 With such an extensive catalog of performances having been amassed throughout his career, there are quite naturally numerous reviews, articles and features commenting on Anthony and his work that have appeared in newspapers, magazines, and web sites over the years. As other pages on this web site have chronicled Anthony's appearances in film, theater, audio books and television, this page represents a chronicle of Anthony's appearances "in the press". Articles and reviews focusing on Anthony and his film, theater, audio book and television performances are gathered below, each in their own section. We are always looking to add to the "In The Press" section of AnthonyHeald.com, so if you know of a review or article that focuses on Anthony that needs to be added, please drop us an email with the information and we'll be sure to add it to the page. NEW! You Can't Take the Stage Out of the Actor From: Jefferson Public Radio -- Lucy Edwards [August 23, 2007] In this great 10 minute audio interview Anthony discusses his film and TV roles, as well as his return to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and his love of performing on the stage. To listen to the interview, click here. 
All The World's A Stage For Actor Anthony Heald From: Distinctly Northwest Magazine -- Althea Godfrey [April 01, 2007] In sharp contrast to his role as Dr. Chilton in Silence of the Lambs or Scott Guber on Boston Public, the real Anthony Heald conveys a serene demeanor. A dedicated family man, Heald recently returned to his home in Ashland after spending six years in Los Angeles. Comfortably ensconced in his Craftsman-style living room with a cup of coffee, I found a man of eclectic tastes: DNW: How did you get your start in the business? AH: I got my first professional job after my freshman year of college in the summer of '63. Then I was offered an equity job in the Asolo Theater in Sarasota, Fla., a repertory company, and I was offered one season. Then, as happens in this business, one job led to another, led to another. DNW: Why did you choose the Rogue Valley as your home? AH: We were living in Montclair, New Jersey - suburban New York. My kids were 3 and 7 years old. I was not spending any time with them or my wife and I spent three hours a day commuting. Working in commercial theater, with the matinees, I was away from home all weekend. We came out here on a vacation in '94. I fell in love with it and started exploring the idea of moving here.I was prepared to accept a less satisfying professional life in return for a more satisfying personal life. To my surprise and delight, I found an infinitely better professional life [at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival]. DNW: What's your favorite part about living in Ashland? AH: The ease of everything. In L.A., it took 20 minutes to get to the grocery store and you tried to arrange it so you would only make right turns. Here, it's five minutes to work, three minutes to the grocery store. And we have a wide circle of friends. DNW: What's been your favorite project to date? AH: During the OSF '99 season, I played Iago in Othello and John Rosmer in Ibsen's Rosmerscholm. One is a villain, the other a pure idealist. One's a man of action, the other is tied in knots and can't act. One's a man of no conscience at all, and Rosmer is so bound by his conscience he kills himself because he can't be as good as he wants to be. To play them both ‹ sometimes in the same day ‹ well, there is nothing like it. As an actor you feel complete. DNW: You often play rather sinister roles. If you could choose any type of genre or character that you have yet to do, what would it be and why? AH: One role I'd like to play is Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Often the most satisfying roles are the ones that I would never have dreamt of taking. I'm doing Tartuffe this year [at OSF]. It's unbelievably daunting. It's a tough, tough play and a tough part, so I'm thrilled to be doing it. DNW: How do you balance a quality family life with the rigors of your profession? AH: Before I became a father, I defined myself as an actor. After having kids, I define myself as a father who acts. In series television you never work weekends and usually only work three-and-a-half days a week. The good thing about repertory is you have some evenings free, and sometimes three days in a row off. The worst possible situation is commercial theater, where you're gone six nights a week and all weekend. DNW: Can you share something about yourself that no one else knows? AH: I'm an inveterate downloader of tunes and I do a lot of downloading from iTunes. I'm trying to stay current with popular music and I'm fascinated with the whole change in the delivery of media. We're at the beginning of a huge shift. DNW: When you played the vice principal in Boston Public, he was a classical music enthusiast. What kind of music do you enjoy in your real life? AH: I'm a huge chamber music fan. I'm now on a 20th century chamber music kick, listening to composers I've never heard before. I'm a jazz collector, especially '60s, especially saxophone. DNW: What book is currently on your nightstand? AH: I'm reading Ward Just's novel A Dangerous Friend. I just finished Nathaniel Philbrick's The Mayflower. I tend to alternate between good literature, history, Judaica and occasionally detective stories. Profile/Interview With Anthony Heald From: The Byline -- Evan T. Burchfield [March 19, 2007] 
The Oregon Shakespeare Festival is a gift to our region. Nestled just a block away from the main thoroughfare of Ashland, the Festival hides hundreds of world-class artists and technicians, both local and transplants. OSF is our Broadway, except where New York has skyscrapers and fast-paced living, we have mountains and a quieter lifestyle. But the plays are just as good, according to actor Anthony Heald, best known for playing creeps in Silence of the Lambs, 8MM, and The Client: "When I first decided to perform at OSF I thought that I wasn't going to get the artistic satisfaction that I wanted. I was wrong."Mr. Heald, (or Tony), first saw a show at the Festival when a stage manager friend invited his family to visit while he had a break from shooting The Client. Impressed with the quality of the plays, Heald and his wife debated moving to Oregon so he could join the festival. "I was living in a suburb of New Jersey, leaving home at quarter to six to get to a show in New York, and not coming back home until after midnight. I was in the same show eight times a week." Heald thought Oregon could offer him the chance to be with his family and get back on stage, his "true love". He joined the Festival in 1997 and played several roles over the course of three years, including Iago in Othello, John Rosmer in Ibsen's Rosmersholm, and Lucio in Measure for Measure, as well as performing in the premiere of The Magic Fire. Mr. Heald considers each of these parts an honor to play, and each is a personal achievement for him. "When you're playing two roles at once, even two as different as Iago and Rosmer, you find the experience of playing one character subtly informs the other." Heald resolved to take every fourth year off from the Festival so he could continue pursuing work in film and television, work that he considers "aesthetically barren." When the year 2000 brought him the chance to play a recurring role in David E. Kelley's Boston Public on ABC, he and his wife again had to make a life changing decision. Deciding to take the role, Heald played Scott Guber for four years until the show was cancelled. Since his children were now in High School, Heald delayed his intended return to Oregon and the Shakespeare Festival until the 2007 season. Currently Mr. Heald is playing Pischik in Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, directed by Libby Appel. "It's a glorious experience. I'm having a ball." The role requires Heald to wear a fat suit and a fake beard, a physical transformation that makes it hard to recognize him. There's a glint in his eye that comes through all those layers though, and seeing him dance around the stage while wheezing heavily as an old man might, it is clear that this is a side of "Tony" that we don't often get to see. Heald has been playing "sleazy" characters on film ever since his key role as Dr. Frederick Chilton in Jonathan Demme's Silence of the Lambs, but on stage at OSF, he's given the chance to play a jolly old man who warms the audience's heart through his imperfections. Mr. Heald intends to stay in Ashland for awhile. If prompted to do so, Heald can rattle off eight or nine things he loves about Southern Oregon without breaking a sweat. Sometimes he sounds like a native, to which he responds, "I'm committed to spending the rest of my life here." Aside from the weather, Mr. Heald loves the music, dance, and theatre community that is fostered in our valley. For someone who's worked for years in Los Angeles and New York, that's saying something. When asked to compare his New York experiences to those on OSF stages, Mr. Heald replies that actors in New York are always looking to further their career, looking past their current project. In Ashland he works with actors who live in the community and don't have the same pressures, while still putting on great shows. "The reason I became an actor is for the experiences I have at Oregon Shakespeare Festival. I'm not at all interested in acting in front of the camera again." Strong words from a strong actor who only adds more luster to the precious gem that is Oregon Shakespeare Festival. The Festival should be happy to have him, as should Southern Oregon. 
