E-mail a friendTimothy Hutton
airdate August 5, 2009
Since becoming the youngest best supporting actor Oscar winner—for his turn in Ordinary People—Timothy Hutton has gone on to star in stage plays, TV productions and numerous films, ranging from supporting roles in mainstream successes to a steady string of indies. He's also worked behind the camera, directing music videos, TV shows and features. The son of an actor, Hutton was cast in a number of his father's projects and spent his early years appearing in TV movies. He currently stars in the TNT series, Leverage.
Leverage star talks about his other projects. (1:30)
Full interview. (11:46)
Timothy Hutton
Tavis: Pleased to welcome Timothy Hutton to this program. The Oscar-winning actor has starred in so many notable projects over the years, including, of course, "Ordinary People," "Taps," and "Falcon and the Snowman." This summer he returns for season two of his latest project, the TNT drama "Leverage." Here now a scene from "Leverage."
[Clip]
Tavis: (Laughs) Nice to meet you, Timothy.
Timothy Hutton: Nice to meet you.
Tavis: I'm glad you're on the program, and glad to have you here.
Hutton: Thank you, good being here.
Tavis: I'm going to let - that clip doesn't - it's a great clip, but it doesn't really explain the story behind the character you play, Nate Ford. I'll let you explain that in just a second, and somewhere in that answer, could you please tell me - I admit that I do, but should I be rooting for you?
Hutton: I think absolutely you should be rooting for me. (Laughter)
Tavis: I do, but I don't know that I should. Having said that, I'll let you explain the character you play and then the audience will understand better why I asked that question.
Hutton: Yeah, well, I play a former insurance investigator who becomes disillusioned with that job, that line of work, because of events that happen involving the death of his son. A tragedy happens leading up to that. He loses his wife, loses everything in his life.
And he's kind of hit rock bottom and he decides to join up with a band of thieves, and he's going to work with these thieves to help settle the score with people that have been taking advantage of - their homes taken away by corrupt contractors, post-Katrina stories, things like that.
Tavis: You're like a modern-day Robin Hood.
Hutton: Modern-day Robin Hood, absolutely.
Tavis: Yeah. (Laughs)
Hutton: So he kind of - he's walking that kind of difficult line for him because he's always been chasing these guys, and now he's working with them. But it's the only way he can help himself is by helping other people, so he decides to sell a part of himself, so to speak, to work with these people, and they become this kind of dysfunctional family.
Tavis: You had no equivocation, no hesitation whatsoever in suggesting to me two minutes ago that I should be rooting for you. Now with that definition, you have to explain why I should be.
Hutton: Well, because - (laughter) because the character in the story and the group as a whole, we help people that have been really, really taken advantage of. So I think you root for this guy and this group of people that I'm with because especially with what's going on today and everything, I think audiences really relate to people that are being taken down, people that are not having things properly explained to them, people that are vulnerable in certain areas, whether it's their bank or their home, their health, their healthcare.
So what we do is we make sure that it's a level playing field and that nobody's taken advantage of, and that's why you should root for these guys.
Tavis: Every time I see this thing, certainly of late, to your brilliant point now about the fact that the timing of this show in its second season couldn't be more propitious, because you're tapping into, I think, an American sentiment - these guys who are running the healthcare industry and running the banking industry and just corporate America, basically. If anybody's getting bailed out, it's them; it's not the everyday people.
And I think you're right, that there's a sentiment there that this show can tap into in season two that may make the numbers even be bigger than they were in season one. The flip side of that is whether or not as an actor you think that you may be pushing people into a behavior to get back at somebody that - you see where I'm going with this?
Hutton: I do, I do. I don't think the message of the show is to get back.
Tavis: Revenge.
Hutton: I think it's - well, revenge is always a fun concept, to get even. The tag line for "Leverage" is "Get ready to get even." That's what TNT puts up on there. And it's apt; it really definitely speaks to the show. But I don't think that the show would ever push people to do things that are outside the boundaries of normal - the way you would go about doing things.
We say about ourselves, we like to say that we pick up where the law leaves off, in some cases. So this is about getting people to say, "Wait a minute - I don't have to have these things taken away from me. I don't have to do this, I don't have to give up my house, there are other options. I have other options."
So if there's a message, it's that. But at the same time, it's a TV show - it's not meant to be -
Tavis: And just to be fair and balanced in my questioning, it ain't "Deathwish."
Hutton: That's right, that's right. (Laughter) That's right.
Tavis: This ain't Charles Bronson with an AK-47 in the middle of the street, taking people out. So I don't mean to -
Hutton: Yeah, it doesn't promote people to be vigilantes.
Tavis: Exactly, and I didn't mean to suggest that. I was being flippant, so forgive me for that.
When you read a script for a guy like Nate Ford, as an actor, an Academy Award-winning actor, what attracts you to this character? Why did you want to play this character? Why this (unintelligible)?
Hutton: Well, right away, from the first page of the pilot, guy sitting in an airport bar, drunk at 7:00 in the morning, no life, no money, living out of a car, lost his wife, lost his kid, has nothing to live for - a great, happy character. No, not really. (Laughter) But I thought, what a great place to start - what a great kind of - the shell of someone's former self, what a great place to kind of build on.
