>> rose: welcome to the program. tonight a conversation about life and death and theater with nathan lane and brian dennehy. the two actors starring in eugene o'neill's "the iceman cometh." >> look, anyone in show business, there are certain preconceptions about them. we think we know them because of two or three things they did that were successful and we think that's the person i know. i thought i had more to offer and wanted to challenge myself and i certainly wanted to do it with bob and brian. i knew that's the way to do it. >> arthur miller who i was privileged to work with we talked about the differences between a lot of these play writes and he sadoneil was the deepest diver, he was interested in the soul. >> rose: nathan lane and brian

dennehy when we continue. >> rose: funding for charlie rose is provided b >> rose: funding for "charlie rose" has been provided by: >> rose: additional funding provided by: >> and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and information services worldwide. captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. > rose: eugene o'neill is one of the greatest play writes of the 20th century, won the nobel prize for literature and called the father of theater paving the way for arthur miller, tennessee williams and

tony kushner. his life was hard -- his mother a morphine addict and brother an alcoholic -- but o'neil channeled his life into his work. "the iceman cometh" is one of his biggest. it focuses on the regulars of a new york city saloon who numbed themselves with alcohol and delayed acting on dreams. it was in chicago in 2012. currently at the brooklyn academy of music. the "new york times" says it is enacted by a cast not likely to be bettered this season. joining me, two tony award winning actors at the center of the production, nathan lane who plays hickey and brian dennehy who plays larry slade. pleased to have them at the table. welcome. >> thank you always a pleasure. >> rose: there's a story i read that you saw this production was going to take

place and you said this is right for nee me, i want to be hickey, and you notified the director? >> yes. it actually started with ken brenna in a bar who said to me, you know nathan, you can't just talk about these great parts you have to do them. >> rose: did you say, i've never thought of that! >> he said, if you do, you will learn a great deal and it will be life changing and doesn't matter what anyone says. ten years later i read an interview in variety with brian and bob and they were discussing potentially revisiting "the iceman cometh." they'd done it when brian played hickey. >> rose: is there a role he hasn't played? >> i don't think so. he played most of them and quite brilliantly. when we heard them discussing

this with brian taking on the role of larry slade, i wrote an email to brian and said i would love to play hickey and here's my reasoning and fortunately he responded positively and we got together and started discussing how we would do it. >> rose: how do you see hickey? >> well, you know when i read the play when i was a kid and i had gotten a collection of eugene o'neill plays and i read "the iceman cometh," i was drawn to the character of hickey because of the description that o'neill writes that sounded a little like me. he describes him as short and roley poley, a button nose and twinkle in his eye. he always writes these very long descriptions of characters rather too specific for everyone to live up to. but what he created i thought,

and what i was bringing up to bob in my email was, you know, it's defined by jason robards. he was the gold standard. in 1956, off broadway, they defined who the character is. and it's much darker than say, the original production in 1946 and jason brought this mischievous ma leaf lens and kind of other-worldly quality to it and i was saying to bob wouldn't it be interesting, taking what o'neil has said about him, the notion is he loves these guys and just as he -- you know, he ultimately says he killed his wife that it was an act of mercy out of love, he has come to help them and change their lives and bring them peace. unfortunately it's -- he feels the only way to do that is for

them to kill their illusions, their pipe dreams as they're so often called. so i thought it has to come out of that. it has to come out of love and not that he's trying to destroy them, but he's trying to help them and in a way that's more disturbing. and the fact that it is a joyous thing when he arrives and that it's so off putting that this person they love sov is driving them to do this thing. for him it's sort of he is many a kind of semidelusional state and he feels this last act which i don't think bringing him absolution but it is a way to prove to them and himself that what he did was right. ultimately, his pipe dream was he did this out of love and -- >> rose: he's doing it for them. >> yeah. >> rose: is this a different

hickey than you conceived when you played hickey? >> oh, yeah. i mean, every great role, it's interesting, when i started working, all i knew was jason rurabs and everyone else, so when we started rehearsal almost 30 years ago, i said, i'm going to do jason r obard. after a few weeks of bad jason robard interpretations i said, no, i can't do that and i came up with the happiest guy in the world this sunny salesman of death and big smiles all the time, a big, hardy laugh and

slowly it becomes obvious to the audience and the people on stage that this guy is selling something that's not quite as advertised. >> rose: but is he selling it out of love h. >> sure. there's an interesting discussion that goes on with people like ourselves who deal with this play and characters just how crazy is he? is he crazy enough to know exactly what he's doing in terms of embracing his craziness or is he not crazy? >> rose: it's interesting, he sort of compartmentalizes all of these things. he knows hehouse to turn himself in. he knows he's going to make a phone call to the police. so he knows what he did was wrong technically -- >> rose: technically. that shooting your wife in the back of the head in the middle of the night, that's technically wrong, and he knows he must be punished and ultimately that's what he really wants.

