Hugh Dancy

Spotlight by: Andrea Tuccillo
AndreaTuccillo@TheCinemaSource.com

Hugh Dancy is the type of actor who doesn't just simply play a part. He's the type of actor who takes the time to get to know the character he's playing, to fully understand why that character behaves the way he does. This clear understanding shines through in his nuanced performances, whether it is on screen or on the stage.

With his mop of wavy brown hair and his playful smile, he plays even the most desperate characters with a glimmer of hope and optimism. In the film Evening, Dancy plays Buddy Wittenborn, a troubled young dreamer from an upper-class 1950's Rhode Island family. He becomes enthralled with his sister's best friend Ann (Claire Danes), as well as harboring deep admiration for his good friend Harris (Patrick Wilson). His confusing feelings are compounded on the day of his sister's wedding and turn out to have unforeseen consequences which reverberate years later.

'Buddy is baffled and that is including, but certainly not limited to, his sexuality,' Dancy explains of his character. 'The way I thought about it was that this is guy who is not comfortable with where he comes from, with who he is and with his background. He feels trapped in a way, but he's simply not dealing with the problems that face him. Instead he's drinking a lot and he's attaching himself to other people that come through his life that he feels are strong. So all these people who he's attracted to like Harris, like Ann, are really people that he wants to be or he wants to have some part of them. He wants Harris' strength, he wants Ann's artistic credentials. I think he's years away from figuring out if he's gay, straight, if he's a writer, if he's a banker. I don't think he knows the first thing about himself.'

Buddy's troubles manifest through his excessive drinking, but playing drunk is a lot more difficult than it would seem. Dancy developed a particular approach for acting inebriated, one that did not include him actually hitting the bottle. 'Drinking when you're playing a drunk is a disastrous idea,' says Dancy. 'You need all the help in controlling your performance that you can get. A couple of stiff drinks is not going to be beneficial.'

His approach was much more logical. 'You remember that drunks are always trying not to be a drunk,' Dancy says. 'A drunk is attempting to be as sober as possible and that basically holds true throughout until the point when they can no longer even do that. That's the first thing and the second thing is that you remember that there are many different kinds of drunks. Everybody is a different drunk and if you feed alcohol to somebody it will bring out different qualities in all of them. So you have to think of it as a character trait.'

One night in particular, Buddy's drunkenness causes him to do something surprising'he kisses Harris. It's a move that shocks not only Harris, but Buddy himself. So why did he do it' 'It's an incredibly potent moment,' he says. 'The whole weekend is potent'it's the marriage of his sister back into the same environment that he sees kind of strangling his parents. He's horrified at her marriage. It's the first time that Ann Grant has ever come to see him in his home and that's obviously thrown him. And finally he sees these two people [Ann and Harris], both of whom he's kind of in love with, are hooking up! It's like a nightmare!'

In the film, Buddy's family seems unaware of his desperate circumstances and does little to help him in overcoming his problems. While their passive reactions may puzzle some, Dancy has their behavior all figured out.

'I think they're just hoping that he'll pull himself together,' he says. 'They don't know how to deal with him. Clearly his father is unsympathetic and probably just thinks of him as being self indulgent. The problem is that Buddy's problems are brought about through the fact that there isn't a great deal of emotional honesty in this setting that he finds himself born into. What he really needs is someone to reach out to him but that's the last thing that's going to happen.'

In the film, the conflicts of Buddy and his peers in the 1950's are seamlessly interwoven with glimpses of the present day. Therefore, during filming there were essentially two separate casts each filming their own part of the movie. Dancy explains this unusual arrangement.

'It was very strange because obviously I had very detailed, very rich memories and great memories of the time making the bit of the movie we were in,' he says. 'But at the same time I was fully aware of what I was going to see because I had read the script and I appreciated the way that [writer] Michael [Cunningham] had interwoven these two stories in a way that you don't normally see in movies. I mean flashback as a device is enormously overused and usually is just a lazy shortcut I think, but in this case it was integral to the journey that Vanessa [Redgrave]'s character was on.'

In addition to his thriving movie career, Dancy recently completed a stint on Broadway in the play Journey's End. He firmly believes that performing on stage is a rejuvenating, educational experience for an actor. Once again he took on a challenging role, one that was hard to shake after each night's performance was over.

'I'm playing a character who's in the trenches of the first world war, he's been there for 3 years without a break, he's an alcoholic, he's in the midst of a nervous breakdown and he's trying to command hundreds of men,' he says. 'So you don't really do that and then go out on the town. It just doesn't work out.'

Even though the role required intense focus, there was still always that danger of becoming stale. 'You're doing the same thing every night over and over again and there's a danger you're going to get bored,' Dancy says. 'When I started doing this play that was my guilty secret'that I felt the danger of getting bored. Now I understand that everybody has that problem. And in fact it's an important problem to have because it's that risk that forces you to go out and make it new every night.'

Next up for the talented Dancy is a role in the upcoming movie The Jane Austen Book Club co-starring Maria Bello, Emily Blunt and Amy Brenneman. 'I play the only guy in this group of six people who decide to read every Jane Austen novel, one a month, and have a book club and talk about them,' he says. 'I'm pretty much dragged in by accident.'

Dancy's success is certainly no accident though, and if he remains the thoughtful, intelligent actor he is now a very fulfilling career is on the horizon.