If it's a television series, you've got a full season, hopefully two and beyond that, to really show how this guy deals with his demons and how he gets out of a kind of self-loathing, a self-indulgent trap of poor me and all of that.
And I thought behaviorally it would be my kind of interesting to kind of get behind that concept of the only way I'm going to help myself is if I help other people. And that, I thought, was a great place to start for a character.
Tavis: I mentioned to you when you walked on the set - and I'm sure you hear this all the time, but you ain't heard it from me so you're going to hear it again. (Laughter)
I came home last night from an event I was at and I turned on my TV, just trying to relax - this is your first time ever on this show and I'm glad to have you, hope you'll come again. I've never met Timothy Hutton, never been on the show before. I turn the TV on - "Taps." I'm just like, how is this possible? I'm going to see this guy tomorrow, the TV show is on.
Hutton: I'll tell you how it's possible. On the show, "Leverage," we have a guy who's a hacker. So I sent him over to your house. (Laughter)
Tavis: Is that how that happened?
Hutton: Yeah, and I piped - I had "Taps" piped right into just your house.
Tavis: Well, it worked. I am not lying - I turn the TV on and it's - I didn't change the channel, it's on, staring me in the face. I was, like, jeez, there's Timothy Hutton. I'm going to see this guy - I'm going to meet this guy tomorrow. (Laughter) When you look back on that experience years later, what do you think of that project, in retrospect?
Hutton: Well, it was great. That was - we were all - Sean Penn, Tom Cruise, Giancarlo Esposito - all of us were starting out together. We were all working with a wonderful director in Harold Becker, George C. Scott was there. We were all very excited to work with him.
It was just a great time in my life, to meet a young Tom Cruise and Sean and everybody, and yeah, it was quite a group of characters outside of the movie.
Tavis: When you look back on having won that Academy Award at the age of 20 - barely 20 years (unintelligible) - you're 20 years old, you win this Academy. Did you ever think then about how you were going to navigate your career beyond that moment?
Some people - it was such a rare, obviously, feat that you accomplished in that year. Did you ever consciously then give thought to how do you navigate from here? And I'm asking that because I'm trying to figure out how you keep yourself from being burdened by the pressure you put on yourself to navigate your career beyond that moment when that happens when you're so young.
Hutton: I think you look at that - at the time, I tried to look at that, what happened with the Academy Award and everything like that, as something that was specific to the movie. It wasn't specific to a career; it was specific to a movie, a time, and a time and place.
Once that happened you have to move on and you have to get into your head that each time you start out again it's the first time, so I happened to be starting "Taps" the next day, actually, after the awards.
Tavis: That's amazing.
Hutton: So I flew back to Pennsylvania to join everybody, and the thing you tell yourself is I haven't done this role before, this is my first time, everything's new. I don't walk in here with anything that gives me any kind of additional knowledge. I am completely at ground zero in terms of this project.
So each time you go about it I think that's the proper perspective. I've tried to do that, and never really thought about the whole career planning thing. You focus on what you have and you hope that good material comes your way, and that will take care of itself, hopefully.
Tavis: Are there things at this point in your career that you're looking for?
Hutton: I directed a film some years ago with Kevin Bacon and Evelyn Rachel Wood, so I'm looking to do that again.
Tavis: More directing?
Hutton: Yeah, that was a great experience. I directed a play, that was also something that I'm interested in. But the schedule is five months - doing this TV series, it's five months out of the year. So I'm able to do other things. Right now I'm doing a film in Berlin with Roman Polanski that Ewan McGregor and Pierce Brosnan are in, and so it's not just working on "Leverage." I'm able to go and do other things, which (unintelligible).
Tavis: I'm glad you said that, Timothy, because I wanted to ask you - working with Roman Polanski is like what? He's obviously in the news so much for a variety of things, but what's it like to work with this guy?
Hutton: Well, it's great. He's an amazing director, he's an amazing actor, and he will literally act your part out and you'll happily allow it. You want him to give you line (unintelligible), you want him to say, "This is how you should do your part, let me show you."
Because he's so - he's got such great ideas. Great storyteller, the life of the set. Just an amazing energy that he has, yeah.
Tavis: So any secrets you want to tell me about where "Leverage" is going in season two while you're here? Or you can just wire it into my house again.
Hutton: Yeah, I'll just - yeah, I'll just do that. (Laughter) Well, the first season, the character I was playing was quite the drinker. So in the second season we're looking for another vice. I haven't figured out what that's going to be yet.
Tavis: I'm trying to figure out where this - not to cut you off - I'm trying to figure out - I got, maybe it's just my read - I got the sense at the end of season one that y'all were starting to have a little tension in the group.
Hutton: Oh, yeah, yeah, trust issues.
Tavis: I'm trying to see where this is going to go, yeah.
Hutton: Yeah, major trust issues. They don't know if they can work together. There's been a little bit - betrayals. And so I think season two you're not going to see them together as a team right away. You're going to see them kind of working solo and slowly. Perhaps they come back together.
Tavis: Ah. We shall see. "Leverage," on TNT, starring Timothy Hutton. Nice to have you here, man.
Hutton: Thank you.
Tavis: Pleasure to meet you.
Hutton: You too.
Tavis: Thanks for coming through.
Back to August 5, 2009