits, including Kopit’s political drama Indians, and a revival of Noël Coward’s 1925 comedy Hay Fever. Waterston was singled out for critical praise for his role in the chilling courtroom drama The Trial Of The Catonsville Nine in 1971.
In mid-1972, Waterston played Laertes in Hamlet and Benedick in that production of Much Ado About Nothing at the New York Shakespeare Festival, and in 1975, he played the title role in Hamlet for the Festival. At first, his Hamlet was not well-received, but by the time the production moved indoors to the Vivian Beaumont Theatre in Lincoln Center Waterston’s portrayal was much buzzed about. Waterston went on to play more roles for the NY Shakespeare Festival, an unconventional Prospero in The Tempest and Vincentio in Measure For Measure. But everyone, audiences and critics adored him in that 1972 production of Much Ado About Nothing at the Delacorte Theatre in Central Park, which moved to Broadway later that year. For his role, Waterston earned a Drama Desk Award, a New York Drama Critics Circle Award and an Obie Award.
He also played Tom Wingfield in a 1973 television production of Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie, starring Katharine Hepburn, for which he was nominated for an Emmy Award. He wasn’t afraid of television work, guesting on popular series and the PBS specials.
One of his major projects from this period was playing the title character in the BBC’s seven-part Oppenheimer (1981), the story of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb. Waterston was nominated for a BAFTA Award for his work. He also became known to general auduences for his role as a single father coping with social change in the 1950s South in the smart, critically well-received series I’ll Fly Away (1991-93).
When he played Nick Carraway in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Great Gatsby (1973), Waterston was one of the only actors in the film, including Mia Farrow and Robert Redford, to receive positive attention, although I have always appreciated this film. Waterston went on to appear in Rancho Deluxe (1975), Interiors (1978), and Heaven’s Gate (1980).
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“The Great Gatsby” (1974, Paramount Pictures, via YouTube
Waterston returned to Broadway in 1975 in Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House and in Anton Chekhov’s The Three Sisters in 1982. With a gentle, yet determined intensity, Waterston played Abraham Lincoln in a 1993 revival of Robert Sherwood’s Abe Lincoln In Illinois (1993), recreating a role he had played in a way in the television movie, Gore Vidal’s Lincoln (1988).
In 1984, Waterston’s distinguished stage, film, and television career reached its apex when he starred in the film The Killing Fields, which brought him an Academy Award nomination.
Most people associate Waterston with the intelligent dramatic television series Law & Order, beginning in 1994. He replaced Michael Moriarty as Jack McCoy, an assistant district attorney, who eventually becomes NYC district attorney. Waterston received three Emmy Award nominations for his work on the show. He played McCoy for 16 seasons until the series’ end in 2010, but he returns as the character on Law & Order: SVU this season, the series’ 19th season. Waterston and his fellow longtime Law & Order castmate the late, great Jerry Orbach were declared “Living Landmarks” by the New York Landmarks Conservancy.
I especially loved his portrayal of of news director Charlie Skinner on Aaron Sorkin’s brilliant HBO series The Newsroom (2012-14) starring Jeff Daniels, Emily Mortimer and Jane Fonda. The show aired from 2012 to 2014.
Waterston returned to where it all started, The NY Shakespeare Festival, appearing as Polonius in the 2008 Shakespeare In The Park production of Hamlet, and Prospero in The Tempest on 2015.
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Grace and Frankie (2016, Netflix
Waterston lives in Connecticut with his wife of 40 years. He has four children: Elisabeth, Katherine and James, all actors, and Graham, a filmmaker. James, played his son in Oppenheimer.
Waterston is a board member of Refugees International, Meals On Wheels, and The Episcopal Actors’ Guild of America.
In 2012, Waterston received the Goodermote Humanitarian Award for his longtime support of refugees around the world.
He endorsed Barack Obama for POTUS and has appeared in print ads, and television commercials for the liberal magazine The Nation.
Waterston is currently filming in On The Basis Of Sex, a biopic about the early career of Ruth Bader Ginsburg with Felicity Jones, Armie Hammer, Justin Theroux, and Kathy Bates, directed by Mimi Leder.
For 45 years, I have been a fan of Waterston’s quietly charismatic, unfailingly solid performances in all sorts of projects. When I watch him on Grace And Frankie, I still find him handsome. Oh, and by the way, that production of Much Ado About Nothing is available on PBS Archives and on Amazon.
The post #BornThisDay: Actor, Sam Waterston appeared first on The WOW Report.
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