Tony Goldwyn is a phenomenal screen and voice actor, peabody-award-winning director, and an incredibly philanthropic force for good in the world. Tony joins Sophia on the podcast to talk about the family member that inspired him to become an activist, his love for storytelling and how he got into directing, his criteria for taking on a job, and so much more!
Executive Producers: Sophia Bush & Rabbit Grin Productions
Associate Producer: Samantha Skelton
Editor: Josh Windisch
Artwork by the Hoodzpah Sisters
This show is brought to you by Brilliant Anatomy
Hey everyone, it's Sophia. Welcome back to work in progress. Today's guest is the inimitable Tony Goldwin, a phenomenal screen and voice actor, Peabody Award winning director, and an incredible philanthropic force for good in the world. Tony has played iconic characters in films like The Last Samurai, to the Divergent Films, even to the voice of Tarzan and Disney's Animated Tarzan. But you might know him best from his shall we say spicy portrayal of President Fitzgerald Grant, the third on Scandal. Tony is a born and raised Angelino and a child of Hollywood. The son of an actor mother and a producer father, he joined the family business and pursued a career in acting, eventually getting his breakout moment as Carl Bruner, the antagonist of the nineties instant Class Ghost, one of my personal favorites, by the way. From there, he went on to perform myriad roles in TV, film and on the stage, including in one of my favorite performances I was able to see on Broadway pre Pandemic Network, also starring Brian Cranston and Tatiana Muslani. Oh You guys, it was phenomenal. But those aren't the only ways he's followed in his family's footsteps. Like his parents and grandparents, Tony is also an avid philanthropist. He sits on the board of three separate charity organizations, and as if that wasn't enough, he's also an ambassador for Stand Up to Cancer, a nonprofit that is dedicating to funding cancer research, treatment, and cure options. Today, we're going to find out more about his life, his career, his pursuit of his own creativity, his advocacy, and more. Enjoy Well, Hi, Tony, I'm so excited to have you today, Sophia. Yeah, thanks for having me on. Thank you for being willing to join me from your vacation. It's nice here and where we are it's quite kind of remote. And I was just saying, a walk on the beach with my daughter, and the seagulls are all hatching and they're all these baby baby seagulls, you know, walking around. I took some pictures of them. Yeah, oh that's so neat. So it's interesting, you know, you were just talking about things that you're doing with your daughter, and I always really like to find out who the folks that sit across from me were when they were kids, because I think, you know, I look at you and immediately think of all the things I've seen you in and and I wonder, when you're so well known as an adult, Um, were you similar to the Tony the world knows? You know? Were you this poised um until actual performer as a kid, or were you very different from from the man we know now as a child? Oh? God, no, Well I don't see myself. No, but I know i'd asking No, no, not at all. I was not. I was sort of um, it wasn't a thing when I was growing up. But I probably would have been diagnosed with a d h D you know, like a lot of creative people when I was a kid. So I was unable to concentrate, bouncing off the walls in school, kind of the class clown as a little kid. Yeah, really unable, quite undisciplined and unable to focus on anything. And honestly, until I discovered acting, which was like in high school, and before that, I didn't feel like I was good at anything specifically, Like I was okay at sports, but I wasn't like one of the best kids at sports. I enjoyed aspects of school, but other things that it didn't grab my interest. I just couldn't get it done, you know. And and then I don't know, like the first time I was in a school play, I was able to like laser have laser focus for an extended period of time, which was very free in a way, you know, But nobody's a kid I was. Yeah, I was kind of all over the place. Yeah, I when I was in fifth grade, I used to get put what they called out of block. A lot. Our desks in the classroom were in this sort of rectangular block and the teacher taught in the center. It was cool because the class was small, but for chatting with my friends and like you know, being like look at the bird and look what's outside the window, they were they constantly were taking my desk out of block and putting me against the wall to isolate me. So that might be something a lot of us, uh, you know, circus performers have in common, I think. So, I think it's pretty most people I know like that. And yeah, I spent a lot of time in the principal's office. What what was it that first inspired you to get on stage? What made you sort of take up that pastime as a kid. Yeah, honestly, it was because my big brother did it. I mean, I think I've always been attracted to performing. I think, like in I always liked, you know, in elementary school when we have singing, you know, like a chorus kind of thing. I always loved doing that. Or and in my middle school there was a choir that actually was a parson. I enjoyed it. I don't know, I just never knew it was a thing. And then my older brother when I went to high school, we were at the same school and news two years older than me, and I kind of vitalized him, and he was kind of he was always in the lead and all the school plays. So I just thought, well, I'll try that. And the first yes, in ninth grade, I auditioned for the Fall play and was immediately instantly it was like being shot, you know, with a drug or something. I just ad I actually didn't get I didn't get the part, but I remembered sitting reading with the drama teacher reading this play Inherent the wind film, you know, like someone older than me got the part. But I was just like, oh my god, I know how to do this. And it was it was it was sort of instantly addicted to it. Yeah, do you think there's something kind of inherent in your DNA about it? I mean you you grew up the child of entertainers, the you know, the grandchild of entertainers, you know, the Metro Goldwyn Meyer. Like, do you think there's something was there just like something in the water or or was it something that you just got to witness from the inside and so perhaps it felt a little more possible. I guess so. Um my sort of I am from a total show biz family, but it sort of was divided between theater on my mother's side and the movies i'm father's side. And uh, my grandfather that you referred to was one of the pioneers of the movie business, Samuel Goldwyn who I mean literally started in nineteen twelve or whatever it was, you know, an actual legend, and he really he really wasn't in a very long career up he retired like right about the time I was born. Um, and I kind of because he was sort of so famous, I wanted nothing to do with Hollywood. I grew up in l a and thought, get me out of here. I just want to do something different than all this show biz stuff, so I didn't I wasn't drawn to it at all as a kid. My mother's father was a very successful Broadway playwright in the nineteen twenties and thirties who became a very successful screenwriter as well. Like a lot of of the you know, New York playwrights would come to Hollywood to make money, you know, during the depression and stuff, and he was quite a successful Broadway play right, So he wrote a lot of wonderful movies, and one of the was Gone with the Wind, which he actually he died in a tragic accident in nine at the year he won he won a posthumous oscar uh that years. So he was also in the movie business, and ironically he worked he was under contract. His name was Sidney Howard and he was under contract to Sam Goldwyn. So my both my grandfathers worked together and made some great films together, and then their kids ended up marrying each other years later. But anyway, so, but he was much more a creature of the theater, and my mom had been an actress as a young woman, so I was kind of for me, the theater was what inspired and drew me, like I started going to the theater with my parents when I was a little kid. I was always just fascinated by it and drawn to it, and it was always very romantic to me. And when I first came to New York and went to a Broadway play, I was my mind was blown. But I didn't actually make the connection like, oh, I don't want to do that, but I was. It was a magical space for me, you know. And and I knew a lot of a lot of my parents friends were theater actors. They weren't really I didn't never know movie stars growing up because they tried to keep us away from all that for being a Hollywood kid. I literally never met one movie star as a kid, or never was on a movie set. They just kept it very They did not want us to be you know, that could be a treacherous world for kids. So um. But in terms of their friends, a lot of them were actors who were kind of New York theater actors or you know, not movie stars, but so and not always was very romantic to me. Yeah. Yeah, the sort of images that come up for me when I listened to you tell the story or those you know, amazing like nights walking through New York leaving the theater and a you know, a late dinner in a bistro and lively conversation and everyone's kind of in the mix, and it it feels creative and and really alive. And how fun that you got exposed to all of that and and not tossed into being a business person when you were still a kid. Yeah, I was. I'm grateful to my parents, you know. So, like my parents were divorced, so my dad's world was very much he sort of followed in his father's footsteps and was, you know, a successful producer and and that was very much his job. But he didn't he just did not want his kid. He you know, my dad grew up right in the red hot center of the golden age of Hollywood, and I think it almost you know, it was very rough on him. You know, every night their their house was a place of business, and every night was at dinner party with movie stars. And you know that my grandfather's business was the center of his life and my grandmother was a big part of that, and um being a Hollywood hostess and all. You know, it's just like their dinner table was a place of business. It was just the way it was. And so my dad as a kid, you know, that was he was definitely I mean, they he loved his parents, but he was definitely in second position, and so he never wanted his kids to suffer