he wants to be punished. it's what he always wanted from his wife but she wouldn't she kept forgiving him. it's this sort of unhealthy co-dependent relationship where she keeps forgiving him and he does love her. that's the other theme of the play. the one theme is man cannot live without his illusions and the other thing is how does love and hate co-exist in a person. >> the only way h he can stop her from forgiving him is to make sure she's dead. otherwise, she would forgive him. wait a minute before you pull the trigger, i forgive you. >> but it is about -- it's an unraveling. you know, in the fourth act when he famously recounts in order to prove to the group that he was right, he recounts his life story and leading up to the night of the murder. as he's going along, you know,

he wasn't planning on telling this story, but then he has to. he's driven to do this to prove to them. and these revelations start happening. it's like a therapy session. someone says, tell me your life story. and you start. and you start to talk about things that you didn't expect to talk about and then it takes you someplace else and it takes you and you think, well, maybe i was wrong about that and maybe i was wrong about this and as he slowly starts to unravel as he's revealing more and more about these awful -- his own self-clothing and his shame about what he did to her, and i think, you know, he finally convinced himself that that was the answer. i mean, it's like a story you would read in the the "new york post" and you would say, do you believe this happened? and yet it did because we're human. >> rose: has doing this done all the things kenneth said it

would do for you? >> without a doubt, he was right. it was prophetic. >> rose: that was ten years ago. >> well yes. it took a while to get me to chicago and to get this -- look i instigated the whole thing. so -- and i was -- you know we, fortunately, it was a huge success in chicago which led to us doing it at bam which has been the perfect venue, the beautiful harvey theater, and this extraordinary company we must talk about that, this extraordinary company of actors charles discussed, and it's a remarkable group of people and that's what's also making this so special but, yes, it has lived up to those expectations and more. you know, it has changed me. >> rose: you want more? well, sure. who wouldn't? you know, i know there are certain -- look, anyone in show business, there are certain

preconceptions about them. we think we know them because of two or three things they did that were successful and, oh, that's the person i know. and i felt, at my age that i needed -- that i had more to offer and wanted to challenge myself, and i certainly wanted to do it with bob and brian. i knew hats the way to do it. >> rose: here's what bob says about you -- it's a mark of brian that he sort of moved through the o'neil roles and he knew that he was the right age for slade. >> yeah, i guess. he's referring to the british system whereby the brits start playing out a wrung yung man part and move up doing the same thing over and over again. that's true. i feel very comfortable with larry slade, especially since he sits on his ass throughout the whole play and try to keep the

circulation moving. it's a really interesting complicated part. >> in many ways as complicated if not more so than hickey because although hickey has all the hard listening to do, larry's got some stuff to work out, especially with the kid, and it's a similar situation. it's a parallel track except, in larry's case, he finds out that the real generous thing to do is to make sure that this kid kills himself, which he assists him in doing. we're talking about o'neil world here. >> rose: dark world. very much so. what's really interesting about the darkness of it, it was written about the same time he was writing the family play, which was apparently an ordeal for him. very, very difficult in california. and he wrote a letter to a

friend in new york and said i've had to stop work on the family play, much too complicated, i'm suffering, i have to do something different so i'm writing something now which makes me laugh every day. (laughter) >> rose: well, i mean he did love these guys. this was at a point in his life when he was in his early 20s and he attempted suicide in this place jimmy the priest, this is where the harry hope saloon is based on, these two places and the golden swan had a back room called the hell hole. and these guys saved his life, the character based on jimmy tamaro a scottish reporter who saved his life when he attempted suicide. most in the characters in the play were based on real people he knew and lived with except for hickey actually. and then he also -- did you know