From: Mail Tribune News -- Jim Davis [April 1999] Tony Heald hates his new movie, "8mm." Although the show has brought in more than $30 million at the box office this spring, the Ashland actor who plays a bad-guy lawyer said it will not be among the highlights of his career. "It's an ugly movie," Heald said. "It's a grim movie and it's about ugly people who do horrible things to each other. It appeals to the lowest instincts of an audience." But he found at least one silver lining: "They offered me a lot of money." Heald, 54, said his roles in movies and television -- and the money they bring -- allow him to live in Ashland, where he has found a home and an outlet for his creative work. For the past three seasons, Heald has acted in seven plays with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, including the currently running ''Othello" and "Rosmersholm," which officially opens this weekend. "I'm here in Ashland," Heald said, "because I want to devote the last 25 years of my career to art." David Dreyfoos, an associate producer for the festival, said Heald's presence in Ashland benefits the audiences. "I think it's a boon when any actor that has a resume like Tony's wants to come to a place like this and be able to relook at their career and be able to fit into an ensemble," Dreyfoos said. Heald, who grew up in New York City, acted in plays throughout high school and college and eventually moved on to regional theater. During those years, Heald met his wife, Robin Herskowitz-Heald, who was a stage manager and who, at one time, babysat the recent Oscar-winning Gwyneth Paltrow. Early in his career, Heald moved to New York to try to make it in what is considered the theater capital of the country. But Heald kept getting parts at regional theaters and moving away from the city. His luck changed in 1979, when he appeared on the television game show "$20,000 Pyramid" and won the top prize. That money allowed him to stay in New York until he caught on. He has since performed live theater on and off Broadway as well as movies and television. He hit the film version of a jackpot in 1991 when he played a creepy psychiatrist in the movie "The Silence of the Lambs," which became one of the most popular movies of all time. However, Heald said he enjoys performing in live theater better than movies. "I tend to play secondary, less complicated roles (in movies)," Heald said. "I always play a sleazy lawyer like in '8mm,' or I play a sleazy psychiatrist like in 'Silence of the Lambs."' In the summer of 1993, Heald was filming the movie "The Client" in Mississippi. Seeking to escape the heat and humidity, his wife and their two children -- Dylan and Zoe -- came to Ashland to visit Jill Rendall, a friend who is a stage manager with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. "I absolutely fell in love with the place," Herskowitz-Heald said. "The town is so charming and beautiful and it seemed so relaxed." The next year, the entire Heald family came back to Ashland on a vacation from their home in Montclair, N.J. During their stay, Heald took in plays and said he was impressed by the quality of the performances. After the shows, Heald spoke with then-artistic director Henry Woronicz, who encouraged him to consider coming to Ashland. Heald, whose film career was heating up, liked what he had seen of Ashland but didn't even consider the offer. Soon after the vacation, Heald flew from New Jersey to Los Angeles to tape an episode of "Murder, She Wrote" with Angela Lansbury. During the show, he missed Dylan's seventh birthday. While he liked working with the legendary Lansbury, Heald was miserable because he was away from his family and because of the work. "It was dreck, it really was," Heald said. "I was doing it for the money." During that stint, Heald went out one night with an actor friend. He tried to persuade his friend to move to Ashland, telling him about the quality of the performances and the beauty of the town. "I started thinking about what I was saying," Heald said. "That night I called my wife and told her I was thinking about moving to Ashland." The family had a home built in Ashland and Heald worked enough film and television to be able financially to make the move. Heald started with the Shakespeare festival late in the 1997 season. He said he was pleased, saying the cast works as an ensemble. "People who play the lead in one show -- they might play a tiny role in the other one," Heald said. "People don't tend to get swelled heads here." And he was also surprised by the support the festival lends its actors -- such as dialogue coaches, movement coaches and dramaturgs, who interpret and research works to help actors and directors understand the characters. "I could never hope to get that kind of help in New York," Heald said. "They just don't do it. For whatever reason, they just don't see the need." Dreyfoos said Heald has managed to fit in well with the company. He said the festival strives to provide support for all of its actors, such as assigning a dramaturg to each play. That support, Heald said, led to four of the most memorable experiences in his career in the plays "Rough Crossing," "The Magic Fire," "Turn of the Screw" and "Othello." "To me," he said, "that's incredible that I would have that high of a level of artistic satisfaction at this point in my career." He said he will continue to do films and television and wants to take every fourth season off for that work. In Ashland, Heald said his life at work has been able to meld with his life at home. At night, he comes home to stay with his family. Heald's son, Dylan, performed with him in "The Magic Fire." He said he loves the small-town feel of Ashland. After that play opened, Heald attended a party with the cast and director Libby Appel. After the reception, he went home, changed clothes and went to the grocery store. As he walked down the aisle pushing his cart, Heald bumped into Appel, pushing her cart toward him. "I found what I was hoping for here," Heald said. "For all of those reasons, it's proven to be a very good decision." From: Hollywood.com A character player capable of projecting priggish attitudes or a sinister aura even when not specifically a villain, Anthony Heald did not begin to be noticed in film until middle-age and after more than 20 years in the theater. The compact, light-haired actor had intended to be a stage actor, and spent 15 years working in repertory companies in Florida, Connecticut, Wisconsin and Kentucky before venturing to New York at age 35. Heald quickly established himself, playing Tom in a 1980 Off-Broadway production of "The Glass Menagerie" and two years later made his Broadway debut alongside Holly Hunter in Beth Henley's short-lived "The Wake of Jamey Foster". He continued to work in the theatre throughout the 80s, notably in support of Remark Ramsey in "Quartermaine's Terms" (1983), as the Welsh Fluellen to Kevin Kline's "Henry V" (1984 in NYC's Central Park) and in the title roles in "The Foreigner", in the Broadway revival of "The Marriage of Figaro" (1985, co-starring with Christopher Reeve and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) and the off-Broadway comedy "Digby" (also 1985, with John Glover). He won critical praise for originating the role of Stephen, the lover who had thwarted his opera-loving beau in Terrence McNally's "The Lisbon Traviata" (1989-90). 
