{"id":15482,"date":"2014-07-15T23:56:00","date_gmt":"2014-07-16T06:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qgp.ykq.mybluehost.me\/cinephiled\/?p=15482"},"modified":"2014-07-16T11:49:16","modified_gmt":"2014-07-16T18:49:16","slug":"harry-hamlins-road-less-traveled","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinephiled.com\/harry-hamlins-road-less-traveled\/","title":{"rendered":"Harry Hamlin’s Road Less Traveled"},"content":{"rendered":"

Acclaimed television star Harry Hamlin has experienced a resurgence in recent years with recurring roles on Army Wives<\/em>, Shameless<\/em>, and his Emmy-nominated turn on Mad Men<\/em> as Jim Cutler, a senior partner at the merged ad agency Sterling Cooper and Partners. The show’s seventh and final season is halfway over and returns in early 2015. What many fans may not know is that the acclaimed actor had a budding movie career in the early ’80s — he starred in the successful original version of Clash Of The Titans<\/em> in 1981 before L.A. Law<\/em> turned him into a bonafide TV star later that decade — nor that his studio career was derailed for then controversial reasons. Hamlin sat down to chat with Cinephiled about Mad Men<\/em>, L.A. Law<\/em>, character expectations, and how he bucked the Hollywood system and chose to do things his way, no matter what the cost.<\/p>\n

\"EXCLUSIVE:<\/a>Bryan Reesman: You were initially hired for one day on Mad Men<\/em>, and then they expanded your role. Do you think they had planned more for you to begin with?<\/strong>
\nHarry Hamlin: <\/strong>I’m not sure that they did. They first called me to only do one day’s work. I think if they had that planned out, they might’ve called and said they might need me for three weeks or a month. But they just said one day.<\/p>\n

Jim Cutler is definitely a character that I wouldn’t want as a babysitter.<\/strong>
\nWhy is that? Is it because of the way I was looking at the [young] couple in the room when they were doing it? I’m starting to find out whether this character is a bad guy or a good guy, but obviously in your mind he is not a good guy. There are some dark things going on. But I have to stand up for him and say, Wait a minute, he’s not a bad guy at all.<\/p>\n

In terms of business he is definitely a hard ass.<\/strong>
\nI definitely agree with that. Whether that’s an evil thing or not, I don’t know. But now I have to stand up for it.<\/p>\n

Your lawyer character on Army Wives<\/em> was a far cry from Michael Kuzak on L.A. Law<\/em><\/strong>
\nThat guy was pretty dark. I took advantage of a teenage girl and killed her. I was an awful human being in that. I was a murderer.<\/p>\n

Not a nice guy.<\/strong>
\nI enjoyed that. It was a lot of fun to play that character.<\/p>\n

While you have gotten a lot of dashing lead roles, some people would not necessarily suspect that the suave, well mannered, good looking guy could be underhanded or evil. And your roles in Army Wives<\/em> and Mad Men<\/em> have had a lot more shades of gray if not darkness.<\/strong>
\nAll through the ’90s, I played these characters after L.A. Law<\/em> where I was the white knight on the show. I got hired by directors to play a good guy who in the end would turn out to be the bad guy. They were doing all those thrillers, and I was a good guy in the beginning. I think I’ve exhausted that and don’t think I can get away [now] with playing so many bad guys because you expect me to be the good guy who turns out to be the bad guy. Maybe I’ll start being the white knight [again].<\/p>\n

L.A. Law<\/em> recently started coming out on DVD.<\/strong>
\nThey asked me to do some interviews for that, which I did. It took an awful long time for L.A. Law<\/em> to come out on DVD. I’m glad [that it did], but it may be a little bit late. We’ll see. There is certainly an appetite for shows that people can get into and watch 24 episodes in a bite. Maybe there is a kind of second life for these shows.<\/p>\n

\"LA<\/a><\/p>\n

There are certain shows from the ’80s that have aged well while others have not. Obviously if you grew up with stuff like that, you have a certain sense of nostalgia and understanding about them that someone in a younger generation won’t have.<\/strong>
\nThe ’80s had its peculiarities and eccentricities, and I’m not sure it translates to today’s generation. The good news is that Mad Men<\/em> will always be fresh for the ensuing generations because it starts out as a period piece. Something like Mad Men<\/em> will probably be considered a classic for the ages because when somebody looks at it 20 years from now, it will have the same effect that it has on a contemporary audience because it’s a period piece that’s done so well. In that sense, it will never age.<\/p>\n

Speaking about things that age well, I think Making Love<\/em> still works today.<\/strong>
\nYou’ve done some deep background on me.<\/p>\n

There are many things I know about your career and others I wanted to learn about. I’m sure you’ve done plenty of interviews where people don’t even know who you play on Mad Men<\/em>.<\/strong>
\nI’ve done a ton of interviews with people who confuse me with Mark Hamill. They’ll say, “How was Star Wars<\/em>? How was that experience?” It’s refreshing to know that you know who I am. That’s great.<\/p>\n