he was reading -- carrying around the birth of tragedy. >> rose: he was writing as he was carrying it around. >> obviously, it's influenced by other plays, by the wild duck and lower depths, burks but neech was an influence. >> rose: were these things you had been interested in and curious about all along and studying? >> i was interested in the the play and when i knew i was going to do it the year before i started doing a lot of research about the play. >> rose: once you knew you were going to do it? >> yeah. >> rose: you started in 1973 doing your first first o'neill character. '73? the first o'neill plays i did, i think it was '73 at the quake theater on lexington avenue with bill hickey, and i did the sea

plays with bill and he was a wonderful, wonderful character and tremendous guy. >> rose: he's been at this table. >> he had one little problem he had trouble learning his lines. these were two guys, one dying and had been buddies for years. we would go in this tiny little room with about 25 a people watching. he would say, yank... yank... i was not talking about those women -- on the other -- on the shore in the -- in the -- what was the name -- rio de janeiro --o daij yeah not talking about them. that one -- consuela -- con consuela, that's right -- (laughter) i had to give him every line. where did that place go the

marumba restaurant -- who do you think gets the curtain call? him. they scream for him! and i'm doing my part and his part! >> rose: (laughter) >> i like the other version of that suzy once told me she worked with a british actor who had great difficulty remembering his lines and when he would go up he would politely turn to her and smile and say, , so how's your father? so it was all on her. (laughter) he talked a lot about her father. so how's your father... >> in this play, there was an actor named ron dean the first time we did it and he played rocky the bartender. >> this is good. rodney had this huge part. rocky has a good part. ron had a checkered career and spent a little time in prison, i

think it was 17 years. inin any case bob took chance on him. what he realized what he had taken on, ron said to the cast, look, i got to have an escape mechanism. so when i'm talking, if i have these speeches i'm taking, and if i say, "oh, boy," i know the line, it's there someplace, i'm going to come up with the line so i'm just going to say "oh, boy" so be ready and i'll get there. he said, but if i say "oh, boy oh boy," you better look at me and make sure you're on your tiptoes because we may skip a line. he said, if i say oh, boy, oh, boy oh, boy, it's every man for himself. (laughter) >> rose: they say working with o'neill is like climbing

mt. everest. why is that swine flu. >> well, you know h he's asking you to go with him. he's very brave what he's writing about and he's asking big questions and big emotions and some people would call it in this particular play operatic. but he's asking you to go especially -- i mean all of us, but in particular hickey in the fourth act, to go to the most personal of places and it's inescapable that you -- if it's going to work, you have to go with him, and you have to be as brave as he is in the writing and you have to expose yourself in a way that it's really difficult and personal and it's very like diamond cutting. it's delicate. you know, you have to -- and you have to expose yourself.

in a way that is difficult, and, you know, we've talked about that challenge of doing it every night. john flaherty came the other night and said how do you do this every night and how do you get will? and i said well, you know you just try. you don't always get there you don't always get to the top. that's the challenge. because he's asking, oh, yeah, it's your agent, he regrets you telling that last story. (laughter) send your letters to brian dennehy. (laughter) you know, everything okay? time for the medication? >> ron says talk about ambidextrous, wait till i get ahold of you! >> there you go. so, you know you can't. you're only human. i mean, you know you're relying on many things. >> rose: do you know why you get there some nights and why

you don't sometimes? >> why you get into the zone? >> rose: yeah, because you said some nights you can't get there. >> sometimes you see where the zone is and you get there a little more technically. that, i don't know why, because it's not science. it's just human chemicals you're pouring in and as much as you prepare, sometimes you're in a very specific moment a quiet moment, and someone in the audience goes -- (clearing throat) -- and that can, you know, throw you. >> either that or go -- (yawning) >> -- give you one of those. yeah, but that can happen. that's what live theater is about. it's about trying to keep a

large group of people from coughing, as someone said famously. it's about concentration and focus. >> rose: did you prepare more for this than anything you've ever done? >> without question. >> rose: without question. because it's a leap. >> a huge leap for anyone, even your most serious of actors. this is a degree of difficulty. >> the other thing, too, along those lines is he is mott the most adept writer of phrases: he'll back up on himself on a phrase. it doesn't necessarily come out as easily as it should. i mean, mary mccarthy who was a famous critic for the new yorker back in the 40s and who was the curse of a lot of play writes always said the same thing about o'neill as she did about others that they were not

good writers but they were great writers, meaning they were not particularly faisal with the language and the verbs and the announce in a way, for example that -- >> but o'neill insisted on going to the deepest darkest parts. arthur miller we talked about the differences between a lot of these play writes and he sadoneil was the deepest -- he said that o'neill was the deepest writer and was interested in the soul. >> rose: you've done eight or nine characters.

