James Rebhorn is a veteran character actor of over one hundred television shows, feature films, and plays. Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, James moved to Anderson, Indiana, as a child. He attended Wittenberg University in Ohio, where he studied political science. His alma mater honored him in 2003 by naming him a University Fellow. After graduation, James moved to New York City, where he earned an MFA in Acting from Columbia University’s School of the Arts.
After making his television debut on the NBC soap opera The Doctors, James starred on Another World: Texas, The Guiding Light, and As the World Turns. He had a recurring role on Kate and Allie and is widely recognized as the DA that put the Seinfeld gang in jail for the show’s finale. James has recurred on Law & Order, Third Watch, Now and Again, Hack, and The Practice. His telefilms have included Sarah, Plain and Tall; North and South; Skylark; From the Earth to the Moon; and Reversible Errors.
A sampling of James’ many film appearances include Regarding Henry, My Cousin Vinny, Basic Instinct, Scent of a Woman, Lorenzo’s Oil, Carlito’s Way, Guarding Tess, I Love Trouble, Up Close & Personal, Independence Day, If Lucy Fell, My Fellow Americans, The Game, Snow Falling on Cedars, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Meet the Parents, The Adventures of Pluto Nash, and Far From Heaven.
Between film and television appearances, James spends much of his time on stage at Manhattan Theatre Club, Playwright’s Horizons, the New York Shakespeare Festival, the La Jolla Playhouse, the Ensemble Studio Theatre, and Lincoln Center. After earning rave reviews in the Roundabout Theatre’s production of Arthur Miller’s The Man Who Had All the Luck with Chris O’Donnell and Samantha Mathis, James returned to the Roundabout for their hit production of Twelve Angry Men. More information on James is available at https://imdb.com/name/nm0714310.
I don’t think I really knew until after I was nearing the end of my course study at Columbia University where I was getting an MFA in Acting. When I was a senior in college, I didn’t really know what I was going to do. I had a job tentatively lined up with the YMCA in Chicago and I thought I would apply to some Drama schools. All of the ones I applied to were accredited programs, thinking that I might teach. The three I applied to—University of Minnesota, SMU, and Columbia—I ended up getting accepted at all of them and I thought, if I was going to study it seriously with an eye towards maybe getting involved in professional theatre I should go to New York. So I went to Columbia.
My teacher there was a fellow named Ted Kazanoff and if it wasn’t for his influence, I don’t think I would’ve thought about pursuing it. It wasn’t that he didn’t encourage me any more specifically than he encouraged any other actor, but he gave me a respect for the craft of acting which I had hitherto been unaware of that inspired me and made me think that it was something I could actually do as opposed to creating simply based upon inspiration. He gave me a system that I thought I could work from. That was why I decided to stay in New York and pursue it. And much to my chagrin, even though I thought I had a firm grasp and understanding of the system, I did not get a job right out of the chute. I was a little surprised. You work hard, you understand something, you got a system; it should all happen and fall into place.
What was your first paid gig?
I got my MFA in the spring of ’72 and that summer, I went down to Atlantic City and worked in a theatre called the Viking Theatre which was on the thirteenth floor of what was then called the Chalfont-Haddon Hall Hotel, which is now the Resorts International Casino. It was a real theatre and had been pretty much underused, unutilized until about ’71. I did the lead in Star Spangled Girl, Lovers and Other Strangers, Plaza Suite, and I was Dracula in Dracula. We got thirty-five dollars a week, room and board, and we had to share a bathroom. And I thought, “I could do this forever!” I loved it. That was my first paying theatre job.
It happened because the director was in the directing program at Columbia and he knew me. That was how most of my first jobs the first few years happened: because friends knew me or friends of friends knew me. Ironically, it’s pretty much how I get jobs now too. Friends or colleagues either know me or have worked with me before. Fewer and fewer jobs happen because of auditions, which is just as well, since there are fewer and fewer auditions going around for people my age.
Cultivating relationships was never high on my agenda, but working with people and encouraging them to work with me—folks who I liked and who I had a good relationship with, had a friendship with—I wanted to promote that. I still to this day send out postcards and Christmas cards to a handful of directors and casting directors who I’ve known and worked with—or for—over the years. But I was never very good at particularly fertilizing relationships. It only happened because these were friends and colleagues who I felt I had already had a relationship with. I’ve tried to keep those active, certainly. I think that’s important.