\"Making<\/a>Making Love<\/em> is a pretty honest, real story. Obviously there weren’t a lot of films back then dealing with gay themes, and just two years before that there been a lot of controversy generated by the Al Pacino movie Cruising<\/em>, which depicted the darker, sadomasochistic side of the gay world. Making Love<\/em> was the opposite of that — a very poignant and heartfelt tale of a married man who has an affair with a man when he starts to understand his sexuality better. You did an interview before Outfest last year where you talked about the fact that it was way ahead of its time.<\/strong>
\nIt was. Not in the sense that it was a story that needed to be told at that time, because it did, but it was ahead of its time because Hollywood was still pretty much a tabloid town. They weren’t in the mood to accept an actor playing a character like that, moving from roles like that into my heterosexual roles. It had a little bit of a stalling effect on my career for several years, which was not unexpected at the time. I knew that we were getting into deep reeds when we did the movie, although I didn’t quite know how deep, but I still believed it was the right movie for me to make at the time. I stand behind it, and I saw it at its 30th anniversary showing last year. I tend to agree with you on some level that it does stand up today, certainly as a love story. It was made at a much more innocent time in the gay community because the term AIDS hadn’t [emerged]. There was a scene where I meet Michael Ontkean in the doctor’s office and I’m pointing to an ingrown hair under my chin. I’m saying, What is this? This big red spot under my chin. If that movie had been made four years after that, it would have been an entirely different story. In that respect, it’s dated in a funny kind of way.<\/p>\n

You’ve obviously done a lot of television and a number of indie films since Making Love<\/em>. Do you think perhaps you were meant to do more in the television arena?<\/strong>
\nAre you talking about manifest destiny?<\/p>\n

That’s a good question. You’ve taken on a wide range of roles in film and television over the last 35 years rather fearlessly. You seem to do what you want to do. It’s impressive that you did the film Making Love<\/em> knowing that it could affect your career the way it did.<\/strong>
\nI have a habit of doing what I want to do, much to the chagrin of the establishment here in town. I was offered a big contract at Warner Bros. in the late ’70s. It was called the Clint Eastwood contract, and I turned it down. I’ll never forget the look of the face of head of the studio when I walked out of his office. “I’m sorry, I’m not going to sign your contract.” I don’t think anybody in the history of Hollywood had ever not signed a contract like that.<\/p>\n

\"People\"<\/a>So why did you turn it down?<\/strong>
\nI knew what films were in the pipeline at Warner Bros. at the time, and because I had some inside information I knew where they wanted to slot me in. I didn’t like [some of] the scripts to the shows … I was going to be asked to do. I was 22, and I said to the head of the studio, whose name was Ron Shapiro, I want some say in what I do. Can I have some say in what I do? He said, We will never ever make you do a movie that you don’t want to do. I said, Let’s put it in the contract. He said he couldn’t do that. He said he would never make me do anything I don’t want to do, but he wouldn’t put in the contract. I said, Why not? He said that because then it wouldn’t be a contract. I had a problem with some of the stuff they had in mind for me, and he said don’t worry. We went back and forth like for a few minutes, and I finally got up and walked out. I said, I’m sorry, and he said, We love your work so much, don’t worry, whether you sign the contract or not we’ll still work with you. And I didn’t set foot on the Warner Bros. lot for another 13 years. Going back to the Making Love<\/em> thing, the reason that I ended up in the television world can directly be traced back to having done Making Love<\/em>. I really didn’t have an option after that. The feature world kind of closed down for me.<\/p>\n

But you have done many independent films along with your television series and movie work over the years.<\/strong>
\nI’ve done independents, but the last studio picture I ever did was Making Love<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I have a collection of The Hitchhiker <\/em>episodes here, and I’m going to dig out the disc with your episode from 1986.<\/strong>
\nYou know, Philip Noyce directed that. That was his first American job, and we became good friends. His first movie was Dead Calm<\/em>. The Hitchhiker<\/em> episode was an interracial love story, and I took a lot of flack for that because it was at a time when that hadn’t been accepted yet either. I was getting it for being a gay character and getting it for doing an interracial love scene. I thought it was kind of cool.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Acclaimed television star Harry Hamlin has experienced a resurgence in recent years with recurring roles on Army Wives, Shameless, and his Emmy-nominated turn on Mad Men as Jim Cutler, a senior partner at the merged ad agency Sterling Cooper and Partners. The show’s seventh and final season is halfway over and returns in early 2015. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":15489,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[140,15,19,324,99],"tags":[2150,2151,2152,2153],"yoast_head":"\nHarry Hamlin's Road Less Traveled - Cinephiled<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cinephiled.com\/harry-hamlins-road-less-traveled\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Harry Hamlin's Road Less Traveled - Cinephiled\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Acclaimed television star Harry Hamlin has experienced a resurgence in recent years with recurring roles on Army Wives, Shameless, and his Emmy-nominated turn on Mad Men as Jim Cutler, a senior partner at the merged ad agency Sterling Cooper and Partners. 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