Paul Guilfoyle has been a familiar face to audiences for decades, whether it’s on the big screen in films like Air Force One and L.A. Confidential, or as Captain Jim Brass on the long-running hit CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.
In his latest film, Any Day Now, Guilfoyle stars as Marty, a man who pulls a young night watchman named Steve (Taylor Gray) into a criminal world filled with oddballs, misfits, and lost souls as dirty as the Charles River. As Steve wrestles with whether this is a chance for change or a dangerous mistake, Guilfoyle delivers the kind of complex, character-driven work he loves most. He spoke with me about what drew him to the film, working with first-time director Eric Aronson, his dynamic with Gray, and even shared a story about working with Harrison Ford. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Watch the full conversation in the video above or on our YouTube channel.
You have the best opening line in a film that I’ve heard in a while now, “The f**k you want?”
Paul Guilfoyle: That’s a good one, you’re right. I remember Harrison Ford having this in Air Force One. I wrote about it in the New York Times. I was in that picture, I was one of the guys telling him how bad we were off.
How was it working with him?
Paul Guilfoyle: He’s a wonderful guy. He’s a real, real precise actor. Really precise. So much fun to be with him and he really knows exactly what he’s going to do. He told me once; he’s never been late. He shows up, he’s there, he’s ready. I liked working with him.
I love character driven dramas and maybe just because I’m an actor, but this totally drew me in.
Paul Guilfoyle: Well, Lance, for me, you’re the promised land. Everyone, you know, as an actor wants character-driven drama. I mean, that’s why I got involved in it.
It was from those movies of the seventies, those neo-realism movies that I watched with Jack Nicholson and Bob De Niro and Al Pacino. I mean, those guys delivered this sort of sense of character and was always slightly on the edge of the unknown.
I loved these characters and that’s all I cared about. I didn’t care where they were, where they were going next. Five Easy Pieces, Jack Nicholson goes from an oil rig to this place in New England where people play classical music, but he would stay the same guy, still uncertain and disdainful and slightly arrogant and displaced.
Some people think we can go to Paris and everything will be fine. No, because you’re going to bring the same character with you to Paris. I love that and I saw that in this movie and saw that in the actors and wanted to do it.
This was Eric Aronson’s directorial debut.
Paul Guilfoyle: That’s right. And goal was to do the same thing we just talked about, build a character driven drama.
Was there ever any trepidation about working with a first-time director? Did you meet him and like to make sure he’s not some sort of schlub or something first?
Paul Guilfoyle: Oh, sure. You’ve got to make sure he’s not some sort of schlub. We don’t want to spin our wheels. And you don’t want somebody who has a tremendous need to control everything and to use you like some kind of meat puppet. You want to make sure that we’re all going to collaborate because that’s the only way anything good happens. Because then everybody’s putting their best stuff in it all the time. And they’re invested.
I had to drop a couple of favorite scenes that I really liked. And Eric talked to me, he said, and we shot them, but he said it made it too easy for me to manipulate, Steve. But it was a scene where I steal Johnny Cash’s guitar, and I give it to him to cement the deal.
But Eric, to his credit, was right. So, he was economical, which is what you have to do.
The whole cast is great, but the dynamic between you and Steve, Taylor Gray, it’s just really what made the film for me. How did you two work together? How was that on-screen relationship formed?
Paul Guilfoyle: These are the things that you work on in a very subtle way. You have to be open to want to develop a relationship, you know? I mean, we have to build something together and then you just hope it goes well, and you invest in that slightly. And by doing that, you let the character invest in it totally. And you as a person want to.
And he’s an easy guy to get along with. He’s a very curious guy and he’s a kind of a throwback where he himself wants to do acting like the acting of Lee Strasberg. So, he was great, and he was open to that and it kind of developed over time. We formed a nice relationship.