>> sometimes it's been my great fortune to do a lot of o'neill's parts and to suddenly discover you're digging away at a fundamental part of your own being and you realize if i keep doing this i could do myself psychic injury. >> rose: you can't do it well unless you do that. >> if you don't leave it on the stage it's disappointing and it's frustrating to you as an actor as well. i mean, he is the -- you know, they call him the american shakespeare and this language that you're talking about, although i love his language and this play in particular, but you do have to know how to handle

that amount of, you know, language, because he's -- >> he repeats himself. wants to repeat himself. people say, well, he says things over and over again. no he's a teacher and if you've heard it once he wants you to hear it again and again and again. and when people say we've got to take this out they're missing the point that's the way he wants it. >> it's like music. it's a variation on a theme he keeps coming back to and changes it just a little and you start to see why he's changing and where the character's head is going when he changes the language and it's fascinating. it's a thrilling challenge. >> it is a huge challenge. yeah. i mean, the man gave birth turning his mother into a

morphine addict which she stayed one for 30 years. >> rose: the birth was so difficult? >> well, this is a very interesting device here. >> rose: yeah. the father refused to hire a good doctor for eugene's eminent birth, so he used the hotel doctor in new york. the guy was terrified of it, he hadn't assisted many births. she was in great pain. he apparently tore her or cut her a little bit, and then overwhelmed her with morphine, turning her into a morphine addict, and i guess that's a way to make a nobel prize winner is turning your mother into a junky. >> and she'll be that way the rest of her life. >> but all this stuff was his life. his brother died roaring in a hospital as the irish say by

acute alcoholism at age 37 and couldn't even walk anymore on his feet. there's a tremendous amount of pain. what do you do as kids? but all of it ended in these extraordinary words, dealing with those events and dealing with a lot of other events and a lot of things that happened to himself. >> rose: i hate to ask this but is there one of the three that you prefer? >> yeah, there's one that i love which is not regarded as necessarily -- as a great play because it's a play not about huge, terrible passions and events, but it's about a little knock-around guy who screwed himself up and refuses to admit it, and his life is full of minor injuries bruises and

cuts, and that's hughie. i love hughie. i love playing hughie. and it's not massive pain and massive -- he's just a little guy who thinks his life has been worth it and successful and as he talks about his life we realize just what a tiny small disaster it's been. not a big one. a thousand cuts? >> not even a thousand cuts. it's the death of 80% of the population. >> rose: you realize they have been living an illusion of some kind? >> oh, for sure and he's still living an illusion. >> rose: and that's 80% of a population you know. >> let me put it this way, i was raised in an irish family so i have sat on a few death beds and

that feeling of was this ride worth it and just recently in fact. and that's what hughie is. hughie is a life adding up to 40 or 50 years of certainty, knowledge of who he was, what he could do what his chances were, and failing at every single thing. >> rose: iceman i think ben bradley said this about hickey is really this is about his role as a catalyst. do you think that? more than him, it's his role as a catalyst. >> yes. i mean, not just as a catalyst for the characters in the play, but for the audience. i mean, this is a confrontational play and as much as he experimented in his early career with the greek tragedy -- you know, more stately mansions

or set in the south or whatever it might have been, these different strange interludes -- this really was also an experiment an emotional mar thop that goes on for close to five hours and he wanted the audience to feel trapped. he wanted them to suffer with the people on stage, and i tell you -- >> rose: make it uncomfortable, but -- >> yes. and the audiences that come to bam, you feel that. some people have said to me more than any other production they feel this is more confrontational. they feel you do start to think about your own life and your own pipe dreams and illusions and what is true and what isn't. >> rose: but in the end they hang on to those illusions. >> they have to. they go pack to the shore. and really, at least in this production, h hickey gives them that. he's about to say to harry, even after -- he's saying to him, you

know, i must have been insane to have said what i said to evelyn after he had killed her and he says, oh, so you have been insane this this entire time... so he sees that, you know, harry wants to be off the hook, and he starts to say, i can't let you get away with it. and he looks at him and he sees him start to shrink in front of him and at least from my point of view is he is giving him and all of them this gift back of being able to go back to their illusions and he says, yes, i have been insane the entire time i have been here, you saw that, didn't you? and, of course, it also allows him the to go back to his own pipe dream, you know of his love for evelyn and what he did out of love. >> and to not get executed. don't think that. that's your theory. but i don't think so. i think he's beyond that at that point. >> he claims he's insane.

