Denis O’Hare is a two-time Emmy Award nominee for his work on the FX series American Freak Show. He has also starred in the HBO series True Blood and the movies Charlie Wilson’s War, Milk, Changeling and Dallas Buyers Club. He and his husband Hugo Redwood live with their son, Declan.
When did you know you wanted to be an actor?
That’s muddy, because I was a musician first. I wanted to be a musician before anything, and I was a pianist and an oboeist and a clarinetist and a violinist, and then I moved into vocal stuff, and then I got into theater via musicals. I went to a Stanislavski class when I was about 16 and fell in love with the idea of acting via Stanislavski.
What has been the biggest obstacle for you?
I think part of the biggest obstacle is your own discipline, and also your own sense of what you can do and what you can’t do, and letting go of misconceptions about yourself and also getting honest about what your agenda is. Because I think people often operate under false pretenses, and they don’t even know what’s making them tick. So for me, for instance, I hate Shakespeare. I don’t like Shakespeare. I don’t want to do it, I don’t want to see it. And yet I labored under the idea that to be a good actor I had to be good at Shakespeare and I had to do Shakespeare. I beat my head against that wall, and when I didn’t succeed I felt like a failure. I realized, I’m not trained for it; I don’t want to do it. I’m a Chekhovian actor, and when I did my Chekhov play, I was really, really happy. So things like that.
What do kids who want to be actors need to know?
Realize that acting is not magic, it’s a craft. You can practice your craft and get better at it. Preparation makes a big difference. Being disciplined about how you work, it takes a long time to learn that kind of stuff.
How important is family to you?
I come from a very large family and a very close family, so of course it’s important to me. There’s no other way to have it.
Did they support your goals?
My mom is a musician. My uncle is a musician, my aunt is a musician, my grandmother is a musician, my father was a businessman. So I think when I told him I wanted to be an actor, he said I don’t know what that’s going to be like for you, but I’m happy to help you do it. You get one shot. If you fail, don’t come crawling back to me. But they’ve always been supportive of me. Incredibly supportive. My mother’s gone now, but my dad, they’re both Republican and very, very Catholic, so they had a hard time with the whole gay thing, but with Irish families, family always comes first. So there was never any question of not accepting me, and they worked very hard at it. They love Declan, they love Hugo, we’re a completely close, tight knit family. My sisters love him. I was just in France with Hugo, and my sister came over and spent five days with us in France. We’re all going to go to Mexico together, all 19 of us in Mexico. That’s not even the whole family. It’s a lot of them, but not all of them.
Did that support help you?
I think it’s vital to have that support because it gives you identity. Who am I, where am I from, what is my trajectory? It also gives you confidence. My mother, when she was dying, I left her side to go to a movie, and as I was leaving she said, you’ll be okay. You’re always okay. Whether or not that’s true, by her saying that it makes it true. You can’t buy that. A parent gives you things nobody else can give you. I think about that, and I tell Declan all the time, I will always come back. I will always come back. I told him this morning, I’m leaving, I don’t know how long I’ll be gone, maybe two weeks, and he said Dada, I’m gonna cry. And I said you don’t have to cry. You can if you want to, but you don’t have to, because I’m going to be back. I’ll be back. And he said, okay.
How important to you is it to be a daddy?
It certainly makes you aware of what you value, and aware of what your responsibility is in passing on those values. It gives you a real sense, at least to me, of community and what my obligation is to the larger community. You’re not living for yourself. Not that any of us do. Hugo and I are very happy as a couple and felt very complete, but having a kid makes you be a grown-up. You’ve got to grow up.
