Craig Bierko talks acting and his career

April 6, 2009 by Lance Carter

Craig Bierko is currently starring on Broadway in Guys and Dolls and he recently sat down for an interview with The Huffington Post.

On working with actors who established themselves in TV & Film:

Q: It’s an interesting mix: Graham is known for television; Platt, for film. But you and Kate Jennings Grant are the Broadway vets. You see what they’re going through, because they have to rise to that challenge that you can understand. Lauren Graham was a surprise, finding out that she can sing and dance. That was a pretty impressive display. Were you surprised yourself?

CB: No. That’s the thing: these people work hard, they work harder than most people. I don’t know how much of a dancer Lauren was, but she started working out in Los Angeles before rehearsals even started. She’s extremely dedicated. I never saw Gilmore Girls, so I don’t think of her as a TV star, I just think of her as this girl Lauren. But when she walks out onstage and you hear all the Barbie dolls screaming, you realize, apparently she did a television show. My nieces are going to be so nervous around her. But I just see her as my friend Lauren who’s doing this part. And she’s incredible.

On Acting:

Q: So did you always know you were going to be an actor?

CB: Yeah, but I don’t feel like one. Just at the point I got this play, I happened to be going through a period when I thought: this is silly, getting up and leaping around in Ferngully like this at the age of 44. And I thought, what am I doing? What is this world?

A lot of actors I had worked with seemed mentally unbalanced. It’s only a matter of time before I go nuts myself. Around that time, and for a few years now, I never felt quite like what I figured an actor should feel like. I don’t know that any actor does. I think feeling displaced or slightly removed is what an artist feels like.

There’s a wonderful book by David Mamet called True or False. I’ll boil it down for you: most of the mythos that surrounds acting–this implied importance, usually generated by actors themselves–is bullshit. Not only are you not curing cancer, but there’s an argument that in certain circumstances you’re probably causing it!

I don’t know exactly what acting is. I don’t think it’s not a noble profession. there are people who are good at it, even geniuses at it. I look at what some people do and I don’t know how they can do that, how they can access that fury of emotion. But I’m not entirely sure what it is.

On who he would want to work with:

Q: Do you have a list of which directors or actors you’d like to work with?

CB: When I had my meeting with Ron Howard, I was thinking, yeah, I’d love to work with Ron Howard. But I don’t sit there thinking, “Boy, I’d love to work with Ron Howard one day.”

You know who I’d love to work with? The Marx Brothers. It’s probably not going to happen!

I love Fred Willard. I love Fred for the same reason I love W.C. Fields, and Groucho [Marx]. Fred Willard discovered something that nobody has ever done–it is a completely unique comic voice. And you can say, ‘Well, no, he’s the dumb guy who thinks his IQ is 17 points higher than it actually is, and there are people who have done that.’ But they haven’t done that with his rhythm, and not with what he does.

You can tell someone is great when they keep popping up in stuff that’s beneath them. Most of the material can’t rise to his talent, which is why you realize that people like the Marx Brothers, or W.C. Fields, or Buster Keaton–these guys from yesterday created material to suit this thing they invented.

If Don Knotts’ career had happened 30 years previously, I think he would have been as big as any of them. He was doing something that was completely unique. But because he wasn’t a writer, he was kind of a slave, like Stan Laurel. That’s another one I want to work with, Stan Laurel! I want to have him explain to me how to solve the problem that I always have of picking something off the desk.

On his career path:

Q: A lot of stage actors seem more exciting than film actors because of their range. How did you decide on your choices?

CB: I really don’t have a strategy. At the beginning of my career I was sort of frustrated because I wasn’t sure how to pinpoint myself yet. But in terms of having a plan, I’m not constructed that way.

I’m blessed with a faulty memory, which is not a good thing to have if you’re going to start constructing a plan, because you need to have “this” experience in order to inform “[that]” experience. I really don’t think like that.

Any decision that’s made about my career is ultimately my decision, and it’s helped me not to plan too much. I’ve never been the guy thinking, “I want to do a play this year, I want to do this kind of movie or this kind of character.” I don’t have that sort of control.

It’s been just seeing what comes along and taking advantage of what excites me. It’s led to what some people might consider bad decisions, and other times, it’s been great decisions. Whatever it has, it’s led me here.

Without getting too Buddhist, I just naturally have been in the moment in the entire time. I’m very happy with my life and with my career.

There’s some alchemy between being present on stage and fulfilling the requirements of a scene, and also remembering that there’s a funnel effect–you have to send it out through a megaphone so that people can experience it. I don’t know how that happens.

I know that part of it is purely kinesthetic, it’s not something you can articulate. That’s why I get suspicious of acting school, to a point. Personally, I don’t know what I did or didn’t get from acting school. A lot of whatever it is that I have is experiential, getting up on stage and getting a sense.

I used to have a singing teacher who said, “You want to find the place with your voice where the room starts ringing.” That’s an impossible thing to relate to unless you’ve actually been in a room and you realize, “Oh, if I keep my tone here, it feels like the room is vibrating in a weird way.” It’s the same way, perhaps on an emotional level, that is purely experiential. It’s like explaining to somebody how to run fast.