you think that was about not getting -- >> well, i don't think that. i admit to mr. lane's posit which is i don't think that o'neill wanted it to be that way. however, being as dark an ironman as i am -- an irishman as i am i expect he says, officer, yes, take me to jail execute me tonight, preferably. could you pull the switch tonight? maybe he'll spend time at some camp and be released. >> no, because he wants to be punished. he wants to be punished. the fact is his version of love growing up he had a preacher father in indiana who used to beat him because he was bad. you're a bad kid. and, you know, he would go out and act on it and then he would

come home and be beaten. and then the only person who didn't was evelyn his wife, who loved him since he was a kid since they were teenagers and saw in him i guess the potential to be a good -- you know, good and bad, happy, you know the word happy comes up so often, happy is mentioned at the end of each act, all i want is for you to be happy. happy. and she's going to make him happy. and, you know, you start to question what happy means because it said so often. >> rose: someone said he found the play exhilarating like a cold shower. >> yes, a long, cold shower. there's nothing less exhilarating than a long, cold shower. >> rose: you don't agree with your director? >> no i think you can overanalyze this stuff.

o'neill was on to something every time he wrote a play. this play is a great mystery and deals with deep subjects. self-do you thinkdelusion. >> the terror of self-recognition. >> rose: so terrifying you back away. >> and cling to self-delusion. this is who i am, a really good phat snore. >> rose: because phat snore. >> rose: because reality and truth is painful. >> and if you need to get drunk to do it, have a drink. in some ways, he advocates drinking. >> rose: with no o'neill, we would have no miller, no -- >> without question he's the father of american drama. he saw what edison and strinberg were doing and created his own

version of that and wrote the first serious plays. >> the one writer i suggest you talk to at length about this is kushner. >> rose: tony kushner. tony kushner is a huge fan of o'neill in the best sense of the word. he understands him so completely. >> i think if you look alt this obsession that he has with illusions and dreams and the way he ties this into the national question of america as kind of a hallowed dream or dream that will never be fulfilled is sort of very very tragic and dark vision of what this country, is what this country does to people's dreams and i think it makes the theater the perfect medium for somebody who is as heart broken about disillusionment who really finally on some level can't reconcile him to the fact that will's no salvation, that there's no redemption, that

there's no life after death, that everything that made life possible, bearable is really kind of finally a lie and i think that, you know the theater is a perfect medium for somebody who's as grief-stricken about that as o'neill was. >> rose: and he's written a screenplay about this period. >> about this period when he was living as a young man. >> rose: a screenplay about o'neill. >> in his youth when he attempted suicide. >> rose: about "the iceman cometh," those years. >> the years that led to him writing "the iceman cometh," this period. >> rose: it was written when? 1939. >> rose: i was thinking '40-something. >> it wasn't introduced till '46 because he didn't think the audiences would accept it, after the war. >> they didn't accept it then. but a year after he died almost

to the dao neil and cantera opened the play and opened the whole banquet of o'neill's work because that's what happened o'neill's plays were recognized for the works of genius they were and they have been done everywhere by everybody ever since, the irony being, of course, that he had died reasonably in obscurity a year and a half before. >> rose: but when joseeé queen terra did that, it changed everything? >> everything. >> rose: is it the thing you're most proud of? >> i have to say i feel strongly about salesmen, though i have to say about salesmen, there are elements i've played i never really explored because they were so close to whatever

sensitive places in myself that i couldn't go. i just had to play them. and also the interesting thing about salesmen having done 800 times and knowing there was something special about that play for me, i have forgotten a lot of it and it's a deliberate act and i don't know why which means something and i don't know why it means something either. >> rose: do you want to know? not particularly. o'neill, i can approach rationally and think about it and come up with ideas and understanding and feelings about, like, for example with hughie and things i've tone more than once but salesmen, i don't think i could ever go back to salesmen and there's been some kind of a process inside me that has removed so much of my understanding of that part from

me and again, i don't question it. i don't worry about it, i don't try to get in its way, it's just what it is. so that play was either more profound to me than i'm prepared to deal with. >> rose: this is not an illusion, this is the rawness of some place that touched you? >> yeah. and i can remember, you know laying awake night after might after night doing it. i did this play exhausted. it seemed to me the more exhausted i got the better it was. like i say, i put that over there and -- >> rose: it will not go back. well, i'm not ready to really look at it yet. >> rose: have you thought about salesmen?

