Acting : Picking the Minds of Legends by Greg Joseph

GREGORY PECK: AT HOME WITH A LEGEND This is one of the photos I took of the late, great actor Gregory Peck at his Los Angeles home when I visited him for a profile I was writing about him for a large Southern California newspaper and its news service to coincide with the reopening of the La Jolla Playhouse, which he co-founded in the late 1940s. He was gracious ("Would you like a libation?"), completely honest and straightforward, and variously gentle and tough. As with all legendary screen figures, it becomes immediately clear when in their presence how and why they made it. Despite publicity campaigns to the contrary, nobody is "discovered" and thrust into "the business" _ it takes steel willpower and a relentless drive. As Robert Redford notes, "There are no fairy godmothers in Hollywood." Mr. Peck, still strikingly handsome, talked about his childhood, film, acting, the state of "the business" his triumphs ("To Kill a Mockingbird") and his regrets (being among Academy honchos who gave their ratings blessings to the film version of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" _ "It opened the floodgates for lesser films" that used coarseness as a draw, rather than as an intrinsic part of subject matter, as did "Woolf"). With all due respect to acting coaches everywhere, there is nothing like picking the minds of the actors who have reached the heights to enlighten and educate. My subjects also included James Stewart, Cary Grant, Jack Lemmon and Rod Steiger, among others. To talk to them about acting was to go to school. When Mr. Peck spoke of his early films, he noted, "If I were doing them today, I'd add a little gravy and pepper" _ and he explained just how. He talked about appearing on Broadway for the first time and peering out at "a murderers' row" of the day's top _ and most feared _ critics (a major reason he had opened the La Jolla Playhouse, where he could experiment and be out of their range). I spoke with Mr. Peck, after whom I was named, a number of times after that. He became a valuable source and a lock-sure bet to give an unvarnished opinion on everything from film to politics. I suspect he identified with me because he had portrayed journalists a number of times, including in the film "Roman Holiday"; during the filming of that classic, he met his wife _ she was also a journalist who had been sent to interview him. When I arrived home the day this article ran, my Dad, newspaper in hand, met me at the door, smiling ear to ear. He told me how proud he was and how much he loved my celebrity profiles: "You really crawl inside their skin." And so my father also described what actors try to do. It was a good day all-around.