the pain that he suffered in that way. So, as far as I knew, my dad could have done anything, he could have been a in any kind of business, and I wouldn't have known any differently. On the other hand, my mom's household was my mother was a painter and her my stepfather, whom she married after my parents, was also a painter. So our house was like a bohemian like gathering place, you know. It was it was all crazy artists and actors and musicians, and yeah, it was just a very different vibe. And I love that, you know, So that I felt those were more of my people in a way. So that when I kind of discovered what you just mentioned in the New York theater community, which is a real community which now I'm a part of, you know, that's sort of where I started out as an actor, that felt more like when I started discovering that, I was like, oh, these are my people, right, if that makes sense. What what kind of a painter with your mom. She did a lot of uh, you know, abstract did a lot of watercolors, but they tended to be abstractions of sort of still life. My stepfather was also a paint that's his painting behind us. You can sort of see that's one of these that he did, like back in the seventies. But then I have some of my mom's work in this house. But yeah, but you know, we lost I lost both of them quite a while ago in the nineties. But but yeah, she's wonderful. Her work was beautiful. That's so cool, how special to to have to be able to have that on the wall. And I I think about that, you know, when I look at photos of my grandparents who are no longer with us, and um, you know, I have old letters my granddad used to send to me, and I think about my dad was a photographer for his whole career, and I think about how someday like it will be his photographs that I have and I and I'll, you know, feel like he's still in the house. So I think there's something really uh kind of sacred about being able to create, to make art that you know, can stay with people. And when I get really in my feelings and sort of esoteric about what we do. I think back to you know, before there was written language, and the way that humanity passed itself down was to you know, perform these stories around fires, probably in caves, and I can really get out there with it. But I think there's something so there's just something so incredible about, um, the legacy of storytelling and and I think, what a neat thing that, you know, talk about a movie script, like you know, your grandfather is working together and then eventually their kids got married. Like it's it feels so written in the stars for you that you would be here and and be doing all of this. Yeah, no, it's it's true. And I think, um, I believe totally what what you're saying. I mean like that art is a kind of is a communion. That's why people are drawn to it. It's not for me, It's not just yes, it's the stories. But I'm almost like, why are we so? Why are we so fascinated with storytelling? Why is it so? What is that satisfy? And it's it's that touch point of human connection. It's just it's the same feeling as a friendship or a lover or any communion with another person. You know, when you feel that deep connection of where you touch someone's soul or you really see into a person's inner life in a profound way, that is a transcendent experience in life, you know. I mean, that's that's where really like we touch God. I think that's where we that's where we're all trying to to be in touch with, you know, whether it's in through a church or whether it's through our relationships or you know, that's that common thing. So I don't I feel like there's something really primalence sacred about art and storytelling and whether it's a painting which is someone expressing whatever was going on for them and they put it on a campus, or a piece of music, or I mean when you have a friend who's you know, friends who are amazing musicians, and when I watch or listen to a friend of mine played extraordinary music, I feel like I'm touching their soul and it's quite different than just hearing a beautiful piece of music anyway, which is also an amazing experience. So yeah, I feel every day is so lucky to do what we do, you know, to get to try and reach that to achieve that kind of transcendent experience, which is hard, it is, but God, when you get it, when you've really just been in it. And I think about those experiences where I've been so deep in a moment with another performer and then it's over, and it's almost like waking up out of a dream, like you've been in some other place. And you're right it it does feel like transcendence. And and I think what's interesting is the thing we're touching is like unadulterated spirit, and you're right. I think that can feel holy. I think that can feel magical. And it's not lost on me, but it is. I guess it's not been lost on me before, but it's really occurring to me in this moment. As I think about the questions I wanted to ask you, there's something about what a spiritual act it is to show up for other people. And I think that's something that really exists at the root of, you know, activism, and and often at the root of activism is storytelling. Is is telling other people's stories, hearing other people's stories, having empathy for other people's experiences, and how interesting that those things kind of come around and meet in the middle, in the way you grew up in this generational legacy of storytelling and and in a family with a long history of activism and philanthropic action, and and do those things kind of strike you as going hand in hand? Did they both inspire you as a kid? Um, the activism part not so much. I mean, I knew I was aware and admired, you know, but I didn't. I don't think it was mature enough to be inspired by it, just to be honest, I was more into being a kid, and I don't think I understood it. I mean, it's appreciate it as an adult, yeah, I mean as a teenager book I I frankly, my kids were much more, not so much in high school, being like as as they approached young adulthood, both of them were like, really felt this call to service and how do I, you know, get back? And it took me a little longer to discover that muscle. But I did watch my parents. Both my parents and my grandparents were very, very engaged on that level. So I suppose that that was you know, they sort of said an example, and I knew I was supposed to follow, but it took me. I think Honestly, he was a maturity issue when I started to realize how central that is to a happy life and as you mentioned, how connected it is to the work that we do as storytellers. So what what did you grow up witnessing, I guess or being exposed to. What were they passionate about. Well, my mom, who as I told her, was was a painter. She um taught at a community center. I grew up in l a And she taught art at a at a community center, and she like formed these deep relationships with the kids and their families, and you know, it was in a disadvantaged community, and she would have like the kids who she taught, I developed really close relationship, became like my friends. And they would come hang out at her house and she would have a you know, Christmas time. We would always have a she'd have a Christmas party for all the kids and the film they would come over and she'd make sure that some of these kids really were in tough circumstances, and she made sure everybody got Christmas presents and you know, had a place. But they were sort of just always around and so hers was on a very grassroots level, and it became a big part of her life. And you know, the thing about my mom that I really come to admire, she like she got in there. You know, it wasn't just writing a check or doing something, you know, doing volunteering or something. I mean, she did volunteer several hours a week to teach, but that that was only her jumping off points. She got in there. And on my father's side, it felt he also was very, very committed, but he um something that he was very involved in was the Most Picture of Television Fund. My grandfather was one of the founders of it in one I guess, so you know, he was sort of drawn in to follow the legacy of his parents and that was, you know, super important to him. Which for people who don't know what that is, it's an organization that gives back to people who work in the entertainment industry because our business is a very secure one and you know, when you fall on hard times, you know, it's a freelance business and you can find yourself successful one year and then on your ass the next year, and you know, NPTF will pay your rent or provide social services or addiction counseling or healthcare. And then there's this incredible, as you know, I'm sure you know this an amazing retirement home and so anyway, so that that was a real passion of my father's as well. Yeah, well, and I wondered too, because they're the legacy of them both is so inspiring. I mean, you, you know, your dad was a producer. I'm saying this to you like you don't know, I'm really saying this to the audience at home. Your dad was a producer and also a World War Two veteran. And you know, in my like digging up all of my research, you know, I learned about your grandfather and his being born in Poland to a Jewish family and your father fought in World War Two, and I I just think about that kind of family history and really the the I gues see of service and of of standing up for people, both of being and oppressed people, and of of coming to the aid of of one's neighbor. And then you know, not to really bring it back around to performances, because I don't know how how you feel about it personally, but then you played the president, you know, the the expert on policy, and I wonder does that real world legacy and also some of what I imagine you had to dive into to play that character. Does that make you really have to take a moment with what we're witnessing in the world now, because you know, so many artists are asked to use their voices and stand up for justice and for what's right, and you have personal ties to generations old extremism and its risks, to the harm done to communities, and now we see versions of that all rising again, and and I imagine that that's a pretty interesting intersection for you to sit at, you know, as a man, as a performer, as a father, as as the descendant of these men. You know, what a what a moment. Yeah, it's interesting for me the way all my engagement with activism and is it involved on a more personal level as I've sort of gotten into it over the past