Early on in my career, I was doing Are You Now or Have You Ever Been and the role of Lionel Standard was frequently recast with relatively notable stage names. At one point, the late Mike Kellin, who was an actor I had long admired, came in. I saw him backstage one night before he was going on, busily writing away and I said, “Mikey, whatcha doin’?” And he said, “I’m sending out cards to people, letting them know I’m in the show, hope they come see me.” And that for me was a real lesson. This was a guy who had done, well, Midnight Express was probably his most recent movie at that point and to me, this was a guy who had it made and he continued to send out cards and letters. It was a lesson to me.
What do you consider your first break?
I think I can point to a couple of events. One was in ’79. I did Roderigo in Othello in Central Park at the Delacorte. Although I was not all that happy with my work—and I don’t think I was alone in that opinion—I did manage to get a manager out of that. It wasn’t that I was looking for a manager, but I was looking for representation that was a little more high-powered, higher profile than what I had up until that point. Jimmy Greene, who was an actor in the show, said he’d be pleased to introduce me to his manager. Her name was Yvette Schumer. She passed away a couple of years ago, now. She had launched Richard Gere’s career and a number of other careers. She and her partner offered me a chance to sign with them, so I did. They made it possible for me to have the confidence to say no to dinner theatre and summer stock, those kinds of things, which I had always said yes to because I just wanted to keep working.
And sure enough, that fall I did my first movie. It was also Tom Hanks’ first movie. It was a slasher film called He Knows You’re Alone starring Donny Scardino. That was my first film. Joe Beruh and Edgar Lansbury who had produced Godspell and A View from the Bridge and Waiting for Godot produced these films. They did one or two every year and they were sort of a tax write-off for them. I had done a number of commercials before that time and I had done an occasional educational film or industrial film, but essentially, that was my first film.
What do you wish someone had told you at the beginning of your career?
I don’t know. Things change so rapidly in this business. It’s hard for me to even assume that I would know anything that would be of value to somebody who is twenty and starting out in this business. I don’t know. Maybe I wish I had auditioned for a school that had a higher profile that would’ve gotten me in some bigger doors faster, but I never really thought that I had the chops to get into anything like Juilliard or Yale or something like that. It just didn’t occur to me. And maybe if somebody had said, “Well why don’t you just try auditioning?” who knows? Maybe that’s the only thing, but I don’t hold that against any of my advisors or any of my teachers or friends or counselors. You never know unless you strive for something higher where you might end up. Sometimes I wish somebody had told me just to shoot a little higher. That having been said, the business has been very, very good to me. Who knows? Maybe that would’ve been a huge mistake. You see a lot of people who get in the door early in their careers and end up flat on their faces in about five years. I don’t know that I would ask for any advice other than what I was given which was, “Be true to yourself and do what you want to do. Try it. Do it.”
What is your favorite thing about being an actor?
I would guess the opportunity to continue to explore the human condition, which is what I think got me into it to begin with and what continues to reinvigorate my interest. As long as there are complexities to the human state, then I’ll be attracted to it, I think. And that’s what I hope to do in my acting; to explore that, expose it, and help people to understand the human condition better and leave the theatre or the movie theatre or the television screen thinking about their lives and the world in a slightly different way because of what I’ve done.
What is your least favorite thing about being an actor?
The insecurity and lack of control over your career. In some ways, I feel more insecure now than I did when I was starting out. When you’re starting out you’re young and you’re stupid and you think you’re going to live forever and everything’s going to be fine. As you get older, you realize that life is far more complex than that.
Most of the jobs I get now are offers, which is very flattering. But on the other hand, in me, anyway, that can create a great deal of insecurity. As I worked my way up through the business, I got my jobs through auditions so that when I was hired, I was hired with the director and myself both knowing that we were sort of on the same page because of the audition. And now there is this great responsibility thrust on me that I over-inflate, admittedly, because of who I am, my psychology. It creates more insecurity.
Twelve Angry Men is a cast of extremely gifted, talented, skillful professionals, all of them. When I was offered it, how could I say no, but I thought, “Uh, uh, uh, sure!” This is also to Scott Ellis’ credit, he cast the show—I don’t think anyone auditioned for it—with a group of guys that he just knew, who get along on and off stage. Nobody was a diva. Nobody was overly needy. Nobody was into criticizing someone else’s work. It’s truly a remarkable situation to have twelve people—well, thirteen with Matte Osian who plays the guard—on stage who are so genuinely happy to be working with each other and very generous. But still, I have this insecurity.