Television and film work began to beckon in the 80s as well. Heald played a recurring role on the ABC daytime drama "All My Children" and guest starred on "Miami Vice" and "Spenser For Hire", but his first big TV appearance was as Kevin Kensington, one of the family of raisin barons in the 1986 CBS spoof miniseries "Fresno", co-starring Carol Burnett. Other small screen credits include a turn as an incestuous doctor in a 1991 "CBS Schoolbreak Special" entitled "Abby, My Love" and the final episode of the hit sitcom "Cheers". By the early 80s, Heald had begun to gain small roles in features (as a doctor in Mike Nichols' "Silkwood" 1983, as a cop in "Teachers" 1984). His first prominent role was Weldon, the government agent posing as an acting student, in "Outrageous Fortune" (1987). While Nichols cast him in a more prominent role in "Postcards From the Edge" (1990), Heald hit pay dirt in 1991 when director Jonathan Demme cast him as Dr. Chilton, the arrogant psychiatrist brought down by his own hubris--and Hannibal Lechter--in the Oscar-winning "Silence of the Lambs". Despite the notice, however, Heald never fully graduated to major roles. Throughout the 90s, he has continued to alternate between features and the stage. On screen, Heald was Annabella Sciorra's former boyfriend in the undistinguished thriller "Whispers in the Dark" and had a small role in the superior "Searching for Bobby Fischer" (both 1993). Heald has appeared in three adaptations of John Grisham best-sellers: Alan J Pakula's "The Pelican Brief" (1993) and "The Client" (1994) and "A Time to Kill" (1996), both directed by Joel Schumacher. In Barbet Schroeder's 1995 remake of "Kiss of Death", he was cited for his depiction of a sleazy lawyer. On stage, Heald has excelled in two plays by Terrence McNally: in "Lips Together, Teeth Apart" (1991), he was Christine Baranski's slightly stuffy husband, while in the Tony-winning "Love! Valour! Compassion!", he was half of a successful gay couple. Heald demonstrated his versatility in multiple roles in A.R. Gurney's off-Broadway hit "Later Life" (1993) and more than held his own against heavyweights George C Scott and Charles Durning in the 1996 revival of "Inherit the Wind". From: Guardian Unlimited Film -- Philip French [May 2, 1999] He's the smarmy lawyer who hires private eye Nicolas Cage to investigate a snuff movie in 8MM, establishing from the outset that Cage is a sad innocent incapable of smelling a rat. The jokes about rats and lawyers (eg 'there are things a rat won't do') are illustrated by his appearances in the three John Grisham legal sagas, The Client, A Time to Kill and The Pelican Brief. 
His name is Anthony Heald. He was born in 1944 in the New York dormitory town of New Rochelle, and educated at Michigan State University. Since the late 1960s, he's acted in the theatre, in regional rep companies and on and off Broadway. In 1983, he made his movie debut as a doctor in Mike Nichols' Silkwood. His confident, stocky figure, large, well-shaped skull, high forehead and wavy hair, have made him a key representative of a suspect professional class playing attorneys, doctors, businessmen. An inviting smile encourages initial trust and respect, but when riled, the smile gives way to a chilling grimace. In last year's Deep Rising, Heald was the crooked financier, scheming to have his cruise ship hi-jacked on its maiden voyage, but his most famous role is as Dr Frederick Chilton, the smug, vindictive shrink who believes he can win mind games with Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs. Heald has been typecast by Hollywood as the epitome of a specific kind of dislikeable American. But for 30 years on the stage - in plays by Shaw, Osborne, Pinter, Hampton, Ayckbourn and Gray - he has played a variety of sympathetic British characters, ranging from Fluellen in Henry V to Henry Higgins in Pygmalion. From: Michigan State University Alumni Magazine -- Bob Bao [Fall 1999] 
Like a line in Macbeth, life's but a stage for Anthony Heald, '70, longtime actor on Broadway, in film, and now with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Heald is probably best known for portraying Dr. Frederick Chilton in The Silence of the Lambs (1991), or for his roles in three John Grisham movies, The Pelican Brief (1993), The Client (1994), and A Time to Kill (1996). Two of his Broadway roles, in Love! Valour! Compasson! and as Lord Evelyn Oakleigh in Anything Goes, resulted in Tony nominations for best supporting actor. "I've been lucky in the quality of the projects and in the quality of the people involved, even though my role was not always a major one," says Tony. A native of New Rochelle, NY, Tony took eight years to graduate from MSU. "I had to work my way through school," he explains. "Frank Rutledge gave me a job at the Scene Shop of the Theatre Dept. and I took a few courses each term." In 1967, he left for two years to work at Asolo in Sarasota, FL, for director Eberle Thomas, whom he had met at MSU. "MSU was really helpful because there was such an active production program," he recalls. "I got a tremendous amount of experience. The Performing Arts Company was very valuable." Tony was also involved with the Street Corner Society, which produced anti-war and feminist skits. After graduation, he was involved with Boarshead in Grand Ledge, as well as regional theatre. In 1977 he moved to New York, where he won TV's "The $20,000 Pyramid" with Dick Clark. His big break came in 1980, when his role in The Glass Menagerie caught the eye of an ICM agent, who got him good auditions and his first movie role, in Silkwood (1983). "When you've worked with (director) Mike Nichols and Meryle Streep," he notes, "you're taken more seriously. After that I averaged a movie a year." 
NEW! Tony Heald Comes Home: In His Return To The Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Veteran Movie And Television Actor Says There's Nothing Like The Stage From: Mail Tribune by Bill Varble [August 26, 2007] There came a time when Tony Heald asked Peter Amster, who directed this season's "Tartuffe" at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, to absolve him of any responsibility for getting laughs. Playing the title character in Molière's classic comedy, Heald had come to believe the character had to be menacing. "It's a tough play," Heald says. "A serious comedy. For my money, the best comedies are serious, like 'Dr. Strangelove.' It can be difficult to find the right tone." Heald says an actor can be funny and truthful, not truthful but funny, truthful and not funny, or not truthful and not funny. "Truthful is important," he says. "I'm trying to find that." It's in theater that actors are most prone to such philosophizing. Heald worked several years in television and films before returning to the OSF this season for the first time since 1999. Which may be why, at 63, he sounds like a happy man. In 1999 Heald played Iago in an acclaimed "Othello." When he left OSF he told Artistic Director Libby Appel he'd probably be back to work in a year. He schmoozed her off and on for the next seven years during visits from Los Angeles when shooting schedules allowed him to get away from "Boston Public" and other work. He'd wound up in an episode of "Frazier," which led to appearances on "The X-Files" and to the role of Judge Harvey Cooper in "Boston Legal," and based on that, the role of Scott Guber on "Boston Public." When he moved with his wife, Robin Herskowitz, and two children to Los Angeles, the couple made plans to stay until the kids finished school in 2006. He had never done a TV series. He found it unsatisfying. "A series is 22 stories a season," he says. "The quality can vary enormously." Story lines veered away from the things he was excited about. And he missed the sense of learning actors get from a live audience. Take Tartuffe, the scary religious hypocrite who preys on the wealthy Orgon. The latter's gullibility and intransigence imperil his family and his estate. Heald plays the scoundrel in black wig and costume and pale makeup, a sort of cross between Ozzy Osbourne and a vampire. Heald says it was difficult to get to the core of the character. "I see a lot of similarities with Iago," he says. "Both affect others' relationships." Voice coach Bonnie Raphael, who worked on "Tartuffe," says Heald's original idea of the villain was somewhat brighter, but Heald darkened the character as rehearsals went on. "When he saw the costume," she says, "he said, 'Ohhh.'" At the heart of the play is what happens to Orgon and his family because Orgon is taken in by Tartuffe, and because Orgon has total authority over his family. "Molière is saying that when fools have authority, disasters will happen," Heald says, "and we've seen that in our national government the last six years." He gives credit to Raphael, whom he knew from his student days at Michigan State University in the 1960s. "Tartuffe" is written in verse and translated from the French and could easily sound like doggerel. "She worked with us to bury and un-stress the rhymes," Heald says. "My job was making sure they didn't get sucked in by the poetry," says Raphael, who is based at Playmakers Repertory in Chapel Hill, N.C., and who has worked with theaters all over the country. "It's not a quick fix. It's having them speak to major punctuation rather than line endings." Raphael was a couple of years ahead of Heald at MSU when both were studying acting, and Amster was a student of hers in the 1970s at Northwestern University. "We're talking old home week here," she says. "The