twenty or whatever years, I've not then come to very much appreciate what my forebears did, and I've I've sort of noticed it almost like I was unaware of it as a kid, as opposed to it being like, oh, this is what I'm supposed to do. I And one of the things that I just want to say that I'm so impressed about you is from the moment you hit you know, got notoriety. You immediately put that to work in terms of activism. And I've been so impressed with with what you've been doing the past ten or fifteen years. You know, it's like, um, Tony, because we do have a platform, and you're always so intentional and I'm substantive about your approach to it, which honestly was you know, for me, the way it evolved in terms of my connection to any kind of services I found celebrity. When I first started to experience it, it made me really uncomfortable. It felt fraudulent somehow, And I really loved being an actor once I was allowed to act. You know, at first it's hard to break in, and then once you do the work itself was great. But it took me a few years to be in a you know, to get any notice really like where you were quotqu famous or whatever. And when that started happening, I've been a sort of struggling actor and all of a sudden, everyone the lights were shining on me and people were taking my picture and I was like, this is I didn't know what to do with it, and so it felt very, very shallow. To me. I understood that it was we were selling a product, and it was transactional and it was necessarily part of the business, but it just, I don't know. I thought it would be really cool, but it ended up not feeling that way. So and then thought, wow. It took me like a couple more years to realize, oh no, but there's a there is power here, So how can I leverage this attention that I'm getting to actually do something that feels substantive and meaningful to me and other people. Then I started searching for ways to give back or to use the platform that we've been given, and it did. It took me a while to find it because it's hard to find something that's meaningful to you because you get asked, like you said, a lot, you know, we get asked to show up at things or to speak on behalf of things. But I quickly realized, you know, just this is before social media, so but it's the equivalent of you know, posting on Instagram, you know, for a cause it felt very shallow, and so I thought, well, how do you I really find things that mattered to me and then really roll up my sleeves and engage in a meaningful way. And I started finding, after some splashing around very organically, you know, a few organizations and causes that I started to get really passionate about and in fact connected with my storytelling. One was Criminal Justice Reform, which came out of a film that I was making as a director and producer. You know that I found out about this organization called the Innocence Project, which pioneered DNA testing for you know, freeing wrongfully convicted people. And they're now the forefront of criminal justice performance. An incredible organization which I'm not deeply involved in, but that came out of storytelling. And then over the years other things have added on in politics too, which I sort of came to again organically just you know, I remembered when I was you know what, I've been asked to help out with political campaigns. I'm like, okay, but I'll only do it if I can actually help, if I can be of help and do it in a substantive way. I don't want to just I'm you know, happy to say as a for you, but I'm not going to be like showing up events to have my picture taken. If you want to use me, really use me, and then and then I've forgot I found out how thrilling and fascinating that world is, you know as well, so and then you feel like, well, yeah, at those moments, because our careers all go up and down, and at some moments where you know, the lights are all shining on us, and then the lights divert somebody else for a while, and then they come back to you. And so when you have those moments where you're hot, I feel like it. It feels so much better now that I'm like, Okay, having a hot moment. How can we put this to use? You know what I mean, not just in a career ist way, not I mean we all want to get our next job and capitalism, you know, capitalism and our success and all that, and from a business point of view, but it really feels good to do it, to do it, to use it, to actually have an impact on other people's lives. That is that's really cool, and I think it's so much in the spirit of what we do. You know, you mentioned the Motion Picture and Television Fund that the whole nature of being an actor is kind of like being in a circus. You travel with this big band of people, you pick up, you move. You spend more time with them than you spend with your own family. And it's it's like it is kind of like being in a circus, for being in a summer camp. People think it's glamorous, and you know, you know, then they come to visit set and they're like, oh my god, this is horrible. You know, they they they're they're bored and forty minutes. But we love it. You know. We're like a little gang of weirdos. And and I think that whether it's supporting our own um really supporting our own you know, our unions are construction guys, the transpo teams, the camera people. We really love being part of a team. And when you can take your celebrity, which can feel very isolating, as you mentioned, it's like all of a sudden, you're alone. You're like, where's all my people? They? You know, you you get this kind of flashlight put in your face. It feels like an immense privilege to be able to grab that flashlight and shine it on someone or something else, a group that could use the spotlight more than than we might. And you know, the I think the irony as I've as I've gotten older in this business as I realized, most of us are very uncomfortable being in the spotlight. We just want to go to summer camp and make art with the other weirdos when the lights around us were like, this feels really really strange. So how do I do something better than what this feels like with all this attention? Exactly, That's exactly how I feel and have always felt that way, and it feels it's it's I love the thing about the circus. I always use that that metaphor because that's exactly what it feels like. I mean. Even my my older daughter who's a writer and a you know, when she was like I guess she was in college or whatever, and she she knew she wanted to be a writer in the in the business and stuff like that. And so she was interning on a TV show and she had been during the school years. She had been working like in the writer's office, and they said, well, do you want to go be a PM production of New Stone Break? And she was like sure. So she came to New York where the show shot. I can't you remember what show it was gone, but but it's shot in New York. And her first day of work, they said um okay, Uh meet ninth Avenue and fourteenth Street at five o'clock, you know, and that's when you'll start that your first day of work, and they'll you'll meet the sort of person who's the head p A and all that, and they'll they'll they'll put you work. So she's a great So she called me up about five thirty the next morning and said, Dad, I'm just walking home from work. We just finished and they I said, you started to five five in the afternoon. She said, yeah, I got there and this person just handed me a walkie talkie and told me to like stop people from walking down the block. And then I didn't see anybody again for twelve hours. And I stayed all night long on the street corner while they were shooting like two blocks away. And then they came and collected wakie talking told me to go home. I was like, and I said to her, I said, welcome to the circus. She was like walking down the streets in Manhattan, you know, quoted to six in the morning, having spent stuff in the street corner, and uh, it's so it's so funny, but it was like, that's what the circuses. And some people go are you crazy that you would do that? And other people just go, I don't know. I love it. I love it. It's super weird and I love it. Yeah. Oh man, that is so funny. And that's it. I mean, that's just it. You just show up and you do it all night and you come back again the next day. Oh my god. I have to ask because I think, and this is just from a like a purem I'm removing myself from like Pierre an interviewer, and I'm going really into my you know, growing up in the movies that made me want to be an actor fan moment when you say that there was a moment where all of a sudden, there was a lot of attention and you were like, what's happening are you? Are you referring to after Ghost premiered, M Yeah, yeah, Ghost was the first thing. Up until Ghost, I was like, I was working, but I guess, I mean, I get when I look back, I was doing pretty well, but to me it felt like I was just constantly unemployed in my first years and couldn't I just like I couldn't break in to get any traction. And then all of a sudden, but by a miracle, I got you know, this big part in this movie, and but even then we still had no idea if it was anyone was gonna watch it. And then overnight it became this massive you get if you get one of those in a career, you're so lucky, and if you got a couple, you're like, you know, but that was it was like an out of body experience, that thing. I was just like, no one knew what it was, no one had any awareness of it, and then all of a sudden, overnight it became this giant hit so one and then everyone was like, oh, you're that dude. You know, it was very exciting because it was really a thrilling time. I mean, what and what a film? Just what a what a conversation, what a moment? Was it so surreal for all of you. I mean you Patrick Whoopy to me, I imagine none of you had any idea what was coming, no, you know, and I was this sort of newbie of the group. I don't know, I think when we were making it, look, I was just so every day I was pinching myself because I could not believe that I was getting this opportunity to do this. And I was like dude, if no one sees this movie, I've had this experience like this. It was. It was just amazing, and while we were doing it, I don't know, I guess one of those weird things. When I read this script, I thought, God, this could be really commercial. Just this this um sort of pushes a lot of buttons. This film was one of those was one of those movies that, like I said, romantic and it's kind of scary and funny and had all these different genres