Kevin Kline - as in the *Actor* - Online - Archives: Actors of the Theatre Bio

-- as in the *Actor* ---- ^

Source reference/© copyright info: Henderson, Kelly. (1985). First Stage: Profiles of the New American Actors. New York: Quill. KK pages-69-76.

The following is from the bio of Kevin Kline. These are excerpts and are printed here without permission.

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"Everything Kevin does, he thinks about and ponders and agonizes over for months. He wouldn't be as well trained as he is and, in a sense, as old as he is and just now becoming widely recognized if he hadn't stuck true to his vision of what he wanted to do. He has built a career that is going to last him a good long lifetime."
-- Wilford Leach, director of The Pirates of Penzance (1980) and Henry V (1984)

During his four years with [John Houseman's The Acting Company] Kline played lead roles in Ring 'Round the Moon, The School for Scandal, She Stoops to Conquer, The Three Sisters, and The Robber Bridegroom, among others.

"He really believed - we all believed - that this was the way to become a major actor. he certainly could have gone out and worked; he was sought after during those last two years, but he stayed because he believed in the process. ... He's not only an extraordinary actor, he's also enormously charming, he has great charisma, and he's terribly handsome. Put those things together and you obviously think there's potential for a star."
-- Margot Harley, executive producer of the Acting Company

[Kline went on to work] on the soap opera Search for Tomorrow for a year, understudied Raul Julia in The Threepenny Opera at Lincoln Center, and had a small role in the 1977 Broadway production of The Robber Bridegroom. Then he took another small part and turned it into a Tony Award-winning show-stopper: Bruce Granit, a bumbling matinee idol...in On the Twentieth Century (1978).

"Kevin auditioned via the casting department, and I thought he was sensational. It was the hardest part in the world to cast because I wanted somebody who was sophisticated and yet a farceur, which is a style we don't do plays in anymore. All I had to do was touch on that and he ran with the ball. We had about as much fun as I've ever had working with an actor."
--Harold Prince, director, On the Twentieth Century

[Next came] the lead in Michael Weller's Loose Ends ... a complete turnaround ... a disillusioned former Peace Corps volunteer who questions the conventions of marriage and career-building in the seventies. The performance was understated and moving, and it helped establish Kline's versatility.

"Immediately after Twentieth Century, he was asked to star in a revival of a forties musical, but he wisely did not allow himself to be pigeonholed. He doesn't deserve it and it didn't happen. It was perfectly fine two shows later to swashbuckle for laughs, but that straight play was very important for him."
-- Harold Prince

The Pirates of Penzance [was a success] in Central Park and later on Broadway, [where he won his second Tony]. [Estatic critical response followed], and Kline [won] one of the most coveted movie roles in years, the tormented Nathan in Sophie's Choice.

[Sophie's Choice] director Alan Pakula had been impressed by the actor's humor and charisma in Pirates, and Meryl Streep...added her vote. Kline captured [in what was perhaps the most difficult role in the film] Nathan's emotional complexity and added his own athletic grace to the part...

[Following a movie version of Pirates], Kline winningly portrayed a Southern gentleman in The Big Chill, a rare chance for him to play a happy contemporary character.

[The next two summers saw Kline playing Shakespeare]... Richard III in 1983 and Henry V in 1984.

"The plays are not only about honor, but about war, chivalry, politics, irony, redemption, andn the triumph of the human spirit....I'm as intrigued by the similarites between Richard and Henry as the opposites. They are alike in efficacy. They sure know how to get the job done. They are uncompromising...And both get the girl."
-- Kevin Kline, in a New York Times interview, speaking about Richard III and Henry V.

"You can complain about bugs and planes and wind and rain, but when it works, it's magic. There is something indescribable about performing outdoors."
-- Kevin Kline, on performing Shakespeare in the outdoors (Delacorte Theater)

"Kevin has all the attributes of what you would call a nineteenth-century actor - proper bearing, tremendous agility, a sense of style, and a command of language that very few American actors have."
-- Joseph Papp

After Henry V [came two back-to-back films], Violets Are Blue (with Sissy Spacek) and [Lawrence Kasdan's sf western] Silverado.

"With movies, it's always take what is offered and taste the wind," [Kline] said, adding that he considers his career "very much a work in progress."

The webmaster wishes to thank Suzanne Snead for her indispensible assistance with this info.