Tony Goldwyn
Tony Goldwyn
Anthony Howard "Tony" Goldwynis an American actor, producer, director and political activist. He portrayed the villain Carl Bruner in Ghost, Colonel Bagley in The Last Samurai, and the voice of the title character of the Disney animated film Tarzan. He stars in the ABC drama Scandal, as Fitzgerald Grant III, President of the United States...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionTV Actor
Date of Birth20 May 1960
CityLos Angeles, CA
CountryUnited States of America
I've done a lot of movies other than Ghost. It's amazing. I get sick of it. I mean, I'm grateful for it. But I think it's one of those movies that struck a chord in the consciousness of people and they watch it over and over again. It's weird - I haven't seen the movie in 10 years!
I don't get over the wonder of it, and 'The Last Samurai' was an extreme example of that. Every day when I went to the set, I couldn't believe what I was seeing.
I view the whole thing as a collaboration. As an actor, I always found that to be the most freeing thing, when the director would collaborate with you, so that together you'd come up with something exponentially better.
In television, the creator is really the voice.
I'm always perversely attracted to characters that seem one thing, but are ultimately revealed as another.
One of the reasons that the African American actors wanted to be a part of the show was because these people are talking to each other the way that African American people talk to each other, and they said that they didn't see that on TV.
It was great to essentially have two protagonists where you're sympathies could go back and forth between the two of them, throughout the season.
My mother's whole family had been from the theater, really. Because I grew up in Hollywood, I wasn't that interested in Hollywood. But the New York theater was completely exotic and fabulous to me.
I'm a moderate Democrat. I've always been fascinated and maddened by the way things get done in our system, which as an ideal is so extraordinary, but the way it actually works can be mind-boggling.
You can say the president's private life takes up so much of his time that he doesn't focus on his job, so therefore he's terrible. But in my imagination, the 23 hours of the day that we don't experience, he's very hard at work. He's quite an effective and successful president - in my narcissistic imagination.
If you're in a popular TV show, you can attract attention, and I like to help focus that on stories that deserve to be told - which is what politicians do. But I would lose my autonomy, and to get things done I would have to compromise and get into the weeds of policy. I don't know if I'm smart enough.
I directed and produced Conviction, a movie about a man who spent 18 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit. I got to know Innocence Project co-founder Barry Scheck very well - he's a character in the movie - and I got very passionate about the cause. It's just so inherently dramatic.
I want to keep doing different things. I'd like to do a more personal, dramatic movie next, I think. But as long as it's about characters and good writing and good parts for actors, that's what's important
Capital punishment? It makes no sense as a policy: It's not a deterrent, and economically it's a disaster. It's very clear that there are innocent people on death row. And if I put an innocent person to death, that's murder.