ARTS Alfred Molina reports that he has two distinct audiences. Those who stop him on the street divide into the 14-year-old boys asking him if he was Doc Ock, the multi-tentacled villain in Spider-Man 2 (he was), and their parents asking him if he played Diego Rivera in Frida (he did). He has also been a great deal more besides – Molina is an astonishingly busy, versatile actor (if we listed his filmography, there would be little space for anything else).
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| Alfred Molina plays Rothko: ‘big domed head, big physique, big presence’ |
“I knew I needed an extraordinary actor, but also a physically extraordinary actor,” says Michael Grandage, who is directing the production. “Rothko was an extraordinary looking man: big domed head, big physique, big presence. It requires a tour de force performance, but also somebody who is going to look big and imposing.”
What is striking about Molina in person, however, is that he is anything but imposing. He has a warm presence, a great wheezy laugh and an accent (despite living in Los Angeles for 17 years) like that of a London cabbie. The new role brings him back to the London stage after nearly 20 years away, and he confesses, slightly sheepishly, that his motive is partly sentimental. He met his wife Jill Gascoine at the Donmar Warehouse in 1982 – a fact, he adds, smiling, that did not escape Grandage. “He may well have not been above manipulating that memory.”
The new play focuses on a brief but critical period of Rothko’s life. In 1958, the artist was commissioned to paint the “Seagram Murals” for the luxurious Four Seasons restaurant in New York: a job that he worked on furiously, then abandoned. Rothko’s change of heart raises many questions about artistic principle and compromise, but the drama also concentrates on the relationship between the artist and a young assistant. This introduces what Molina identifies as a classical theme: the passing of power from one generation to the next; the moment when the balance tilts towards the young.
“I suppose that’s another reason why the play appealed to me,” he says. “I’m 56 and I’m reaching that age when it’s happening to my generation of actors. It’s time now to hand it over. That’s the way it should be. There’s a generational stomping-down of what went before. And it has to be done with a certain amount of violence and glee. It’s like having a good frost: you’ve got to have a good frost so everything dies off.”
Molina seems remarkably sanguine about the prospect. But he has a down-to-earth approach to his profession overall. He loves working – “I’ve always felt holidays were a complete waste of time” – and values in actors “the wonderful capacity to take the work seriously and themselves not at all”, He comes up with a quirky analysis of his own journey into the profession:
“I’ve got this theory about why I became an actor and why some people become actors,” he says. “I don’t think it’s because we have got something extra to offer. I often think it’s because actually we’ve got something missing. There’s a gap in our genetic make-up, and acting is somehow a way of plugging that gap.”
He chuckles quietly. But the affable demeanour masks a thoughtfulness that may go some way to explaining Molina’s packed and varied acting career. Researching the new play, he read everything he could about Rothko.
“I think he was very conflicted on many levels. Not just about work, but also about himself as an American [Rothko’s family emigrated from Russia] and as a human being. Of course nowadays, those of us who are either immigrants, or the sons and daughters of immigrants, can take a certain pride in that kind of background. But for his generation, arriving in America in 1910, that was not the case at all ... So throughout his life there is tension. Tension between two states, between two colours, between two ideas, even. Balance was what he was constantly searching for. And like all of us, never achieving.”
Molina himself understands something of tension and balance, having lived on the cusp between the two immigrant experiences. He is now based in the United States, at ease with his complex heritage. But he was born in west London, to an Italian mother and Spanish father, and grew up acutely aware of the urge to assimilate. He has played many foreigners. “I’ve always been attracted to stories about immigrants and outsiders,” he says. “I remember the tension at home when I was a young teenager, desperate to be English.”
His job this time, however, is not just to deliver a complex outsider, but to suggest that that individual is Mark Rothko, a man capable of producing those magisterial and mysterious works of art. He admits that this is a daunting responsibility. When playing a real person, he says, he looks for a physical clue to understanding their personality – an object, a habit or a gesture.
“It’s all about finding whatever key unlocks the door. Rothko smoked a great deal and in a lot of the photographs he’s got a cigarette on the go, his hand about here” – Molina rests his hand on his chest – “and his head is often tilted. There’s something about those photos that suggests to me a man who is very comfortable in stillness. He’s not kinetic, he’s not constantly on the move. Diego Rivera [the Mexican artist whom Molina played in the film Frida], for a big man, was constantly moving. Whereas Rothko was almost the opposite. He seems to have been very contained – lived in his mind a lot; wasn’t a man of physique. He was very articulate; he didn’t need to be demonstrative. So you think, ‘I can afford to be still. I can afford to stay contained.’ You can make choices based on that information.”
But it is important, he adds, not to force such research up the audience’s nose. The task is to offer the audience enough detail to relax – give them permission to suspend disbelief. It is a question, again, of balance.
“It’s not about being realistic, it’s about being authentic,” he says. “We know that Rothko was a Russian-American, that he lived most of his life in New York, that he was an intellectual. So I’m not going to do it as if I’m in a Mamet play. And that’s just showing some modicum of respect for the character and the audience’s intelligence. But beyond that, what happens in the play isn’t documentary. We’re telling a story. This isn’t the definitive Mark Rothko. This is my Mark Rothko.”
Rothko once talked about paintings living “by companionship”. As Molina prepares to leave, I wonder whether he, such a chameleon actor, can relate to that idea? “Absolutely,” he replies. “Because acting is completely collaborative. Even if it’s a solo performance, there’s collaboration with the audience. So when an actor isn’t acting, in a sense, as an artist, he doesn’t exist.”
‘Red’ previews from Dec 3 and opens Dec 8 at the Donmar Warehouse, London WC2, 0844 871 7624, www.donmarwarehouse.com