kind of blended into one. While we were making it, we felt like it was good, like we were. It was inspiring and fun and it seemed really like it could be good, but still would no no idea. You never know, as you know, And then when I saw the finished film, I was like, wow, if this is not a hit, someone screwed up. You know that. Then the marketing people did not do their job, like this movie works and if this doesn't, who knows it may know and may go see it. But I just had a feel like if they do their job right, this could this could really work. So I did feel like he's just you never know. I mean, I've been in so many things where that I thought were great and no one saw him. You know, I've had my heartbroken so many times of things that I was just deeply passionate about that just never just never found an audience. So so no, you just never know, you know. And like I said, I was a new kid. But you know, Patrick kid had sort of a string of movies that hadn't quite worked at that moment and whoopee too. You know, she you know, it was a star for sure, but she did a few that, you know, things that weren't didn't do so well at the box office right before that, and you know, demy was still that was the thing that made her star. So she'd been working for a number of years and was kind of you know, everyone thought she was gonna have a big career, but she hadn't kind of busted out yet, so no one, no one knew I was free. Yeah, it was, It was, It was. Yeah. I look back on it with gratitude and a lot of funness. It was really an exciting time and my wife one of the most exciting things. My wife, Jane was an incredible production designer, was the production designer on that movie. Is that how You do? So? No, no, no, we met God, we were already married. We met years before. Several years before we met, when I was still in college. My very first professional job was working at a theater, a summer theater festival um called the Williamstown Theater Festival, and Jane was like a young designer there. She was doing scenic design for for theater at that time. And then she's a few years older than me, so her career kind of took off from there when I was still at finishing school and she became like a very hot production designer. And when I was really struggling as an actor, she was already doing all these big movies and everything. And the way I got that part in Ghost was Jane kept coming home. She was on the movie, and she kept coming home going, you know, they haven't cast a villain, and there's this great part, and you should bug your agents. And I literally couldn't get an audition. I kept calling my agents and they're like, Nope, they don't want to see you, and uh, I could and only because James was on me every night. I was like, y'ren they want to start, they want a big name, They're not gonna. I can't even get in the door. And I just Finally my agents assist and said, Tony, you should get seen for this. I'm gonna I'm gonna get you an appointment, and he the assistant, got me in the room and I end up getting me. Then, you know, months later, after they tried to get a star, they couldn't get a star for the part, and then they like saw my audition tape and we're like, oh, that guy's good, let's bring him back. And then they couldn't live like that's Jane's husband. Oh my god. It was one of those weird kids met things. So that was the other really awesome thing about that is that we've got to do it together and she designed these amazing sets and yeah, it was really that was It was a magical time. Oh that's so neat and Okay, So that that's this major sort of pivotal moment in your career. What happens next? How do you decide what to do next? When you've had a movie you know, explode around the globe like that. I feel like I would be paralyzed with decision fear. Yeah, that's pretty right. I had no clue. I sort of had no idea what to do. The mistake that I made was I sort of said to my agents, Okay, I've done that. Here you go, We've got this. Don't tell me how tell me what happens next? Like okay, I felt like I did all the work, I delivered this hot thing, and now you guys go do your thing. And I just assumed they were going to provide me with the plan. And that's not how it works, and I didn't. I learned that the hard way, you know, so like they just it doesn't work that way. You got to take responsibility for your own career. One of the good things I did was that same year, actually, you know, when I got the job, I was actually doing a play at that same theater where I met Jane years before, and this playing it up transferring to New York City, and I decided at the moment ghost was kind of raging in the theater to do this play in New York And people are like, why do you are you crazy? You're gonna go to a play now You've got this hot movie out there, and I was like, yeah, but I'm there's no scripts coming by. Well, I don't know. I'm gonna I love this part and I'm gonna go do it and and the planet. It being a real success and a great thing artistically for me to do, and that was all awesome. What it was called The Some of Us. It was this beautiful Australian play about a son and a father and the son is gay and the father is completely accepting of his homosexuality. And this was at a time when that was not the case. And in those days Australia was even further behind than the States, but it was still, you know, like in the eighties and early nineties. Man, it was very different than it is nowadays. But it was this beautiful story where the father and the son share a house together and both men are unable to find love in their life because people are so freaked out that they have such an accepting relationship. So the men that my character brings into the home are flip. They can't handle the fact that my dad is so embracing my sexuality and so okay with it, and they run away. And the women that he gets involved with because my mother is dead, are completely unable to accept that he has a home sexual son, and so these two men live. It's this beautiful, heartbreaking play about, you know, the love between a son and a father, and at a time when the AIDS epidemic was raging in New York and only you know, a year or two before the President of the United States had only uttered the word AIDS, and it was just tremendous stigma, and you know, we so we did display it. We did it at a theater in Greenwich Village, which was, you know, the red hot center of the gay community. And it was a it was an important piece of work. It really really was in a beautiful play and very meaningful. You know, It's one of the roles of my career. I really cherished I hadn't done. But anyway, but back to your your question. But then the movies I ended up doing not very we're not very good. Like I did a couple that didn't work, and I wasn't sure, like do I just take a job because someone's offering me a job. It was hard for me to say no to a job because I wasn't used to saying no. So you can offer all these things that are not maybe so good, maybe you shouldn't take them, but even then, you know, we're like, okay, if you want to do it, really really yeah, So I just kind of was like, oh, Okay, I'll do it. I just didn't have a sense. So then for me, you know, doing that for a few years and then having had the experience of being like super red hot and then after a few movies don't work, I'm suddenly not so hot and it's hard to get you know. I was working, thank god, unable to support my family, but not getting those great parts, and I was like what So that's really when I turned to directing and producing, because I thought, oh, that's how I'll take control of my career. And that was great. That was my solution. It gave me more a sense of self determination. Yeah, it's just always fascinating to me that actors will be punished if their movies don't turn out great when we're the ones in the least control of the movie, Like we show up and we do the thing, and then all the footage goes away to someone else. We don't make the decisions you know, in the editing room, or or about the sound or the soundtracks or and it's it's it is. It's very it's very funny to um face a thing that you don't control, and I think about having the same anxiety, you know, because you don't know what will work. You don't know what to say yes and no to. At least for me in my early career, My god, I was like, I can't tell the difference on the page. Like sometimes sure you read I don't know Steven Soderberg movie, like, yeah, obviously it's going to be good. But with these movies where you don't know who anybody is, and I'm like, I like the story or I like this character, I have no idea if this is going to be a good or bad. And I was on a TV show that went on for so long that I was just so desperate to go do something else, to like try on someone else that Yeah, there were the rightest movies I did that were terrible, but I had a really good time, you know, out adventuring with new people and and in new places. So it's like you gotta chalk it up to experience. That's that's that's so true, and that at the end of the day, you know, I came to a kind of this idea of trying to game the business. Um, I have always found to be a fools. I think there was maybe some people who just have a real nose for what's commercial or their particular brand, I guess is the term people use now. But you know, there are there are certain performers and stars who have a real vision about himself in the marketplace, and I really admire those people. I do not have that. I've never I don't have that muscle. I don't understand it. I'm unable to do it, you know. So for me when I came to personally was in terms of as an actor. I have like three criteria that I evaluate a job with. None of them are is this going to be good for my career? Is this going to be a hit? The three things for me are who am I working with? Are the people that that inspire me? Or I'm excited to work with? Is the role something that I feel like I can do something with, Like can I really whether it's big or small, can I really is there a real stub kind of do something special with this role? And then the third thing is how much money am I going to make? And for me, I've sort of come to this from me. If it if it satisfies two of the three criteria, I'll take the job. You know. If it's if it's a really interesting role with great people, I'll do it for free. If it's amazing money with people I die I work with, the scripts may not's so great, I'll be like, great, that'll be a really cool experience, you know