Also, you start developing a lifestyle and I’ve always tried to live modestly in that I have never really borrowed any substantial money. When I’ve bought cars, I’ve bought in cash. When I’ve bought houses, I only borrowed what I knew I could write a check for tomorrow if I had to. Even though we’ve lived relatively close to the belt, we still have houses and cars and kids going to college and all that. You wonder if you’ll continue to make the money you need to keep all that afloat.
What are some of the family sacrifices of being a working actor?
They are huge and they are unknown. I can’t say for sure that the business has been good or bad for my children. It’s the only business they know their daddy has ever been in. They see the world in those terms. I think if your father was a policeman or a garbage collector or an accountant or a president of a corporation, that’s the way you see the world. You tend to mirror your parents’ values and your parents’ reality.
I’m sure they have been damaged at times by what has happened in my life. I remember one time both my daughters (they were very young at this point; Emma was eight, Hannah was four) were asked to be in a bridal party for a second cousin and we went to Laura Ashley to pick out some matching dresses for them. At this time I was on The Guiding Light and at that point I was playing this fellow who was a blue-collar security guard who beat his wife and ultimately raped his stepdaughter. We’re in Laura Ashley in Shorthills Mall in New Jersey and these two women come into Laura Ashley. One woman was the customer, the other was her buyer and the buyer turns to me and says, “Oh, you’re the rapist on television!” in front of my two little children. I remember that as a particularly chilling moment in my career. Now, of course, she meant this—in her own twisted way—as a compliment. But who knows where that lives in my children’s hearts? So, I can’t tell what the negative effects are.
There’s an actor friend of mine, Tom Mason, who has referred to his relationship with his children as sort of one of being a grandfather because he’s not there all the time. He kind of pops in and it’s all jolly and then when he is there for an extended period of time, nobody really looks to him for parental advice because mommy has been handling the reins for so long. It’s understandable, but it is unfortunate too.
How do you handle being recognized?
When it first happened, it was a novelty. I can’t say I ever felt that it stroked my ego, ever. But I do say when it first happened I thought it was very interesting. Now, it’s pretty much just an intrusion. It’s not that people are intentionally rude, but they frequently are, without meaning to be: yelling out at you on a street, interrupting you when you’re having dinner with your family, shoving photographs or pictures up into your face. I used to get phone calls from people, collect phone calls, until I took my name off the phone bill.
Frankly, the only thing that really is flattering is when someone comes up and says, “Excuse me. Are you James Rebhorn? I know your work.” If they come up and say, “Hey I know you, don’t I?” or “What have I seen you in?” or even more peculiarly, “What is the last thing I saw you in?” I have no idea! I don’t know what you’re watching. People respond as if they’re talking to their television sets as opposed to talking to a human being who might be running late for a doctor’s appointment or who is trying to pick up his kid at school or who wants to go home and rake the leaves so that they don’t pile up.
I’m walking out of the theatre the other night with Larry Bryggman, who is a good friend, and this Korean family stopped me and said, “May I take a picture with you?” and we’re back and forth with the wife and the daughter and back and forth with him and with her and all of these pictures and at the end he says, “And what is your name?”
I remember one time getting into a fight with somebody who was convinced I was James Woods. It became an argument! I’m frequently mistook for Jamie Cromwell. I know Jamie and there is a similarity in our physiques but we are very different people. It’s gotten to the point where people say, “I loved you in The General’s Daughter,” and I say, “Well, thank you very much,” and walk on. I just let it go.
Do you prefer theatre to film and television work?
First of all, I feel I have been blessed. I have had opportunities to do quality work in all the media: very interesting roles, very interesting stories. And I’ve worked with some wonderful, wonderful people in all media. I think though, in the end, what is the most exhausting but also the most satisfying is stage work. It’s the only medium that really is the actors’ medium. Television is very much the producers’ medium. Film is the directors’ medium. On stage, it’s really you and the audience. If you look back historically, initially that’s all there was; there were actors and there were audiences. It came out of religious ceremonies. Even the playwright was a later event and the director is only about a hundred and fifty years old. The primal experience for the actor, it seems to me, is stage. Being able to play something from beginning through the middle to the end is very, very satisfying. And to know that you’ve landed on the audience is something you can experience right there at the moment. You don’t wait for the film to come out or, if it’s television, to be broadcast. It happens right there, in real time. And that’s very stimulating. That having been said, a good film, the work on that is no less challenging or interesting for me as an actor. It certainly has proved in my experience to be considerably more lucrative. I’ve been very fortunate to be able to ply my craft in all the media.