lesson is, be nice, people come back." Heald was born in New Rochelle, N.Y., and first acted professionally in 1963, after his freshman year of college. He acted for several years and graduated from MSU in 1971. He worked on and off-Broadway and was nominated for Tony awards for his work in 1988's "Anything Goes" and the 1995 Terrence McNally play "Love! Valour! Compassion!" He appeared in such films as "Silkwood" (1983) and "Postcards From the Edge" (1990), but it wasn't until 1991, when he played the smarmy Dr. Frederick Chilton in 1991's "Silence of the Lambs," that his career went into orbit. "I specialized in sleazeballs," he says. Movie slimewads paid the bills ‹ no comparison with stage work there ‹ but Heald missed what he says is the constant learning curve of live theater. In the run of the 1999 OSF "Othello," for example, audiences were getting restless in the fifth act. The stage manager gave Heald some notes that said his Iago, the villain, was too appealing and was taking too much of the focus. "He said if I toned it down, fifth act would pay off," Heald says. He did, and it did. Veteran actor Richard Elmore, who worked with Heald this season in both "The Cherry Orchard" and "Tartuffe," says Heald makes him a better actor. That's in part because of Heald's generosity to other actors, Elmore says. For example, Elmore had an idea for an action for his character in a pivotal moment that ends the first half of the play. It involved Heald's character, and he wanted to spring it on the director. "Tony was very accommodating and said, 'Let's try it,'" Elmore says in an e-mail. Those who see the play will recognize the moment. Heald gained weight for the role of Pischick, the money-cadging neighbor in "The Cherry Orchard," and lost it quickly as "Tartuffe" neared its late July opening. During rehearsals, Elmore says, Heald would be off to the side studying two or more different translations of the script ‹ "always looking, searching for the truth of that character." Raphael says one reason for Heald's success is an old-fashioned one. "He works very hard," she says. "He's hungry. He's not happy until he's nailed something." He's under contract at the OSF for 2008, when he'll play the Stage Manager in Thornton Wilder's "Our Town," which will become the first play by a modern American playwright to be presented on the OSF's Elizabethan stage. "It's a dream I never thought would come true," he says. "He (the Stage Manager) sets the tone. It's intimidating and exciting." He sees the festival as a 10-month job, leaving November and December to devote to family but little time for movie or TV work, although he might squeeze in the odd role here or there. "But I'm ready to spend the rest of my career at the festival," he says. "I've never had as satisfying an experience on stage as here. "If God is listening, I'd like to wind up here." 
Oregon Shakespeare Festival Stages Molière's 'Tartuffe'From: Mail Tribune by Bill Varble [July 27, 2007] One of drama's most infamous and entertaining con artists will come to life when Molière's comic masterpiece "Tartuffe," directed by Peter Amster, opens at 8:30 p.m. Saturday, July 28, 2007 in the Oregon Shakespeare Festival's Bowmer Theatre. Orgon, a wealthy bourgeois, and his mother, Mme. Pernelle, have fallen under the spell of Tartuffe, a mysterious holy man with more on his mind than the eternal. Tartuffe has even taken up residence in Orgon's house. Not everybody is easily duped. Orgon's children, Mariane and Damis; Orgon's wife, Elmire; Mariane's maid, Dorine; and Elmire's brother, Cléante, all see Tartuffe for the fraud he is. Together, they hatch a plan to prove this to Orgon. But even when he is caught in a trap, Tartuffe is sly enough to wriggle off the hook. Tartuffe tries to seduce Elmire, causing Damis to denounce Tartuffe. When Damis tells Orgon what has happened, Tartuffe disingenuously "confesses" in such a way that Orgon immediately puts the matter aside. What follows is physical and verbal comedy with what OSF describes as a touch of danger. Amster is in his seventh season at OSF. He has directed "The Importance of Being Earnest," "Twelfth Night," "The Royal Family," "Enter the Guardsman," "Present Laughter" and "Idiot's Delight." If "Tartuffe" reminds us of the scandals that have surrounded televangelists and others in our own day, Amster says that's a tribute to Molière. "Treachery, hypocrisy, pride that strangles true feeling, holding complacently to one's beliefs when overwhelming evidence points to the truth," Amster said in a press release. "It's nice to know that certain things don't change. Molière's rueful comedy certainly proves that. One has only to look in the newspapers or at one's own family to see how current 'Tartuffe' really is." Anthony Heald plays Tartuffe. Richard Elmore has been cast as Orgon, and Suzanne Irving as his wife, Elmire. Linda Alper plays the impertinent maid Dorine, Richard Howard is Elmire's brother, Cléante, Laura Morache and Gregory Linington play Mariane and Damis. Kevin Kenerly is Mariane's fiancé, Valère, and Eileen DeSandre is Mme. Pernelle. Richard Farrell, Rex Young, John Michael Goodson, Amanda Wilkins, Tasso Feldman and Jason Esquerra round out the cast. "Tartuffe" was first performed in 1664 at Versailles and was greeted with an outcry by religious people known as "devouts" who were influential in the court of Louis XIV. The king eventually suppressed the play, but it resurfaced and has remained popular. From: Mail Tribune by Bill Varble [July 30, 2007] The very funny new production of Molière's "Tartuffe" that opened Saturday night (July 28, 2007) at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival boasted some of the festival's premier actors. There was Anthony Heald, back at OSF from his role as Scott Guber in "Boston Public" and other work, as the phony holy man who provides the play's name. And there was Richard Elmore as the rich bourgeois Orgon, who has fallen under Tartuffe's sway. But the man who arguably may be the production's biggest star was not seen but heard. That would be Ranjit Bolt, the English translator and adapter who fit the fine wine of the classic loosely into a new skin of rhyming couplets. Bolt got an assist from director Peter Amster and dramaturg David Copelin, who made things yet more user-friendly by swapping out some of Bolt's Britishisms for American vernacular. The result, although purists may grouse, is witty, charming, naughty and accessible. The actors for the most part manage to get through Bolt's verse in fluid fashion, sometimes finishing each other's lines and seldom if ever standing around. In the dining table seduction scene, Orgon's wife, in extremis, tries to ward off the randy holy man saying in the middle of the action, "And now you're rushing to the sweet before we've had the soup and meat!" Amster stages Molière's classic with high octane and 17th-century opulence, with Richard Hay's elegantly subdued set a foil for Mara Blumenfeld's gorgeous, colorful (except for the black-clad Tartuffe) costumes. It is bound to bring to mind the antics of certain televangelists and others. Tartuffe (Heald) has insinuated himself into the family of Orgon (Elmore) by feigning great religiosity. Orgon is so enthralled by Tartuffe's spiritual claptrap that he is ready to marry off his daughter, Mariane (Laura Morache), to the hypocrite and leave him his entire estate, disinheriting everybody else. Almost everybody else in the household ‹ Orgon's wife, Elmire (Suzanne Irving), his son, Damis (Gregory Linington), his brother-in-law, Cleante (Richard Howard), and the maid, Dorine (Linda Alper) ‹ sees through Tartuffe. Which is no great feat, since Tartuffe pretty much reveals himself to them. In a telling scene, rather than deny the charges brought against him by Damis, Tartuffe sheds crocodile tears and condemns himself as a helpless sinner. The show of fake humility makes your skin crawl ‹ and sets Tartuffe's hook even harder in Orgon's pliable psyche. The great charlatan does not enter until almost time for the intermission. When he does he is endowed by Heald with an air of self-importance and the dead eyes of a reptile. His first line, delivered to his acolyte, Laurent (John Michael Goodson), says it all: "My hair shirt needs wringing out." At the play's center has always been the question of how Orgon can be so blind as not to see this mock-pious con man for the scheming fraud he so obviously is. Elmore answers by lighting up in Tartuffe's presence as if warming in a spiritual glow. Elmore's eyes turn flinty in the many conflicts he has with family members over this snake in their midst. But something like a lovelight comes into them in his dealings with Tartuffe. Orgon is a man of a certain age lost in the heady, dream-like state of an unexpected love affair. And there's no fool like an old fool. Alper and Irving are marvels, but the play's energy must come from the Orgon-Tartuffe axis, and Elmore and Heald have the chemistry to deliver. By the time Elmire forces Orgon to see the real Tartuffe in the dining table scene, the family's goose would seem to be cooked ‹ but for what might be the most flagrant deus ex machina in world theater. It's as if Molière, knowing which side his bread was buttered on, was throwing a big, wet, sycophantic kiss to Louis XIV, who would eventually protect the play from the church. We don't believe it for a minute. But there is Molière, who has shown us the mysteries of a foolish heart, winking at us over the absurdity, and we laugh with him across the centuries. 