what I mean. And then if it's a great role for good money and I don't know who I'm working with, I'll do that so and I found that to be pretty good. And it's all about what, you know, my personal connection in a sense, and what my personal experience is going to be on it, thinking is this gonna be a success. When I look back on all the movies that I've done, and I've done dozens of thems, now, I could no more have predicted which ones we're gonna work. And I've been in some big hit movies I had would have no idea which ones. And then ones that I just am so proud of that you know, you would say what, I've never heard of it, you know, and then you can go and you said yes. And but I made a decisions early on where I thought, oh, well, this is what I'm supposed to be doing. Man, every one of them was just a disaster for me looking back now, whether it's a business decision or signing onto a film, any time I've had to be talked into something. I look back and go, I was right. I shouldn't have done that, even in my personal life. Honestly, as I say that, I'm like, no, anytime I've had to be talked into something, it's been a mistake. But you you know, you live and you learn. I'm curious about that idea that you know, you mentioned getting into this about how you decided to sort of rest some control because as performers, we again we often have the least of it. And you said that there was a point where you started producing and directing, and it was a film you produced that led you to a criminal justice reform. And so I guess this question is twofold, which is how how did you begin producing and directing? And then and then how did you find that kind of a lens for projects as you got farther down that road? Okay, So, so what happened for me was about a year or two after Ghost, when I started to feel like it was slipping away from me. To be honest with you, you know, like the next movie I did didn't do well, and and then not suddenly I was like, wait, but why I'm not So I started to get very frustrated. And I did a couple of jobs where I had that feeling of like, well that wasn't very good, and I just felt no sense of self determination whatsoever. And you know, my agent, who had been super you know, I thought was my best friend, was suddenly not returning my phone calls so much, you know, And it was all that stuff where you're like, oh, we're best friends, now we're like family, and then a year or two later, when you're not making so much money, it was like, why did it take him three days to call me back? You know kind of thing. I started to go, this is not I said, Okay, So I said, when I get into my forties, I don't want to be feeling this way. I don't this I'm not gonna be able to survive. This is just too crazy. So I thought, this is gonna mean I wanted more self determined. So with the way I started approaching it was I didn't really have any interest in directing. I had no idea that I want to be a director. I had never I'd never thought about it. It seemed an impossible job that I had no skills for. So I thought, well, at some point one of my movies will work and I'll be in a position of leverage again, and I want to know at that point, I want to have a script or a role that I want to do, so the next time I'm in a hit, I can say not to my agents, find me a great job. I can say, here's what I want to do. Let's use my leverage to get this done. So that was the thought going in so and then I started reading a hundred scripts looking for roles that I would be right for that I could then develop the thing and be a producer on That was my thought. So I read a bunch of scripts, maybe like a hundred scripts, and Sea send me all the scripts that they couldn't sell. So most of them were not very good, but I did find a few that were really quite interesting. And there was one in particular that I absolutely fell in love with. And I said, there wasn't really a part that I felt right for in it, but the writing just blew my mind, and I said, I have to meet this writer. So I met the writer and I said, what else do you have? And she said, well, I don't really have anything else at the moment um, but I'm working on stuff, you know, and she was a struggling writer and uh, this script had won a lot of awards for her, but it hadn't gotten made. And I said, well, I think I think it needs work. I think this is what I would do to it in terms of developing it, and I think these characters could be better. And you know, we talked about the script and she said, you know, I love your ideas about my script. Would you produce it with me, even if you're not sure you want to act in it? Like, would you help me get it off the ground. And I was like, okay. So we entered it in this relationship and I said, what do you want? And I paid her a little bit of money to option the script, very little, and I said, I'll pay your rent. When you can't afford your rent, I'll pay your rent, so literally, like you had a seven dollar a month rent. And when she was hard up, she'd go, Tony, can you pay my rent? This man that I'd send her a check and pay her rent. And that's kind of how we kept working on the script for a few years and the script got to be really good. And initially I had approached a director who I admired, who liked the script a lot, and I said, you know, will you help us? And he was also a writer, so we worked with him for about a year and then he lost interest and sort of disappeared on us, and the script got to be quite good, and I was deeply invested in it and had a sense. I remember my father saying to me, you know, you have a really good sense of story. I think you should consider directing yourself, like I think you're more than just an actor. And I was like, no, no no, no, I'm gonna be an actor. I don't tell me I'm not an actor, typical sort of defensive with my father. But I started thinking about, well, maybe in one day I would like to do that. So but anyway, I had this wonderful script and I started trying to find another director for it, and I was meeting these directors. In every meeting I had, I was like, they're going to screw it up. Like I can't. I've worked too hard on this thing for We've been working for a couple of years on the script. I can't give it of what if I give it to somebody and they mess it up? And it was the kind of material that could easily be done badly there were lots of sort of cliche traps in it, and it was set in the Summer of nine, which often is an era that's done very badly, and and I just was like scared that someone's gonna screw it up. And one day I just thought, oh, I need to do this myself. I need to step up and say I'm going to direct this myself. And I've been thinking, well, maybe I should direct a little short film or do something, put my toe in the water. And one day I just be like, Nope, I'm gonna do this as like a personal challenge. And I've called the writer and her name is Pamela, and I said, PAMs, are you sitting down. I know we've been telling you a lot of the directors, but I think I want to direct this myself. But I don't want to do it if you don't support that. And I thought she'd get upset with me, and she was like, that's a great idea. So I'd decided to do it myself. And then I don't know, it's weird because I had some profile as an actor. People then were like, oh, that makes sense, and you know, my agents were like, oh, that's a great idea. Okay, and out of the blue. This is how life works like this is another thing dropped in my lap. After three years of work out of the Blue, so I had her do another rewrite for me as the director, and I started gaining my confidence about what I was gonna do with the movie. I get a call from an agency a saying, Tony this script. It was called The Blouseman at the time. The movie ended up being called A Walk on the Moon, but it was original time was The Blustman. He said, you you control the rights to The Blouse Man, right, I said yeah. He said, and you want to direct it, right? I said, yeah, I do. And he said, well, Dustin Hoffman wants to read the script. I said what he said, Well, Dustin Hoffman, Um, I had not shown the script to anybody. He said he was having lunch with a director who had read that script back in the day when I was I told you had won some awards and went around town to no one bought it. He always had remembered the script. And Dustin was having lunch with this guy and the guy said, oh, there's the script. I always wondered what happened with it? And Dustin wants to read it because his production company has just put together a deal to produce independent movies. And I was like, this is crazy. So I didn't have never met Dustin. I was like, is it Can I send him the script? I was like, well, I don't have a copy of but I have to print it off my computer else. So I sent him. I was on my way back from a film festivals and so I send him the script to Dustin's office and about two days later, I get a phone call and there's this character who's Dustin's kind of head story guy, this old playwright named Murray shis Galla. Mary was like this. He was like it must have been in his seventies at the time. He was this old, like New York guy. And he's like, hello, as Mary's from Punch Productions, which was Dustin's company. I read your script. I think it's very good. We'd like to make a deal with you. And I said, well, I was driving in my car and I almost crashed the car. He said, would you come see me in my apartment? And so I'm like, yes, sir. So he going up to Murray's apartment and he sits me down and he's like, so, um, you want to direct this movie, right, And I was thinking he was gonna say, we can't let you do it, and I was like yes. He said, good, that's a great idea. Dustin loves actor directors. That's a fantastic idea. I was like okay. He said how much money do you want to make it for? And I had been struggling to get the budget under two million dollars and I couldn't. I was trying to say well, and I was about to say well, I've been trying to get it under two million, and he said, do you think you can do it for six million dollars? And I said, uh, yeah, you probably could do. So basically that was like October and by December we were casting, and by May we were in production directing what turned out being an eight million dollar independent feature. And it was like it just like all came to life. So it was a weird, that weird thing that I'm sure you've experienced, where like you kind of set your intention towards something that's impossible and you just kind of grind away at it and it seems like