Jeffrey Tambor
Jeffrey Tambor
Jeffrey Michael Tamboris an American actor and voice actor, widely known for his roles as Hank Kingsley on The Larry Sanders Show; George Bluth Sr. and Oscar Bluth on Arrested Development and Maura Pfefferman on Transparent for which he received the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series and the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Television Series – Musical or Comedy in 2015...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionTV Actor
Date of Birth8 July 1944
CitySan Francisco, CA
CountryUnited States of America
Those guys, Scott and Preston, had professionalism, with a capital P. It's a bygone era. I'm getting emotional talking about them.
It's everything I wanted it to be and more, ... Doing Mamet is working without a net. He's so delicious. I knew he was great, but I did not know that by doing him, you get him. It's like hearing an overture in a musical. There isn't an ounce of fat on this thing. It's great!
They were working on Home of the Brave - deconstructing it, putting it together. I kept coming every day to watch. It seemed beautiful.
As my manager says, 'These are wonderful problems.'
My part had three lines. I said, 'You look wonderful, sir,' three times. All my friends said, 'Do not take that role - and do not understudy. You'll regret it the rest of your life.' I did both of those things, and I've never regretted it once.
Gordon and I run our scene every night prior to the performance, just to get the cadences. I don't think Gordon would mind my telling you that.
The most telling one was recently on a plane. This guy very dressed up and formal - the watch, the shoes, the cufflinks, the whole nine yards - he came at me, and I thought I was going to get nailed. But he literally came up to me and just gave me a hug and said, "Thank you for introducing me to a subject that I didn't know anything about." In those moments it always clicks for me what we're doing here.
I am not so concerned with how many Rotten Tomatoes we have - although the good reviews are to be wished for, of course - but I have my hands full in the daily housekeeping of doing Maura right and being truthful to this experience.
You keep your head down and you work and work, and all of a sudden you pick your head up and people are receiving it the same way we're sending it. They're thinking the same things that I'm thinking about the show.
I get a singular comment that's very revealing: "I didn't know what to expect." Every time I hear that I think it's really just code for, "I wasn't sure I'd be comfortable with you in this role," which I understand coming from Oscar Bluth and Hank Kingsley and whatever. But I think there's a degree of, "Oh, okay, this is how it is." Then almost always people tell me that they love it and then people start talking to me about their families, whether it's transgender issues or not.
I had a lot of questions where I had to be very frank and clinical. I had to go to school on it about what it could mean physically to be trans and the options that have to be weighed and considered. But I love that. Exploring that opens my worldview in ways that I would never be able to try.
When I was a young boy in San Francisco, I remember being sent home - I was playing with a friend. And I remember the mother saying, tell Jeffrey to go home. And I said to the girl, I said, why? She goes, my mother says that you're the people who killed Christ.
I really loved my dad. I was very, very close to my dad. He - you know, he was very, very nervous about my being an actor.
In my life, I find that in sobriety, I feel much more. And I have much more depth.