BoarsHead alumnus returns for 'Love Letters'From: Lansign City Pulse by Ute Von Der Heyden [February 2006] When Anthony Heald flies into Lansing Friday for a reunion with BoarsHead Theater and its artistic director Kristine Thatcher, he will be reconnecting with a "hugely important" part of his life. "It's been way too long," he said. "After I left Michigan in '77, I really didn't come back very often - maybe three times." "BoarsHead is the place where I basically learned how to be an actor," said Heald, an MSU and BoarsHead's alum who has gone on to national TV and film prominence. At 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 18, 2006 Heald will help Thatcher raise funds for BoarsHead productions and educational programs with a staged reading of "Love Letters" by A. R. Gurney, a drama that traces a 50-year love affair from childhood birthday party thank-you note to death letter. "Kristine and I were together as co-workers and as partners for five years," Heald said. "There's a history there that resonates in 'Love Letters.'" While in Lansing over the weekend, Heald will also do a workshop with high school students and an actors' forum with students from MSU and Lansing Community College. Heald, 61, has performed everywhere from Broadway to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. On film, he made his debut in "Silkwood" and played psychiatrist Frederick Chilton in "The Silence of the Lambs." On TV, he played assistant principal Scott Guber in the high school comedy-drama "Boston Public," and has been seen more recently in "Numb3rs," "NCIS," "Boston Legal" and "Crossing Jordan." He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two teenage sons. At BoarsHead, Heald appeared in 18 productions between 1974 and 1977. Both he and Thatcher remember doing a whirlwind schedule of plays at the Ledges Playhouse (as it was then located in Grand Ledge), earning about $125 a week and teaching acting at LCC. "We started with 'There's a Girl in My Soup' and went on to things like 'Macbeth.' 'The Threepenny Opera' and 'Dial M for Murder,'" Thatcher recalls. "We were handed parts that we wouldn't have gotten in bigger theaters." Before coming to BoarsHead, Heald has worked at the Asolo Theater Festival, the Hartford Stage Co. and the Milwaukee Repertory Theater, and he recalls worrying about joining "a tiny theater that was really operating on a shoestring." But that didn't last long. "I was wrestling with text with people like Kristine, Carmen Decker, Buck Schirner, John Peakes and Richard Thomsen. It was exciting, it was fun." Heald said he gave BoarsHead "a couple of years" when former artistic director John Peakes left in 2003. "Lansing was not the same place that it was back in the early and mid '70s when I was working there," he said. "A lot of jobs have ceased to be and there's a lot of income that's no longer being enjoyed. It's hard under the best of circumstances to make theater work." Now, Heald has gone full circle on that prediction. "With Kristine taking over, I feel like Lansing and BoarsHead have hit the jackpot," he said, firing off an early love letter. From: New York Theatre Wire -- Glenn Loney [June 28, 1999] I stand -- or sit -- amazed! This is the most effective production of "Othello" I have ever seen. And I have seen a great many over the years, including Olivier in blackface. Derrick Lee Weeden, as Othello, is more powerful, more convincing, and more pitiable/admirable than any of the famed African-American or Anglo-African Othellos I have admired in previous productions at home or abroad. That he was also, only the day before, so utterly moving and convincing as August Wilson's crazed old Hedley in "Seven Guitars" makes his achievement as Shakespeare's Moor even more impressive. 
But, in a strange way, I'm even more impressed with the Iago of Anthony Heald. Weeden is of course overpowering. But Heald is very much his match. What makes this worth noting -- to me at least -- is the fact that Heald has so often been seen in New York in blander, more modern roles, which he plays very smoothly. At Ashland, his very interesting Pastor Rosmer seems almost an extension of that blandness. I did not know he was capable of such power, fury, and passion as he displays as Iago. He seems almost a different actor. Had I not read the program, I wouldn't at first have recognized him in the role. He is in this production a very physical, muscular, violent villain. Having seen some merely competent productions directed at Berkeley Rep by Tony Taccone, I was also not prepared for the brilliance of his "Othello" staging at Ashland. It is memorable, and I found myself following the unfolding of the tragedy as if seeing it for the first time ever. That of course is largely owing to the passion and conviction of the major characters, including Amy Cronise as a lovely but too fondly loving Desdemona. And Robynn Rodriguez as an outraged and valiant Aemelia -- when she finally perceives the depths of her husband's villainy. Clearly, Taccone has been strongly assisted by John Sipes, for the fight-sequences are tremendously exciting -- and the entire production seems to move as if choreographed. This in no way detracts from the violence of the sword-fights, or the physical encounters between Othello and Iago. This production is not an elegant pageant or Ceremonial of Love & Death. Though it does have some almost Japanese ritual elements in costume, setting, and movement. The fencing-excercise, during which Iago drives home the suspicions of Desdemona's infidelity, is a masterpiece. As the tension increases, the parries and thrusts grow more violent. One fears Othello might lose his iron control at any moment. When Othello seizes Iago and splashily forces his head underwater -- to make sure he's telling the truth to him -- Iago seems in danger of drowning. An extended rectangle of water on the forestage suggests both the canals of Venice and the seacoast of Cyprus. Designer William Bloodgood has otherwise avoided specific visual references to locales. There are no gondolas, no campanile, no harbor docks. Instead, with a rear stage with upper and lower levels and elemental set-prop on the mainstage thrust, he has been able to accomodate both stately ritual and violent action. He uses some horizontally-slatted flown-screens to aid in suggesting changing scenes and locales. These aren't exactly shoji-screens, but they do complement the initial Japanese effect, with Othello and Desdemona kneelng in richly decorated robes, designed by Deborah M. Dryden. The screens look similar to those I recently saw at the Brooklyn Academy of Music [BAM], when it imported an English production set apparently during some kind of British Mandate on Cyprus. Or was their intention to imply the British Raj in India? Andrew Borba's Cassio is slight of of build, somewhat lightweight in manner, and with glasses, hardly the image of a Venetian nobleman who deserves what Iago perceives as his own rightful promotion. John Pribyl is properly foolish, fond, and frustrated as Roderigo, but his flowing hair -- it looked almost white to me -- makes him initially seem an aged grandee, rather than a dampish, dumpish young spark. Taccone and Heald make Iago's outburst of anger at not being promoted by Othello -- and his dark suspicions of the rumors that the Moor has defiled his own wife -- forceful and believable motives for revenge. These exclamations of outrage do suggest reasons for the devious depths of his diabolic intrigues‹in which he succeeds in destroying almost all of the principals, leaving Cassio maimed but able to carry on. It used to be the fashion of some commentators to insist that Iago's vicious vengeance on Othello was actually unmotivated. That the failure of promotion and the gossip about his wife were only excuses for unmitigaged villainy. That was supposed to make Iago seem even more monstrous, especially in his device to have the Moor murder the innocent, loving, trusting Desdemona -- who had done Iago no wrong whatsoever. The current Ashland production certainly gives Iago ample cue for his terrible passion and vengeance. It is worth a trip to Oregon -- even across country -- to see this staging. From: Oregon Voice Online -- Rob Elder 
