Over the last three decades, the Illinois-born Richard Jenkins has carved out a reputation as one of American cinema’s most dependable character actors. He’s worked with the likes of the Coen brothers (Burn after Reading), the Farrellys (There’s Something about Mary), David O Russell (Flirting with Disaster), and Woody Allen (Hannah and her Sisters), and he was the ghostly paterfamilias in the TV series Six Feet Under.
The US indie, The Visitor, has allowed the tall, balding Jenkins to move centre-stage, however, providing him with a deserved starring role which he knocks out of the park. He plays gruff academic widower Walter Vale, who befriends a couple of illegal immigrants, the Syrian Tarek (Haaz Sleiman) and the Senegalese Zainab (Danai Gurira), who have been squatting in his Manhattan pied à terre. Jenkins’s subtle, economical performance is the bedrock of an understated and humane film.
LWLies: How did you get involved with The Visitor?
Jenkins: I didn’t know the director, Tom McCarthy, well but we both had the same agent and I’d seen his movie The Station Agent. One time we were in LA, working on different movies and we were staying at the same hotel, and we had dinner together. Then about two years later he called me up and said that because of that meeting that he had written a script for me.
LWLies: So what particularly interested you in the script?
Jenkins: I read it and then I asked my wife to read it, to see if it was as good as I thought it was. I felt that I hadn’t read a script as good as this in a long time. It was very respectful. It didn’t explain everything. You felt that you were peeping through a window at these people’s lives and they didn’t know you were watching. What I love in a film is the sense that you’re being let in to a story, as opposed to the story saying, ‘Come on, this is for you.’
I thought it was an incredibly subtle and understated script. There’s a scene at the beginning where Walter is looking out of the window at Tarek and Zainab, after he’s kicked them out of his apartment, and then he goes down into the street and talks to them. The next shot is that they are all back in the apartment. A lot of filmmakers would have shown them dragging up their suitcases, but Tom trusts the intelligence of the audience.
And I liked the fact that you don’t know what the characters are thinking all the time in The Visitor. By the end though, I think you know and understand these characters on a level that you couldn’t have achieved if it had been explained who they were. What I mean is by not trying to explain the character there is a kind of clarity as to who these people are. That is much more rewarding than having everything spoon-fed for you.
LWLies: What was most important in shaping your performance as Walter?
Jenkins: I think for me the most important thing was being physically still and not letting my hands wave around. Then it was just about trusting and living that guy, and trusting that the camera would see it and record it, and that it would make sense.
I found there was a lot of anger and self-loathing in Walter, a lot of disappointment. He takes it out on others, like the young student who’s late with his assignment. He bullies him to make himself feel better. There’s that moment, which came quite late in rehearsals, when he says to Mona (Hiam Abbas), ‘I pretend to work’. That’s a big moment for Walter. He’s saying that he respects and cares for Mona enough to be able to tell her the truth about himself, which is something he has not been willing to do for years. He is admitting that he is a phoney, that he uses work as an excuse. He uses work as a reason not to deal with life, which is something we all do at times. But for Walter his whole life is an excuse not to participate.
LWLies: What was it like having to play the djembe [a type of African drum you play with your hands] for the film?
Jenkins: I played drums when I was younger, when I was 14 or 15, but I wasn’t very good, and I gave up. The
LWLies: How would you characterise Tom McCarthy’s direction?
Jenkins: He treats you how he likes to be treated as an actor. I think that if you’ve been an actor yourself, like Tom has, you know when is a good time during a shoot to talk to an actor about something. We did develop a shorthand – he might just say something like, ‘Watch your hand’, and I’d know what he meant. We spent two weeks rehearsing, understanding what each of us needed. He’s always in control of his movie, yet he’s collaborative and ready to try new things. I came up with the idea of changing Walter’s glasses to impress Mona in a subtle way, and he said straightaway, ‘Let’s do it’.
LWLies: Thinking about your career as a whole, what do you remember of working with directors like David O Russell and the Coen brothers?
Jenkins: I tend to remember moments from scenes, although the older I get, the more confused I become! I tend not to forget the happy accidents on set though, which happen quite rarely. I remember on Flirting with Disaster the scene where we’re interrogating Ben Stiller after he’s driven a truck into the building. I did it one take and I got really angry. I told David to print that take, and that was the one he used in the final cut.
You find these amazing connections as well. It turned out that John C Reilly, who I worked with in Step Brothers, grew up in the same area I did in Chicago. His Dad had been vice-president of a laundry in Chicago, and when I was chatting to him on the set, I said that my father-in-law had worked for Union Linen in Chicago, and that I used to drive a laundry truck as my summer job. I had actually known John’s father, and I realised I had met John when he was just six, because his family had come to visit us at our beach house. Isn’t that weird?
LWLies: Finally what do you look for in an actor when you watch a film?
Jenkins: I like to see somebody living a life on screen. There’s a lack of self-consciousness to the great actors. I think Viggo Mortensen in Eastern Promises is amazing: he’s not there to impress anybody. He’s living his life on screen and you can’t take your eyes off him. It’s like Brando. You might not know why you’re drawn to him, but you are. What’s humbling is when you realise how many wonderful actors there are out there.
The Visitor is released on DVD on February 9