you're nowhere and it's never gonna happen, and then like light a lightning bolt strikes and suddenly something finds its moment and and then that that movie ended up you know, it was this joyous experience and it ended up getting into this sundance and like it got a lot of heat on it. And then that sort of gave me the beginnings of a you know, a directing career, and it got sold, you know, bought by Mirror Max, and it was like, you know, it was it ended up being a good thing. So and and also I fell in love with directing. I had no idea I would have any interest in the job, and as soon as I started doing it, I was like, oh my god, this is the best job ever. So I just love that. And it's funny because, you know, you said, it's like something fell into my lap after three years of work, and everyone always from the outside thinks it's an overnight success, but there's these years and years to your point that you're just grinding away, and your story is just reminding me. There have been times where, to use your three year example, I'm like, did I give up on something at two years and ten months? Like was it just going to take two more months? And I don't know. I think it's so great for folks at home listening to hear you talk about what the work really takes, because it's such a good reminder to keep going and that just because dreams might have a long lead time doesn't mean they won't come true. So it's so it's so cool, it's so try to say this. I mean, like I said to my kids all the time, and any artists that I you know, if you're listening to the right voices inside of you again, like you said, not the voices that are convincing, which you should do what you're supposed to do, what you think you want to do to to make a million dollars or whatever. You know, it's like that's another another thing. But you know, if you have a creative soul and you want to do something, you know, creative or anything, if you have a passion to do something. I've said this a lot in sort of like talking to younger people. But the best advice I ever got in my life with my brother in law was a jazz musician, a very very successful jazz musician. And when I was in college and desperate to be an actor and really had decided this is what I wanted to do with my life, but I have no idea if I had any talent. I was having lunch with him one day and I was like, oh, man, I just don't know, and he's a tony. When I was your age, I was like a kid from Indiana and I came to New York City dreaming to be a jazz musician with no idea. And he said, I knew that if I committed a hundred sent to the passion that is driving me, either it will work out the way I dream it will, or it will lead me to something else that I don't even know about. He said, But I won't wake up twenty years from now wishing I had tried. But I didn't because I was too scared. He said, So if you commit, that's the that is the solution, because it will lead you somewhere you don't even know about. And that I added to me was the thing that I have lee I've fallen back on so many times in my life where I'm like, I have no idea if this is gonna work at all. But I made a commitment, so I'm gonna commit, And oh god, I mean I could. The six years before that, I was an actor before I got ghost. I literally, I mean I remember there were days and I was weeping in my living room, going, this is never going to work out, Like no one is interested, or you get rejected for the five thousandth time, or people tell you have no talent or that you're it's just you should just give it up. And and literally the only thing that kept me going was going I made a commitment to do this, so I'm gonna do it until I see a path elsewhere. And then all of a sudden, out of the blue, some miracle happens, you know, in the in the direction that movie was like that, or so many things, you know. I found it on projects where even scripts that I've been developing the movie. I mentioned to you that I was about this innocence project case that the movie towe me eight years to get going. It was on and off again for eight years, and I just kept at it because it was a true story, and I had made a commitment to the woman whose life it was about, and I said, I'm going to tell your story. I you have my commitment that we're going to do this. And then when the circumstances were right, it happened, and we made the film and I was like, wow, man, I could easily have just walked away from this because it would have been easier, but I would have missed out on this extraordinary experience, you know, creative and very fulfilling thing. Well, and what a thing to give the kind of platform that art can give. Two, this truth of wrongful incarceration, this thing that happens in our country all the time that we want to ignore. And I imagine in your subject, in the woman whose story you told, I imagine you made a friend for life. Oh, no question about it. Yeah, I mean this story that film was called Conviction. Hillary Swain and Sam Rockwell ended up being a brilliant actress who are in a And then this was a story about a woman named Benny and Waters who whose brother was convicted of murder and they had been you know, poor kids, growing up uneducated. She never got out of tenth grade, and Kenny was in and out of jail his whole life, really, but he got convicted of this murder that he didn't commence. She was the only person who believed he was innocence. Everyone else was like, he's all those you know, he's We knew he was gonna end up in jail when the days and so he went away for murder with life in prison with no chance of parole, and Betty Anne refused to admit that he was guilt. And what she ended up doing was she said, I'm going to get you out of here. And she went back to school. She got her g e d. She went to college, she went to law school, became an attorney just with the sole objective of getting her brother for any way to get her brother out, had no interest in practicing law. It took eighteen and a half years and she finally, with the help of the Innocence Project, who she wrote when she was in law school, she found some DNA evidence in a basement of courthouse in Boston and got her brother elexnor at it after eighteen and a half years in prison. Yes, it was an amazing story and she is one of my dear friends. You know. Yeah. Wow. So do you think that that kind of storytelling the potential to expose injustice and your your platform, coupled with you know, your family history. Do you see that when you know when you look at and I want to your daughters, you know, co creating the political playlist and educating all of us about what's you know, what's happening with so many elected officials. Do you go like, yeah, that's my kid, that makes sense? Oh wow? Um? Sort of the the inverse of that is what I feel. Honestly, I feel, um proud that that's my I'm sort of impressed and amazed. I'm like, I wish I was like that her age. You know. Um, there are certain moments where I'm like, oh no, I'm really glad I did this as a parent because I know that inspired, like, for example, with Anna with Political Playlist, which is this platform that they've launched six months ago to educate people about young leaders in Congress under forty five years old and really to engage young vote millennial voters. But anybody you know, it's this awesome platform at you can Political Playlist dot com people who are interested. But yeah, it's cool and the way the answer gets into politics. As my wife Jane and I are always been real political and but in two thousand eight she turned eighteen, and um, I was going to the Democratic convention where Obama was the nominee, you know, and you were you there and I think I saw you in I saw you Yeah, yeah, I think I saw you at an inauguration, but I know I saw you in Philly and yeah, but anyway, yeah, but but so in a way, we went to Denver, which was an extraordinary thing, and I saw her at eighteen was the first time voting, being like very inspired about politics. So in that way I did feel like, oh yeah, great. And the family legacy thing, it's a very gratifying thing to see both Anna and my younger daughter tests, you know, really joining those service oriented aspects of our family instinct um. But it wasn't preordained. I wasn't like, oh, yeah, of course they did that. It's more like, wow, look they're doing it, and isn't it wonderful to be a part of something that's multi generational. In the same way that I feel very grateful that I have found a way to kind of engage in my own way, and that then that is thereby therefore connected to what my parents and grandparents did, do you know what I mean? As opposed to just kind of joining what they did, I had to figure my own way into it. But so being put in the same way, like show business, like you have to make your own way in this business. I don't know how you could be an like, I don't know how my dad couldn't give me a job, you know, I had to figure out how to forge my own way. But once I was able to do that, what a blessing to be a part of a legacy, you know that. To me, I feel so lucky and privileged to have that. I love that and you do. It's another I think common misconception that you're somebody's kid. It's easy for you, and I think in a way, you have to work harder to prove yourself, you know, because because everyone thinks maybe you're in the room because you're so and so's kid, And it's neat to see when you love something, you know how you'll fight for it, how you'll work for it. And like you said, you spent years just like sobbing in your apartment wondering if it's going to happen, And here you are with this incredible filmography. And I mean, god, even what you guys did was scandal. You like rocked. You rocked the world with that show. You you know, you you challenged all of these ideas and I don't know, I just think it's it's so exciting to see all the things that you know, you've you've done and made and and even what's coming up. I mean you have two huge new projects coming out. You you did um this new Nott Geo thing, the Hot Zone Anthrax all about what happened you know, post nine eleven, and and you're doing King Richard for Wonder Brothers. I mean, can you tell us about these what what can we expect? Yeah? And maybe why why you chose these these projects? Yeah, they're both really really great projects. King Richard is the story to check all the boxes on the list. Yea, yeah, yeah, King King Richard. Yes, they definitely check all the boxes on the list. Uh. King Richard is the story of Venus and Serena Williams