In William Shakespeare's Othello, unhappy means dead and unlucky means murdered. And what a delightful bloodbath it is.Perhaps the Bard's darkest human tragedy, Othello is brought to the Ashland stage with an almost unflinchingly intense cast, including the brooding Derrick Lee Weeden as Othello. Weeden plays the Moor with seismic passion, literally frothing at the mouth in some scenes (it's almost distracting, as you feel sorry for the spittled-upon actors and the first row). Amy Cronise plays Desdemona, Othello's faithful and wrongly-accused wife. The Bambi to Othello's Godzilla, Cronise's Desdemona is a trampled but resilient rose.Anthony Heald is jet-black evil as Iago. The architect of Othello's madness, Iago leads the Moor to believe his wife has been unfaithful - and therefore must die. Heald plays Iago with both comic delight and steely seriousness, making Othello that much more riveting. William Bloodgood's stark minimalist set casts the tone for the play, setting the action against an industrial backdrop and catwalks. Composer Todd Barton's metallic soundtrack underlines Othello's themes of alienation and moral corruption.But what sets Othello apart are the small things. Director Tony Taccone keeps the audience involved with changing sets and kinetic direction, keeping the promise of swordplay and character strife throughout the show. Taccone's stage direction takes a peculiar turn during the second intermission. The tortured Othello stays onstage, circling it like a caged animal throughout, silently plotting his wife's murder.The effect is as powerful as it is unnerving. In allowing the audience to get up and stretch with actors still on stage, Taccone ensures that people will come running back to their seats. From: Newsday Inc -- Linda Winer At the start of "Elliot Loves," the new Jules Feiffer-Mike Nichols collaboration that opened last night at the Promenade, Anthony Heald's Elliot stands in a spotlight with hands in his pockets and tries to explain the complex riot of emotions he feels for a woman he has been dating "three months, four times a week." His observations on queasy modern love are trenchant, stunted, ironic, irritable, adorable and as close to the bone as the best Feiffer has created for the stage. There's enough material in this single monologue - enough warmth, humiliation and fresh insight - to make a harrowing and wonderful play. The heartbreak is that, somehow, that play never got written. This particular Elliot and the Joanna (Christine Baranski) he describes with such disarming ambivalence are reunited for a final gut-wrenching phone conversation that is worthy of these splendid actors and the monologue that introduced their characters. Between points A and C, however, the characters get derailed into a different play, one that's lazy, disjointed and involves less interesting people who banter and get ugly in shallow, tired and improbable ways. The set-up is endlessly promising: Elliot is bringing Joanna to meet his oldest friends - guys he has known since high school, guys who knew his first wife, guys who have had fixed ideas about him for so many years that no one knows whether they are still true. So Elliot loves a new woman. And Elliot loves his old friends. And love has problems. You see, a woman may know a man who is different from the one his high-school buddies know and the woman may act differently in a roomful of new men and the guys may reflect things about all of them that make the whole idea of relationships even more slippery. Such is the stuff great Sondheim songs are made of. The problem is that Elliot's buddies have come in from another play, if not another generation altogether. Their woman-hating sensibilities are stuck in an older, simpler, less sneaky style of misogyny than today's - as if they had stepped out of Nichols' production of "Hurlyburly" or his film adaptation of Feiffer's "Carnal Knowledge." Even the frames of reference - Frank Sinatra, Joe McCarthy - are outofsynch with these early-middle-aged creatures. This being Nichols, the acting is first-rate and, this being Feiffer, there are lots of wry observations to keep us alert. But the jokes are often unrelated to the point of the play, the male confessions come out of nowhere, and the tone of these middle scenes feels off. Nichols is surprisingly casual about details here, and there is a phony crisis about a couple of prostitutes that is forgotten when it gets inconvenient. Then, too, it is hard not to search for motives when a New Yorker sets such an excruciatingly immediate play, for no apparent reason beyond a couple of irrelevent local gags, in Chicago in the mid-'80s. The guys all went to the same Catholic school, but their Jewish jokes tend to be the most comfortably observed. And Tony Walton's sets, which change with astonishing speed during blackouts, include an apartment for a yuppie black couple that is ludicrously decorated in upscale swinger style - leopard pillows, a huge statue of a naked white woman and a bar with full crystal decanters, even though everyone pours from bottles. David Pierce can make you weep as the sweet recovering alcoholic who thinks he used to be more fun. Oliver Platt is all gangly as the self-loathing lecher who prefers VCR tapes to the hassle of women. Bruce A. Young is a virtuosic juggler as the black yuppie who uses platitudes about ethnic pride when they're useful. And the opening and closing scenes really are something to treasure. Baranski's Joanna is a convincing package of paradoxes - terrified enough to bolt at the prospect of meeting Elliot's friends, only to return in sexier clothes and a lapsed southern accent to charm her new audience with what we later come to understand is self-protection. Heald's Elliot has the blind candor to describe love as the "distance between what I need and what I am getting," and the repressed hostility toward having been called Captain Cautious in school. When Elliot and Joanna go at each other after the party, they seem to peel and bleed. At the start of the play, he presents all kinds of intriguing contradictions about how much he wants to please her and how good she is for him and how much she annoys him when she says certain phrases and how much he misses the guilt in sex. He says he wants to see "something in her no one has seen before." Jumping over the middle to the finale, he confesses, "Sex scares me." She admits, "I'm scared for you." He says, almost disbelieving, "You know so much more than I thought you did." Trouble is, we need to know so much more. Back to School From: The Star-Ledger -- Alan Sepinwall Anthony Heald has defied the cliche that "those who can't do, teach" in a roundabout way. The onetime theater professor at Lansing Community College in Michigan has now gotten great acclaim and celebrity for playing the part of a teacher on Fox's "Boston Public". After leaving teaching in the mid-'70s, Heald worked steadily on stage (he's a four-time winner of the prestigious Obie Award and a two-time Tony nominee for "Love! Valour! Compassion!" and "Anything Goes") and screen (he played Hannibal Lecter's keeper in "Silence of the Lambs") without ever considering getting a regular television job. But after guest-starring on an episode of "The Practice" in early 2000, Heald was approached by that show's creator, the eccentric David E. Kelley, who was developing a series about an inner-city high school and wanted Heald to co-star in it. "I never wanted to do a series," says Heald, "but the chance to work with David and the chance to do a series that's not centered around law enforcement or medicine or the legal profession, but instead is centered around an area I have some experience with and passion for, made me change my mind." The role Heald wound up playing was assistant principal Scott Guber, an icy, cultured, meticulous disciplinarian. In keeping with Kelley's tradition of tailoring the role for the actor, it's not an incredible leap from Guber to Heald. "I do tend to be organized," Heald admits. "I do tend to be a person who tries to understand and play by the rules. I place a great priority on professional behavior, and in that, I'm like Guber, but as my kids will attest, I'm not a stern disciplinarian, and I'm much more open to contact with people. I'm much less hidden." "Tony's a little looser than Guber, but he's very fastidious, and he's very on top of things," says "Public" executive producer Jonathan Pontell, who credits a lot of Guber's buttoned-down physicality to Heald's attention to detail. "He is very prepared," Pontell adds. "He thinks constantly about back story, he really thinks about the arc of the character and is very protective of the character." Much of the first "Public" season was devoted to detailing the utter loneliness of Guber, whose only real friend is principal Stephen Harper (Chi McBride), a man with whom he has nothing in common except the high school. Heald loves playing scenes opposite McBride, even though the two actors are as unlike each other as their fictional counterparts. Guber always goes by the book, while Harper responds to each crisis (and there are a lot of them at this school) in a new way. Heald, borrowing on his years of theater training, appreciates the value of rehearsal, while