How do you choose the material you work on?
In the best of all possible worlds, I choose the material because it is really good and the character is interesting. But there are always other considerations. Will it fit with my schedule? Will it make sense with what family plans I have? Will it pay the bills? Will it keep me out of town for only one week instead of three months? All of those other considerations come into play as well. How long has it been since I’ve done a play? I like to do a play once a year if I can. Those are the kind of questions I ask after I read the material, after I figure out whether I’ve really responded to it or not. And sometimes it’s just: I need a job.
How do you prepare for a role?
That depends on the role. This experience at the Roundabout—Blake knows this from working with Scott—we do an awful lot of research in the course of the rehearsal. We read an entire book on this one jury foreman’s experience on a trial and that was tremendously helpful. Whenever I’m working on any role, I start with what’s in the script and then kind of work backward and forward from that. There are several details in every script that give you an idea of who that character is. In Twelve Angry Men it’s interesting, everybody in the course of the play, what they do for a living is revealed, which is interesting. Out of that, for instance, that can spark the imagination of all the kinds of things that can start to be created. I’m a stockbroker in the early ’50s. What did that mean? It wasn’t quite the career path that most upwardly-mobile people would take because, in many cases, you went into family businesses. It would suggest other things: who my family was. Maybe we’ve been investment bankers for generations. That’s how I begin working on a role. Of course, in a play, in rehearsal, you’re fed all kinds of things every day with your other actors. They give you other kinds of ideas just by simply rehearsing. That’s how I develop it.
When I audition, I look at an audition experience as a performance experience. I don’t go in there fumbling around. I make clear, strong choices in the hopes that it will either land and be exactly what they’re looking for or that it will be strong enough that they will then want to redirect me and have me audition again. I look at it as a performance.
I must say my own ego is either big enough or fragile enough that if somebody is paying me thirty-five thousand dollars a week for a film, I’m considerably more willing to do anything anybody tells me. My choice has already been that I’m doing it for the money. Hopefully I can get other pleasures and satisfaction out of it as well. Theatre, I’m doing it because I love it, because I love the play. If somebody is going to make that experience unhappy for me, I’m less likely to want to go along with it because I’m investing so much time and energy in something I love and if that love is sucked out of it, it’s no fun.
What made you choose New York?
I’ve always been in New York. The irony is, my two least favorite places in the world are LA and New York, in that order. But, if you’re an actor, you have to be in one or the other. I think, on balance, New York for me is a healthier world. LA, for all of its strengths, is essentially a one-industry town. No matter what you’re doing for a living there, it’s all focused and dependent on the entertainment industry. New York is not. I think that—for the human soul—is better for me. That’s why I’ve always stayed here, and I’m lucky.
I was in Scent of a Woman and Lorenzo’s Oil, two movies that came to New York to cast, which they do less and less of. I was in both of them and they were released within a week of each other. Both were hits in different ways. Lorenzo’s Oil was a big hit with the industry and Scent of a Woman was a big hit at the box office. I think—and this is conjecture on my part—at that point I became a known quantity to Hollywood. So that when they said, “What about Rebhorn?” they would say, “Now who is he?” “Well, he was in Scent of a Woman and Lorenzo’s Oil,” and they’d go, “Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.” So they could pass judgment or give me a shot early in the process. I’ve been fortunate that I’ve been able to stay in New York, I think, because of those two movies.
Who are your favorite actors?
I’m working with twelve of them right now! Larry Bryggman, who is a very good friend, is one of my favorite actors both to watch and to work with. Debra Monk is another one. She’s just sensational. Deb’s won a couple of Tonys and Larry’s been nominated several times. They both have Obies. They both have Emmys as a matter of fact, too. They’re two of my favorite actors. An actor I would love to work with sometime is Robert Duvall. I think he’s brilliant and I’ve seen him on stage as well as on film.
This interview was conducted on November 8, 2004, and it originally appeared in Acting Qs: Conversations with Working Actors by Bonnie Gillespie and Blake Robbins, available at Amazon.