Neal McDonough: The Hollywood Interview

Actor Neal McDonough


NEAL MCDONOUGH TAKES OFF THE GLOVES IN TRAITOR
By
Alex Simon

Editor's Note: This article appears in the September issue of Venice Magazine.

Neal McDonough first gained notoriety in Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks’ epic HBO miniseries Band of Brothers, playing real-life WW II hero Lt. Buck Compton. This came after more than a decade of bit parts, guest spots on television, and paying his dues the way only the tough son of Irish immigrants could. Born February 23, 1966 in Dorchester, MA. Neal was the youngest of six children. After attending Syracuse University, he went onto study at London’s Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts.

Following his acclaimed work in Band of Brothers, Neal went on to appear in such films as Spielberg’s Minority Report, Clint Eastwood’s Flags of Our Fathers, and the acclaimed series Boomtown. More recently, Neal appeared in such diverse fare as The Guardian, I Know Who Killed Me, The Last Time, and Jon Avnet’s 88 Minutes, opposite Al Pacino. Neal also recently appeared in the miniseries Tin Man, as the eponymous leading character.

Possessed of an old-school tough guy steeliness not seen since the likes of Lee Marvin, Steve McQueen or Robert Mitchum, Neal’s talents are put to good use in director Jeffrey Nachmanoff’s Traitor, as a hard-nosed FBI agent who, along with his partner (Guy Pearce), track a suspected terrorist (Don Cheadle)’s entry into the U.S. However, as in all good political thrillers, no person, or event, is quite as it seems. The Overture Films release hits theaters August 27.

We sat down with Neal McDonough at his Hancock Park home recently. In between two lively children and four cats and dogs, a conversation managed to happen. Here’s some of it:

I said to (director) Jeffrey Nachmanoff that Traitor reminded me very much of John Frankenheimer’s political thrillers from the ‘60s and ‘70s. It had that same gritty energy.
Neal McDonough: Yeah, I think Jeffrey’s in the same league. My wife and I used to see Frankenheimer at church and he was somebody I’d always wanted to work with, he was such an icon. Now that he’s gone, there are people like Jeffrey that can take up where he left off. The film is entertainment for thinkers, and there isn’t a lot of that out there right now. Everything is really…

A comic book.
Yeah! Although some of the comic adaptations, like Iron Man, I thought was really terrific. I haven’t seen Batman yet. Once you have kids, you don’t have much free time to watch anything but Teletubbies, which is okay. (laughs) But this is a film I was proud to be a part of. In the last few years I’ve done twelve films, a couple of which were great, a couple weren’t so great, and the rest…I’m very lucky to be a working actor, let’s say that. (laughs)

You’ve been very busy the past few years.
Yeah, I’ve been really fortunate: Flags of Our Fathers, Boomtown, Tin Man, which is probably my favorite role to date. It was fun to play that hardened guy with the heart of gold underneath, but wouldn’t show that heart to very many people. That’s what I am, mostly. My dad came over from Ireland in 1947; my mother came over in ’53. As soon as my dad arrived on American shores, he went straight to the Army office and said “I want to be an American.” So they shipped him all over the world for five years, and he became a sergeant all of which, as he says, is a small price to pay for being an American. So he sunk that into my skull at a very young age: if you do something, do the best you can. If you don’t like something, tell someone you don’t like the way it’s done. That’s really who I am, and when I play these John Wayne, Lee Marvin type characters, that’s who I gravitate towards, like my character Max Archer in Traitor. He can be a good guy or bad guy in the film, but as long as he plays in the gray, not the black & white, that’s who I am.

Lee Marvin was the king. Point Blank is one of the great movies.
Oh man, he was just amazing! That’s a perfect film, just perfect.

Do you think Lee Marvin’s character in that was real, or was he the Angel of Death, as some film scholars and pundits have theorized?
I think he was real. What else could Lee Marvin be, but real?