McBride hates to rehearse, preferring to save his best performance for when the cameras roll. "Initially, I found that very irritating," Heald says, "but Chi's very inspirational, and I think we spark each other in wonderful ways. I provide a real framework for him to improvise within, and he provides a great spontaneity for me to work against. Our differences add to what comes out when we work together." This year, Heald has gotten to play opposite the newest member of the demented "Boston Public" universe: Kathy Baker as Martha "Hook Lady" Peters, who apparently cut off her left hand with a chain saw while trying to free herself after her teenage son locked her in the basement for a few months. After getting a job at Winslow High as a teacher's assistant, Mrs. Peters has started to romance a wary Guber. Last week's episode featured Peters trying to seduce Guber by grabbing his hand with her hook, placing it on her chest and saying, "I want you to ravage me" -- to which he responded, meekly but sincerely, "It's a school night." As with many "Public" stories, it's best not to think too much about the back story on this one, but the grounded performances by Heald and Baker somehow make it believable when they're on screen together. "I think Kathy's an extraordinary actress," says Heald. "I put her in the same league with Susan Sarandon and Helen Mirren and some of the great earthy performers. She's a joy to work with, and I've been learning an enormous amount by having scenes with her." He has also learned an enormous amount about the current state of education from all the letters, e-mails, phone calls and in-person approaches he has received from real teachers. "I get attacked by teachers, in a friendly way, in airports. They say it's the only show they watch, that they're obsessed with the show, that it's the only thing they talk about with each other on Tuesday morning, and that a lot of the plot lines reflect in an eerie way their situation." To someone who used to be a teacher himself, getting feedback like that is the equivalent of placing several dozen apples on his desk. From: Richmond.com -- Don Dale Anthony Heald has an actor's dream role in "Boston Public." And Heald is making the most of it, as he usually does. When he's not chewing on the scenery, he's always in motion ‹ whether it's a nervous blink or a sweeping gesture, whatever makes the camera pay attention. It's an Actor Thing, and some would say it's only worthy of the hammiest. But Heald is no ham. He's just got a part to die for. As Scott Guber, assistant principal at Winslow High, Heald gets to do what he does best: play mean and snotty. 
Heald has memorably played mean and snotty on "The Practice" and "Law & Order," and in movies including "A Time to Kill," "Silence of the Lambs," "The Client," "Kiss of Death" and "The Pelican Brief." But an actor on series TV can't build a character out of nothing but mean and snotty, no matter how adept he is. For series TV, there also has to be a hint or a whiff of a suggestion that there's some redeeming characteristic, something to save the character from being universally loathed. With assistant principal Guber, the redeeming characteristic is that he's also a bit pitiable. How he does this is much too complicated to go into here, but it's amazing to watch. Just when Guber has behaved at his worst and gotten called on it, Heald makes him almost ... almost ... seem to see himself as others must.
Like I said, it's a delicious role. Heald is but one actor in a talented ensemble playing the administrators, teachers and students at Winslow High who grapple with teaching and learning in a school facing all the problems that schools face in real life ‹ from drugs to gangs, and from low funding to teacher burnout. One recent episode focused on an aging teacher, ruinous gossip, a teacher wrongly accused by a student of fondling her, and a gang-related murder. As a running subtext, Guber was the victim of an elaborate practical joke that set him up to believe he was being asked to be musical director and conductor of a small-town symphony orchestra. He fell for it ‹ hard. I keep telling you, it's a scrumptious role. "Boston Public" is produced by David E. Kelley Productions. Kelley, who's also at the helm of "The Practice" and "Ally McBeal," is also creator/executive producer. And "Boston Public" bears his mark: the stories are gripping, the pacing is just shy of frenetic, and the ensemble is greater than the sum of its parts. (The ensemble includes Chi McBride, Jessalyn Gilsig, Fyvush Finkel, Nicky Katt, Loretta Devine, Sharon Leal and Rashida Jones.) Fox is happy with the ratings, too: the network just signed on for a second season of 22 episodes. But there's no doubt about which actor is having the most fun. It's Anthony Heald. Or maybe it's just that he's so ... good. From: Post-Gazette -- Rob Owen As outrageous and exasperating as ever, Fox's "Boston Public" returns tomorrow at 8 for its second season of teaching in the trenches. Set at an inner city school, the series salutes the important work of teachers, but continues to do so in an over-the-top, unrealistic way that undermines its ode to the profession. Tonight's episode [October 29, 2001] features a teacher who encourages a fight in his classroom. Another teacher talks to his class about masturbation and mentions fantasizing about his female students. A third teacher, angered when a student talks back, calls the boy by a shortened form of "Richard" - but the kid's name is not Dick. New characters are introduced, including Jeri Ryan ("Star Trek: Voyager") as an attorney-turned-teacher and Michael Rapaport as the masturbation-minded educator who dresses as informally as his students. Written by David E. Kelley ("Picket Fences," "The Practice," "Ally McBeal"), "Boston Public" turns to black humor for the continuing story of controlling mom, Mrs. Peters (Kathy Baker), and her studious son, Jeremy (Kaj-Erik Eriksen), whom she used to regularly lock in the basement as a form of punishment. "Boston Public" often entertains, but it stretches the bounds of credulity. And that's fine by series star Anthony Heald, who plays uptight vice principal Scott Guber. "There are projects you can say are realistic and it's a real compliment. I don't think our show aspires to that," Heald said in July at a Fox party in Hollywood. "I don't think our show is trying to be realistic and gritty. ... What we're trying to do is tell stories in an entertaining way." At the same time, Heald said "Boston Public" bridges the generation gap, allowing adults and teens to better understand one another. "My ideal Monday night audience would be a pair of young parents watching with their adolescent kid and talking about what they just saw," Heald said. "It shows the adult world in ways that make it possible for adolescents to comprehend and it shows the adolescent world in ways that make it comprehensible for an adult. "That's David [E. Kelley's] genius, an ability to bring to light both those worlds. Whether that's presented realistically or not is really immaterial. Sometimes David chooses to push the envelope in one way, and sometimes he chooses to push it in another. The point is, it's still dealing with that crucial interaction." The heart of "Boston Public" is the relationship between Heald's Guber and actor Chi McBride's put-upon principal, Steven Harper. "Without these two guys and their ability to interact and have a real working relationship that's a little deeper than something servicey, kind of a general-lieutenant relationship, the inmates would run the asylum," McBride said in a phone interview earlier this month. "It's a lot of the backbone of the series. We've got to have these guys talking all the time and conferring. Nobody has all the answers. Harper's smart enough to know he can't do everything." Though some parents and parents' groups object to the content of "Boston Public," particularly for an 8 p.m. show, McBride dismisses their complaints. "Part of the reason why our youth are in such a state of disrepair is people don't think these things are going on. They think they're going to school, jumping rope and singing nursery rhymes," McBride said. "Last year I was looking in USA Today and saw the Parents Television Council named 'Boston Public' the worst family viewing show on television. Worse than wrestling? So what they're saying is, let's go watch grown men hit each other with chairs, but we don't want 'Boston Public.' "People need to wake up and realize we live in an ever-changing world. Even before Sept. 11 our society was becoming incredibly unmanageable, with children bringing guns to school, violence and all kind of things going on." Both actors say they get feedback from