>> it's something that i've talked about with joe mantello, a director who had wanted me to do it, and then i didn't feel i was old enough. then, of course, phil hoffman did it when he was 44 or 45. so it would be a way off now if we did. you know it's hard. i've seen a lot of them. i sawdust -- i saw dustin hoffman. i saw one with lee j. cobb. one of the reasons i wanted to do this play with them is bob falls directed one with brian. maybe it was my age but it was the first time i had seen the play and it's always affecting because it's about a father. but the first time i saw it and thought i really understood what was happening and also that i

was seeing it inside someone's head which is i think i believe what almost -- "inside his head "is almost what it was called -- and seeing someone have a real breakdown as well as what was happening to him you know in society around all of those other things, but it was very personal and raw that time, and i was so affected, i remember going back -- i think it was the highest compliment i could have paid you which is i went back to see him and i started to talk to him and i broke down crying. i couldn't really speak. >> rose: you wasn't backstage to see brian and started crying? >> yeah, i couldn't find the words and i just broke down crying. >> rose: do you remember what you said before that? >> what was i saying? >> rose: hi, are you having any fun? (laughter) and something happened. i remember looking at you and all of a sudden you broke into tears snoop did you understand

what that was about? >> oh, i'm sure it has to do with my father, you know, the lack of a father. my father died when i was 11, he was an alcoholic. he basically drank himself to death. i don't know, i mean, that play, it's a powerful one and then, sure, i think at some point, yes, i would love to tackle it. >> that i would like to see. >> rose: you would like to see that? >> see if you can do it before i kick the bucket, all right? >> all right, we'll try to coordinate our schedules around that. >> rose: anything else on a bucket list you have about theater? >> well, you know -- i don't think we have enough time. i have this ongoing flirtation

with lear. however, it's a long conversation. i want to do it but i want to do it in a certain way i think i want to sneak up on it with end game which is a version of lear an easier version of lear only because beckett, whom i love, makes it so obvious that so much has been taken away from this man, already. the thing about lear is that i've seen very good performances of lear lately, all of which will be nameless, and i realize one thing -- it requires a towering performance. it's not good enough to do lear good enough.

it's, after all about the most important subject of all, which is death and dying. we're all dying, no matter what age we are. here's a man who's had everything, who assumes he's always going to have everything, and suddenly life begins to slip away in absurd and tragic ways. but whatever the canon is covered by shakespeare. what's required is a majestic, mindless, humorous towering performance of life being ripped away. having said that and having seen it a few times, paul scoff scofield, simon russell you say to yourself, do you want to climb into that arena? part of me does.

part of -- >> rose: ego? yeah, that's the ego part. i have to kick its ass to see if i can come up with a real analysis as to whether or not i'm capable of it. but that appeals to me to take on a part that i know is so demanding and so huge that, you know, the idea of getting it scares the hell out of me. bob and i a long time ago said we're only going to do things to scare each other, but that one didn't really scare me. but that's the thing about lear. people say that's very nice -- that's not enough. >> rose: do you wish you'd done this ten years ago? could you have done it? or is it one of those things maybe i did but i couldn't have happened -- it couldn't have happened without the intervening

things in my life to do it? >> i think so. the latter, yes. i think it took this amount of time, and to reach a point in your life where you do -- you know, you're questioning not unlike the play writes we're talking about you're questioning why am i here? what am i supposed to do with this? i have this success. am i an artist? am i going to push myself further? i could entertain people for the rest of my life and that's a lovely life and, you know marty short once said something about, you know the funniest man in the world. >> rose: you think so? i do. he said, you know, people don't want to see me stretching. they don't want to go to the monkey house and see the monkeys being introspective. they want the monkeys to be

monkeys. which made me laugh. although believe me marty has within him -- marty as well as being a brilliant comic also can be a brilliant actor and has shown that in things like "damages." >> rose: yeah, but does he want to? >> i think he's perfectly happy doing what he wants when it happens and if something interesting came along, you know, he's in the paul thomas anderson film. he can do many things. but mostly i think he enjoys making people laugh, and i said to myself i think i might be one of the introspective monkeys. >> rose: introspective monkeys. >> yeah. >> rose: didn't olivier always say he wanted to do comedy? >> he always wanted to play nathan detroit. he wanted to do it at the national. he imitated sam gold win