in primary of the story of their father, Richard Williams, who was their their coach and will place will Smith place Richard, and it's about them when they were little girls, how they got into tennis and became champions, and um, it was all this vision that Richard Williams had. He literally, for those who don't know, had never picked up a tennis racket in his life. He saw a tennis match on television before his girls were born, and he was raising his three step daughters by his wife, and uh, he was watching this match. He said that's he saw this this woman tennis player get a check for for a tennis tournament. And he was like, that's a good way to make money. And he wrote something like an eight page manifesto this plan. They were gonna have two girls and they were gonna become the number one, number two champions in the world. And he told his wife and she was like, you're crazy, but let's have two more kids. They had these two girls, Venus and Serena, and at four years old, he started he taught himself to play tennis, and then he started teaching them to play, and he coached them, you know, for as long as he could before they really needed professional intervention and and he made this dream come true. And so I played this guy, Paul Cohen, who was their first professional coach, who he kind of cold called. I was Paul was mcnrose coach, and he cold called this guy and said, you need to see my kids play, and brought them to him, and Paul Cohen, you know, took him on. And then anyway, it's really the odyssey of of of the family and how they they So it's it's a really great script and UM, it was a really fun project to do. And then and yeah, that'll be out I think like November December of this year. And then The Hot Zone Anthrax is the second season of this series that nat GEO did, this limited series. Um. Last year the Hot Zone was about the Bolo crisis, Julianna Marguillis did it. And this year, as you mentioned, it's about the anthrax attacks after eleven and it's a six part series exploring that crime and the murder, investigating the investigation. Five people were killed and it was a terrible time and it was something I didn't remember when it happened. But I played this scientist named Bruce Ivans who was the lead anthrax researcher for the U. S. Batto Defense for the military, and he struggled with mental illness and ended up becoming central in this investigation and as a fascinating, complicated character and someone I knew nothing about. So yes, he's her of followed Groucer's story and then Daniel take Him, wonderful actor plays the FBI and who was the lead investigator and the sort of you followed these two men's on parallel tracks. And ultimately their stories converge, so that that's a really it's a fascinating project which we just finished son yet so all I can think about it, I just I love a research project. Is the I would imagine the very different types of prep you had to do for these projects, one of which I'm I'm wondering, you know, did you just get to take tennis lessons for for a while to get ready for King Richard? Did you have to just pound the court? Wow? That feels fun, though, to learn a skill like that for a job, I think feels really so great. I mean, like I played tennis as a kid, but I'm not I'm not a good tennis player, and it dropped it like I just hadn't been playing for twenty years really, And so then you get this thing, and I thought, I want to I don't want to have to rely on stunt double to look like I know what I'm doing. Obviously, to some two at it would have to. But so I immediately is when I got the job, for whatever a month or two that I knew before I went to do it, I just played tennis every day and went to tennis coach is going to be? How would a coach play tennis like not, because that's what I had to do. So that was just super fun and interesting. You want as an actor, I think, as you know, well, you don't necessarily need to be a great tennis player. You need to feel like you know what you're doing, so physically you need to be very very relaxed and able to hit balls and be physically very much at ease like someone who plays hundreds of hours of tennis every week, you know. So that was super exciting. And then I, you know, both kids, I was playing a real real people, so that's also when always an interesting challenge. And so I cold called this man, this wonderful man, Paul Colin, who I was playing, who was not involved with the production, but I found his email address and I just wrote him and I was like, would you have for talking to me? So we had some really fast in any conversations and which I wasn't able to do on the second one. Bruce is no what he actually died, so I was able to just read a lot about him. But yeah, playing the research aspect, I just to find this such a fun rabbit hole to go down with every project. Yeah, did you find for Hot Zone? Were you really diving deep into you know, researching chemistry or or biological weaponry like hat Where where do you have to go to play someone like that? Yeah? For me, that part it really depends, you know, because I with acting, you can also get hamstrung by research. You know, when I was a younger actor, I was so fascinated with research. But I do so much research that it would be so in my head about what really happened or what it really was that I wasn't you know. So what I try and do personally is I'll do enough research again where I feel comfortable, like I feel like I know what I'm talking about, but not enslaved by it. So in the case of the hot Zone, I did research in the science the microbiology of what I was doing enough so that anything that I was talking about in the scenes, I knew what I was talking about, and anything I had to do physically in terms of behavior that I really understood what I was doing. I did not get go down the rabbit hole of becoming a microbiology I knew that that was impossible and be it was unnecessary. Where I did need to do a tremendous amount of work was on the specific mental illness that my character was struggling with. That I spent a lot of time reading about talking to people about trying to get inside of someone who was struggling in the way that that Bruce was. That that ended up being much more, you know, which was not that connected to microbiology, had to do with his childhood and childhood trauma and um, you know, different different issues that he struck and there was there was the gold of a biography that had been written about him, which is always amazing resource when you have something like that. Yeah, that's so cool. Again, it just makes me think about the truth that storytelling is a vehicle for empathy and you know, you get to study the specifics of a person and what they do, but to figure out what makes them tick or what makes them suffer. It. It's really I just think it's so special. Yeah. The thing the magic of it for me as an actor always is, you know, every time I play a part, I always feel fraud at first. I'm like, I'm not right for this, Like what what they want me? Like, I don't know, this guy is so different than me. What you know, And the more you borrow into it, hopefully by the time you get to actually doing it, you feel like, well, this is just me, this is just another version of me. I I completely relate to this person, and I'm just kind of doing myself in this situation, you know, And uh that you know, I'm not I'm not putting on a character or playing at something that's far away from me. If you do the work to get there or where you feel that, that's like, we never we never get to the place we want to be it. We always feel that we're falling short, which you have to learn how to just roll with that as well and go, well, I gave it my best shot. But you know, if you do feel that intimacy and empathy with a character. I was reading something a profile I think it was in the New York Times of some wonderful actor actress who was saying that playing a character, you have to fall in love with your character. That it's it's like falling in love and you and that's what it is. And I was like, Oh, that's so great. That you have to get whatever, the character of a villain or whatever, you have to get to a point of intimacy where you've fallen in love with the person that you're playing. And then you really find that connection. And that gets back to the things we were first talking about it, but that sort of transcendent connection with another person, another human being. You know that you are trying to bring someone to life, someone like as if they're a real, living human being. You know, when you're connecting with them in the way that you would with any intimate person in your life. You know, and then you have the honor of telling that person's story. Mm hmm. Yeah, it is an honor. And maybe that's why we never really feel like we get there. I mean, or maybe it's because if you ever got to the end of your destination, you'd be dead. But I feel like I feel like it's the work. I feel like it's the constant desire to learn another thing or you know, turn another stone over. It feels it just feels endlessly citing to me. Yeah, And I don't know about you, but I often feel like in any given project, there are just a few moments or a few times when I'm like, oh my god, that we found flow like that was whether you know, like that I walked away really feeling like I went somewhere, you know, or even if you touch it a few times in a in the scene, or I have a couple of moments where you're like that that was I was that was fully connected, work fully and it's never at the time. You know, if you can create the illusion for the audience that they have that experience at the time, that's that's the job. But it doesn't mean you're gonna you know, we're just trying to touch to touch it, you know, and maybe there are geniuses who can sort of step in and be that, but I've not met one. I must say, the actors that I've met and worked with who I believe our geniuses to hear them say they're like, no, I've never got there, you know what I mean, the great who I've met, I've never heard one of them say yeah, man, I'm just always connected. I'm always so yeah. Well, it's a chase. It's a constant chase, and and it's it's the occasional moment where we touch it that keeps us coming back looking for more. I think that's it. But it um, You're right when I hear people who I think are just so incredible talk about how much work it is, or you know, when I've heard actors who I really look up to say, Oh, I'm always convinced when I start a job