viewers. Heald hears from an old college friend who is assistant principal of a public high school in Boston. "She e-mails me frequently after episodes to say, 'This would never happen,'" Heald said. McBride was surprised to discover the show has such a following among teen-agers. While returning videos to a Blockbuster, a teen approached him and said the show had changed his life. The student had been a wiseacre, but he was moved by an episode that showed a teacher who, because of her low salary, was unable to afford to buy a house. "That just blew me away," McBride said. "I was just standing there slack-jawed." Heald was cast in "Boston Public" after appearing in an episode of Kelley's "The Practice" as a tightly wound judge with a unique pronunciation for "Mass-a-chusetts." He almost didn't take that role, but only did so at the urging of his wife, who enjoyed watching the legal drama. When Kelley approached Heald about starring in "Boston Public," he was reluctant. Then Kelley described the character. "Think the judge in high school except that everybody looks upon him the way people look upon the judge, but the audience sees he's vulnerable, that he's conflicted," Heald said. "That was exactly the strategy to overcome my reluctance to do series television." McBride is eager for viewers to see new "Boston Public" episodes because they explore more of Harper's personal life. Viewers will meet his ex-wife and daughter. "There was a real emptiness to Steven's existence last year that I think is going to change," McBride said. "I'm a realist who believes happiness is not a destination, it's a journey. David doesn't write happily ever after; he writes happy for now. It's time you'll get to see that with Harper. Sooner or later it will all go to hell ... but life is a bit of a winding road and David is very adept at letting you see the curves and forks in everyone's roads." Narrator Profiles: Anthony Heald From: AshGroveAudioBook.com Anthony Heald is one of the most prolific and most professional readers working. His first experience in audiobooks was with the collection of short stories called The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien, a book about the Vietnam War. Heald, who works with many publishers, believes his success lies in his ability to work well with others. "I tend to be not terribly temperamental. I'm usually well-prepared and I work very quickly." 
Heald provides some interesting insights into why he is successful as a narrator as he describes his preparations for a reading. "I read through the book, first of all, just to get a sense of it, and I try to read it as quickly as possible so that I can approximate what the experience would be for somebody listening to the tape... Then I read through it again and on my computer I make a database of the characters that have to be vocalized, characters that have voices in the script... to figure out some kind of vocal placement for the character. It's tricky -- you don't want to supply too much as a reader. I think the audience wants to use their own imagination and they don't want to have everything provided for them... But by the same token, when you have three or four characters speaking in the scene, it has to be clear to the audience who's saying what." Heald describes some of his more interesting challenges as a reader. "When I did Robert Ludlum's book The Gemini Contenders, there was something like 80 or 85 characters, dozens of whom were Serbo-Croatian or northern- or southern-Italian or Greek, and so there were a wealth of different accents that kind of helped to keep the characters straight. In the Star Wars books, frequently I have to find a vocal characterization for a 16-foot-long lizard or a walking skeleton or a fish-man." After the background preparation comes the actual process of recording which is really quite hard work: "...it's frustrating when you're sitting there in a minuscule little studio, where there's no air, because the air conditioner would make noise, so it's stifling and it's warm and you're there for eight, nine hours at a stretch. It's very hard to get more than a half a page before you stumble or before the director has you go back and make a change. So, for me, the most difficult aspect of the whole thing after the preparation has all been done is just maintaining the same sense of freshness and urgency and commitment to the material at the hour-and-45 minute point that you had at the two-minute point. Anthony's personal reading habits are much like those of most audiobook listeners. He loves to read, especially to his two children, and his family is very book-oriented. "I tend to read, oh, maybe two books a week. My father was an editor with Holt, Reinhart & Winston, and I remember going to the library once a week with my father and my brother and sister and we'd leave with stacks of books..." Heald shares a perspective on abridgment: "I was looking for a Tom Sawyer tape because my son was quite interested in that story, and when I saw it it said that it was abridged, and I kept thinking, 'Oh, the heck with it. I'll just read it to him myself.' Well, I started abridging it as I read it to him, because there were some things that were just plainly not appropriate for a 6-year-old -- the descriptions, and some of the dialog were really quite shocking to me! When you're reading to yourself, that's fine -- that's part of the process, but it doesn't quite work when you're riding in your car." Heald believes that the publishers of audiobooks have much yet to do to promote their products. "I know some people in the Midwest who do a lot of driving who are totally addicted to them. But I don't know what the producers/publishers should be doing to go about instilling this habit in people. I'm sure they don't know yet." Heald doesn't spend much time thinking about what is done before or after his role in audiobook production. As he says "I have a hard enough time figuring our how to sound like an eel or how to be an 80-year-old woman!" 8MM From: MovieWeb.com 
In Eight Millimeter, the backdrop of the sexual underworld on both coasts is crucial in telling the story of how the primal can overwhelm goodness and civility in life. However, as Anthony Heald -- who plays Longdale, Mrs. Christian's lawyer -- points out, "I don't think this movie is about the pornography industry in the sense that Boogie Nights was. More than anything else, Eight Millimeter is about Tom Welles' obsession and how it leads him down a long, difficult path. Pornography is the background to this personal story of balancing good and evil in the world, in the same sense that the sinking of the ship was the background to what was essentially a passionate love story in Titanic." From: MovieWeb.com Despite the larger-than-life menace of the sea creatures, to writer/director Sommers, Canton, the ship's owner, is actually the film's deadliest predator. He is portrayed by Anthony Heald whom audiences will remember from "Silence of the Lambs." "Anthony's character turns out to be the biggest monster in this movie," says Sommers. "To play the role, I wanted someone who could play a really bad guy. I wanted Anthony. I knew he could completely pull off this role and make it fun and exciting and scary." Heald was keen to play the part. "I wanted to work with Stephen because I loved his work in 'The Jungle Book.' He's got a wonderful feeling for action, and in 'Deep Rising,' I think it's done in a tasteful way that makes it possible to watch the mayhem. It's a tough balance with this type of movie, where there are some rather violent episodes. Stephen always made sure he dealt with the effects of the violence and didn't just show the gruesomeness." From: Michigan State University Newsbulletin 
The list of Spartan accomplishments in Hollywood continues to grow each year.
This ranks MSU with some of the nation's elite film universities -- like the University of Southern California (USC), the University of California-Los Angeles, Columbia University or Northwestern University -- in the education of future film-makers. Outstanding Spartans who have had distinguished careers in the film and entertainment industry were recognized by the MSU Alumni Association at a reception in Los Angeles July 30. Fifteen MSU alums were presented with either a Crystal Spartan Award or a Spartan Star Award for their contributions to American cinema in all phases -- from producing to directing to performing. Spartans who were recognized with theSpartan Star Award were: ... Anthony Heald, who has appeared in more than two dozen films, including "Silkwood," "Silence of the Lambs," "The Pelican Brief" and "The Client." AnthonyHeald.com © 2001-2008 / An unofficial, non-profit, fan run web site / Webmaster email |