John C. Reilly on the “Physical Wear and Tear” of Becoming an Actor
John C. Reilly isn’t just a fantastic comedic actor, as it’s long been considered conventional wisdom to say. Anyone who has seen Reilly in his dramatic parts knows he can play the clown as effectively as the tragic hero. Reilly’s latest theatrical performance is his portrayal of Los Angeles Lakers owner Jerry Buss in HBO’s limited series Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty. In an interview with Vulture regarding the part, Reilly said that an actor must do everything possible to maintain their fitness for a role.
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When asked if he has difficulty distancing himself from his characters after seeing them onscreen, Reilly replies, “At the end of a night, a violinist gets to put his violin in its case. If it gets broken, he takes it to the luthier, and they fix it. But actors are their own instruments, and we have to perform maintenance on ourselves. You have to come back after these jobs that take a lot out of you emotionally. Physical wear and tear is another thing people don’t realize. It’s like, Just slam your hand on the table one time. No big deal. But then I slam my hand on a table 25 times from three different angles, so by the end of the day, it gets messed up.”
John C. Reilly tells a hilarious tale about the personal “maintenance” he went through to prepare for the emotional ups and downs of the part in which his assistant directors thought he had a typical “movie star” fit at his assistant:
“All the usual stuff, like taking care of myself physically. But one of the main things I had to meditate on was not letting the power of my position go to my head. When you’re on a show like Winning Time, it’s in everyone’s vested interest that you are happy and stable, so they’re always trying to make you feel important. I like to be self-reliant because you can get spoiled really quickly. Once, I was running lines in my trailer. I think it was one of the early scenes where I rip Jerry West a new one. And I realized nobody had come to tell me when it was time to go to set. I went to the ADs like, ‘Hey, why didn’t you guys let me know it was time?’ They were afraid to knock on the door because they thought I was screaming at my assistant. I was like, ‘We were running lines! Come on, you guys. You know I’m not like that.'”
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