that this is going to be the one where everyone figures out I don't know how to act at all, and I'm going to get fired. I'm like, oh, you feel that so okay? Well, I mean, I guess if a person with a bunch of oscars at home feels that way, and then I should probably accept it. I'm always going to feel that way too, totally completely. It's very important to make friends with that feeling, Like I just have developed a sense of humor about it, like, yeah, this is probably going to be a disaster and I'm going to fail. So all I know to do is roll up my sleeves and put one foot in front of the other and see what happens. You know, because you can actually burn a lot of energy and destroy a lot of creative energy by indulging that anxiety, you know what I mean, Like people get in their own way so much because they're like, oh my god, what if this doesn't work out? Or what if what if I among my good or what if people don't like me? Or what if I don't get what I'm in any department of life? You know what I mean when you're like, our fears get the better of us, and we worry, oh my god, what if what if it doesn't go right? Or what if I don't prevail? Or And that's just a waste of time and energy and life and life force. So it's like, well, just go dive into the experience and you know your best shot is it? Like commit, just go for it, and who knows whether it's a relationship or a project or you know, yeah, how have you learned to do that though? To free yourself of that or or to make friends with that feeling? Yeah, combination of experience since psychotherapy, I would say in my early thirties, I started to really dislike my work. I was extremely self critical, and I would finish a day on set, or I'd finished a scene, or I'd be in a play and I've come into my addressing my performance, and I would like evaluate my work and like what did I do right? What did I do wrong? And not it's not good enough and it's got to be better. And I really was in my own way, and I started to think my work was getting mediocre, Like I didn't like it. I was a little tight, and I didn't there was a lack of joy and fun and play in it. So I went to a therapist. I was like, I'm I'm in troublesome. I'm I'm doing something wrong and I'm not. It's not I got to figure this out, and I literally learned skills like exercises where I could there were like little meditations to reorganize my brain where I stopped doing that, where I was like failures, good failures. Okay, if I'm gonna fall in my face, I'll fall on my face and that's not a bad thing that that's not like it's counterintuitive, but it's fine. Like and to do something and throw down and then be able to walk away and go it is what it was, was what it was like as opposed to that thing, and like what was it good? Was it bad? Way? You know? And the sort of self flagellation that we saw often do an I think actors particularly do because we're so exposed, you know, like whether it after an audition or after a performance. You know, you're like, what what how did that go? You know? I just publicly humiliated myself maybe, And so I developed skills to do that, and then as I got better at that, I started to realize how empowering that was, and I was able to develop a sense of humor about myself and be fine with like, well maybe that wasn't so good, okay, and then be less attached to when it does go well, not be like your ego doesn't get on them, like, oh it was great, you know that was that was a great performance. You know now, I'm like, Okay, that one worked out pretty well. That was like that. I was able to then go, I like that way that worked, that was good, and something else go, oh that didn't that That wasn't at all what I thought I was supposed to, you know what I mean? And you sort of then over time that becomes your default and you realize that that is um your best shot at success actually is by just I can't determine outcomes. All I can control was my process, And frankly, the process is what actually really interests me most. That's what I like about it. So why don't I just pay attention to that and pay a lot of attention to that? So then when those negative voices come crowding in, I'm like, Okay, you're always there, but you're wasting my time, So shut the hell up. You know what I mean that you just not that those voices go away, but you start to give them less credence and go shut up, you know, go meditate or something, and then get back to work. Because anytime I'm giving that attention is attention I'm taking away from actually what I want to do, which is create something good. Mm hmmm mm hmm. That's beautiful. And I think the key I'm really learning right now that I think the key to dealing with those feelings is a bit of a sense of humor is learning to laugh at them, because otherwise, at least for me, if I'm not laughing at them, I'm taking them seriously and that's really a waste of my time. The sense of humor is sense humor about everything in life. But yeah, with our work and with ourselves. To be able to say that's their key to humility for me, you know, being able to like laugh at yourself or your situation or your demons or whatever it is. It just lightens everything. And without it, man, it just gets I gets to be a heavy experience. Truly, laughter really is medicine. I'm like, it's a cliche, but it's a cliche because it's true. Apparently they all are, so Tony, I have one last question for you, and I'm curious because you just have so much you know that you do and clearly care about. And it could be you know, professional film, television, theater, it could be personal, it could be you know, political with activism. What would you say when you think about the notion of being a work in progress? What feels like a work in progress in your life? Right now? My whole life feels like a work in progress, honestly, so I I'm finding at my age too, I'm viewing both my creative process as a work in progress, my parenting, my marriage of out thirty four years um my kind of viewed holistically. And so I'm now going, okay, I'm resisting the habitual impulse to try and say this is how it's gonna, this is how it's supposed to go, Like you know, we saw up and go what's my plan? Like, what's my plan? Okay? So what do I want to do next time? I What am I gonna? And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with having a plan, that that's that's good and often very useful, But I also can be toxic in the sense of trying to get what we talk about were controlling outcomes and because so many things like you mentioned scandal or something happening fell in my lap at fifty years old, Like I literally got a phone call from Sean dear Rocks going feel like planning President. I was like, what you know that that was something I could never have created, the success of it, the cultural phenomenon of it. That was just a gift that its life just dumped in my lap. And you know, so I've sort of had so many things like that that I am trying now to look at my life very much like what is what is actually happening, what's going on in the present, to be played with, to be um worked with in terms of work in progress, like what is the work that's actually progressing, what's actually what's actually happening, as opposed to being like, Okay, that job is over, I don't know what my next project is, so what you know, what's my client? What am I? What do I want? What am I gonna tell my agents? Or what script am I going to direct? Now? Like how am I going to? Is that all just exhausted to me now? So I'm really putting my attention more on trying to be observing and respond to all the little sparks that are constantly all around us that we just don't see. Does that make sense? Yes, absolutely, because we get swing our own head about like what I think it's supposed to happen is us, and you miss all the ship that's actually happening. So that's sort of the jag that I'm out at the moment. I love it, which is just another word for unemployment. No, but I think it's so important because you're right, Sometimes our job is slow, and sometimes it's it's so fast it's hard to keep up with. And and if you're always looking at what's coming next, you know, weeks go by and you realize you have no idea what you did because you weren't paying attention. Yeah, you know. I had this beautiful experience this year. My younger daughter, Tess, who's an actress, who was just she just got to grad school and during COVID she was home for a while because her program get suspended and she was in school in London, and she came home and she was like that we should make a film together. I was like, Okay, how do how do how do we let me do that, like just during COVID, like what. And I said, well, why don't you write why don't you write one like and we'll figure it out. And so she was back in London or school resumed, and and she wrote the script and sent it to me and I was like, this is really good. And we sort of kicked it back and forth, and then when she came home in the wintertime, she said, I was about to go off to Toronto to do the hot zone that I just told you about. And she was like, we need to do this before you leave because it needs to be shot in the winter, and this is where we're gonna do it. And I was like okay, And the two of us we got a crew together and we knew where we wanted to do it, and in a month we're going to put together this short film with it and found these young filmmakers, this incredibly young d P and all these We got this crew of eight people together and we figured it out and shot this beautiful little film and then edited it together while she was you know, I was in Toronto and anyway, it was just like, uh, seizing an opportunity because we were in the COVID situation. I wanted to do something creative, and this very magical creative experience, artistic experience happened, and we collaborating with one's own kid, which we had not collaborated really together before. It was it was just this thrilling thing and we made this beautiful little film and yeah, whereas you know, those are the kinds of things you can miss if you're like, well, no, that's not part of the plan, that's not on the schedule, whatever it is, you know what I mean. Mm hmm. I love that. It's amazing what you find, you know, on the other side of your plans. Totally. I'm so excited for everything that's ahead. I know I would love to see the short. I'm very excited about this too. Yeah, show it to you for sure. And I just I'm so grateful for you taking the time. Well, thank you. So fun talking to Sophia