Let’s go back to Max Archer. How did you avoid making him a cartoon, which would have been very easy to do?
I went into it determined not to make him a cartoon. I played Max as gray as possible. When he’s doing things that might be perceived as being bad, I tried to understand why he was doing it. I tried to portray him as a person who loves what he does, has a very specific way of doing things, while Guy Pearce’s character has another way of doing things.

Ultimately a pragmatist at heart.
Absolutely. He’s going to do what he has to do to get the job done, and if you get in his way, you’re going to get your ass kicked. If I’d had a few more minutes with Don Cheadle’s character in that room alone, I think he would’ve told me everything. (laughs) Someone said to me the other day “How do you feel about being typecast as the tough guy?” I said “What would Lee Marvin or John Wayne have said if you’d asked them the same question?”

McDonough and Guy Pearce in Traitor.

Steve McQueen is the other actor you’ve always reminded me of.
Thanks, man. He was amazing, too, another guy who existed in the gray. I thought about McQueen somewhat with this character I just played in Street Fighter, named Bison, who would have been easy to make into another cartoon bad guy. So I had him speak eight different languages, flying private jets, and everything he did was according to this really crazy code of ethics, but it was his code of ethics. This made him such an incredibly scary character. You look at this guy, and you say “That’s Richard Bramson!” (laughs) He’s this charming guy who’ll smile and charm your pants off, but he’s truly dangerous underneath—not that Richard Bramson is dangerous or evil, but you see what I’m saying. (laughs) You look at the great leaders in the history of the world, and they all exist in that gray area. You have to at that level, and I like playing those characters.

This is the second time you’ve worked with Guy Pearce.
Yeah, and almost identical characters. In Ravenous he was the very thoughtful, careful thinker, and I was the gung-ho guy doing push-ups in the snow. Guy’s great. He’s a very mellow, peaceful guy in person, too.

You paid a lot of dues before you got your first break. Your first paying gig was a single line in Darkman.
“Buncha cuties, huh?” That was my line. At the premiere, in Hyannis where I’m from, my brother Bob at that time had a sign company and had this thing called the ad van that would cruise all over Hyannis. For a week, it had a sign that read “See Darkman, starring Neal McDonough as Dock Worker # 2.” (laughs) We had the premiere and the place was just packed with all my friends. I got killed before (director) Sam Raimi’s name came up in the beginning, and as soon as Raimi’s name came up, we all got up and walked across the street to a pub, and I still haven’t seen the whole film, to this day! (laughs) Someone asked me recently, “How do you enjoy your life now, compared to your salad days?” When I didn’t have anything, and I was working UPS out here, or doing Christmas tree deliveries, I enjoyed the heck out of that, too. As long as you enjoy all the steps, that’s just what life is. I just try to keep it simple as possible.

McDonough in Band of Brothers.

You’re the youngest of six kids, right?
Yeah, and all my siblings are amazing. We have two professors, a stock broker, my brother who had the little sign company now runs the biggest sign company on The Cape, a teacher, and then there’s me, out of the blue, the actor. My mother always said I was the best mistake she ever made, because she had five kids in six years, then four years later I came along. So there was the pod, then there was me. For me, it was more freedom, whereas for the first five it was more like the military: everyone gets in line, everyone eats now, everyone go to bed. My dad, the sergeant, had that down.

When did you know you were an actor?
From the get-go. There was a lot of tension in my family because there was so much going on all the time. I just wanted to make everyone smile, and enjoy. I don’t think that’s changed at all. I’m still the kid who wants to put a smile on people’s faces.

McDonough (center) with Tom Cruise (L) and Colin Farrell (R) in Minority Report.

So you were the kid that was always going for the lead in the school play, or the church play?
Oh yeah, that and sports. I loved baseball. I had to choose between theater or baseball. I got all these scholarship offers from amazing schools to play baseball, but I told my dad “Syracuse has one of the best theater departments. I want to go there.” He just looked at me and said “You’re going to have to work your ass off to pay for it.” Alright. He said “Okay, good. Don’t let yourself down.” And I haven’t. You work hard, great things will happen.