beautifully. i would have loved to have seen him play nathan detroit. >> well, he's an entertainer which was a tragic version of a comedian, but there are times he was very funny. of course, the problem with him playing that part was he could not allow himself to be any good to the point he's playing a lesser entertainer. >> famously, he was asked how did he achieve that mediocrity of singing and dancing and he just said, i just did the best i could and that's what came out. but, you know, he was -- yeah, i mean, look he famously did the pdipus in the rest regulation play where he played mr. puff in the critic. so you know, he was testing himself in that way a long time ago. but, yeah, i think that's what

happens, this has come about at a great time in my life to explore this side of myself andeth been thrilling and it has been life changing to come back. it makes you want more of that. not that i don't enjoy comedy and going lack to it's only a play with terrence mcnaily. but i think one thing helps the other. you know, when you do -- it's like when you do stage then go back to tv or film and one enhances the other in some ways and i think having done this affects your other work as well. >> rose: does it mean in the end you put a higher value on drama than comedy? >> no. i think that would be wrong because, you know, comedy is always considered the poor

second cousin to billing old drama -- to big old drama and tragedy, as if comedy was easy and, as we know, it's not and to do it well, you know, is really difficult. and to make it look effort effortless. i think if it's done in that way, people don't take it as seriously. >> robert falls said imagine i was a beautiful young gorgeous woman and i wound up with brian dennehy. >> that's why he made me wear that wig all that time. i always wondered about that. (laughter) you know, it's funny, he took me to coffee one day. he was running a little theater and didn't even direct this play i did rat in the skull.

and we had coffee and he said you and rigoing to do all these things together. he didn't even have a job, right? i had a job, but -- and i listened for a long time as i realized this was going to be something that we were going to do and he finished up by saying we're always going to do things we're not sure we can do. which is also something else we did. >> rose: always do things that will make you a bit scared. >> well, yeah. even more than that. we're always scared. it can be the easiest play in the world and you're going to be scared. but you're saying to yourself, i don't know if i belong in this ball game and i'm really taking a chance here and, for the most part, we've pulled them off. >> rose: that's the way you are about lear, though, i don't

know but i think -- >> the other thing about lear is i've left a little too late in terms of age and strength and my brain and so forth although that may be an excuse. whatever i do i've got to make up my mind in the next several months and then i've got to find a place. we'll see. we'll see. >> rose: are you looking for another role like h? do you actively look or does something happen that precipitates the thought in you? >> i would love to see him do the madrid play. >> rose: you mean the lisbon. the lisbon. >> rose: that's an old terrance mcnaily -- >> that's an old terrence mcnaily play i did in 1989. i was supposed to do a character much older but they wound up

going with me. it's a wonderfully theatrical play and wonderfully dark. i could return to that. >> rose: what would you love to do? >> this was such a huge thing to climb and it's been -- and so, it's hard to think about another one right away where you know you see whatever -- you know one would hope that the cause of this, if people had seen me doing something like this that it might lead to another kind of interesting role like that. i don't know. i would hope. >> rose: or watch the show. or watch the show and you might think, oh, he's a little deeper than i thought. >> i have one for you. all right. richard ii. yeah, i'm not crazy about him. >> beautiful poetry.

gorgeous, gorgeous, but i don't have that passion for him. you know richard iii maybe, although and i'm getting a little old for that. but, you know, at least i understand -- you know, the character actor's hamlet, richard iii. i would love to do more shakespeare, i haven't done it in a long, long time and that would be thrilling. >> rose: thank you for coming. thank you for having me. i really appreciate it. >> rose: "the iceman cometh" is at brooklyn academy of music through this sunday march 15. >> it's sold out. >> rose:you don't go sorry. >> rose: just stand around, hope somebody doesn't come. you will miss something very, very special if you didn't go. we showed a little bit of it this evening in terms of two

powerful actors. thank you for joining us. see you next time. for more about this program and earlier episodes visit us online at pbs.org and charlierose.com. captioning sponsored by rose communications captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org

this is "nightly business report sue herera. much more tonight on "nightly business report" for march 12th. >> wipe away your tears from a past couple of days.

wipe those losses away. more importantly stocks are once again positive for the year helped by a strong showing in financials. following the final