here.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\nDavid Alan Grier\u00a0never saw himself as just one thing. Coming of age as a performer, the actor admired the careers of legends like Jackie Gleason,\u00a0stars known for one persona who could pull off brilliant surprises in another. \u201cWhen [Gleason] did\u00a0The Hustler,<\/em> he was so deadly, man,\u201d Grier says, almost in awe. \u201cHe was so bone-chilling and righteous that I always think about that\u2014those kinds of choices. That\u2019s what I\u2019m about.\u201d<\/p>\nSuch fluidity, Grier has learned over the course of more than 40 years as a professional actor, requires patience. This is an actor who graduated from the Yale School of Drama, attending with the likes of\u00a0Angela Bassett<\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0Tony Shalhoub<\/strong>\u00a0and rooming with the late Reg E. Cathey. He broke into movies with the celebrated stage adaptation\u00a0A Soldier\u2019s Story<\/em>\u00a0and Robert Altman\u2019s Vietnam War drama\u00a0Streamers,<\/em> and has won a Tony Award out of four nominations for his extensive work on Broadway. Yet for the bulk of his time in Hollywood, Grier has operated as a kind of comic utility player, stealing scenes between sketch shows, blockbuster movies, and popular sitcoms\u2014oftentimes with a handful of lines. \u201cThis business is very much about saying, Well, you can\u2019t do\u00a0that<\/em>,\u201d he says. Fortunately, Grier didn\u2019t take the message.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n<\/noscript><\/picture><\/span><\/div>\n<\/p>\nStreamers.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/span>\u00a9 United Artists\/Everett Collection.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\nThat things have started changing is a credit to both Grier\u2019s persistence and his talent. Taking on a rare dramatic screen role, the actor gave a quietly riveting, empathetic performance last fall in FX\u2019s\u00a0The Patient<\/em> (streaming on Hulu) as the therapist to\u00a0Steve Carell<\/strong>\u2019s therapist, who\u2019s been kidnapped by a serial killer (Domhnall Gleeson<\/strong>) seeking\u2026some kind of treatment. In other words, Grier plays an imagined version of his character, appearing in fantasized sessions devised by his imperiled patient as a way of working through the terror, tedium, and trauma of his predicament. The part is anything but thin, though\u2014Grier emerges as a nifty narrative conscience, guiding the limited series through to its affecting end. Immediately when he got the script, Grier was all in. \u201cI really wanted to email my team after reading 10 pages,\u201d he says with a laugh. \u201cI had to wait a couple of hours so that they didn\u2019t think I hadn\u2019t read it.\u201d<\/p>\nAnd then he was off, working on the sort of project he\u2019d long been hoping for. \u201cI didn\u2019t know what people were going to say, I didn\u2019t know how they would take it, I didn\u2019t know how they would view it,\u201d he says. \u201cI just took it and ran.\u201d<\/p>\n
Everything Grier learned at Yale continues to guide him today. \u201cWe were trained to have\u00a0careers,<\/em>\u201d he says. He wasn\u2019t taught anything specific about screen acting, or movies and TV at all for that matter. He graduated in 1981. That same year, he made his Broadway debut in the musical\u00a0The First,<\/em> playing baseball icon Jackie Robinson, and eventually received a Tony nod. In 1982, he joined the company of\u00a0A Soldier\u2019s Play,<\/em> as well as the Oscar-nominated film adaptation that soon followed. In 1983, he starred in Altman\u2019s\u00a0Streamers,<\/em> which premiered in Venice; Grier won the festival\u2019s best-actor award jointly with his ensemble. \u201cI got off a really good start, but then I always felt pressure\u2014What am I going to do next?\u201d he says. \u201cAnd no one thought I was funny. I hadn\u2019t really done comedy, and I got the same thing at that point\u2014they were like, \u2018These casting directors have not seen you [that way],\u2019 so I had to establish myself there.\u201d<\/p>\nHe felt the grind of proving himself, particularly in that new arena, as the buzzy projects started drying up. \u201cI was very unhappy. I mean, I was doing a guest part on a TV show, struggling, or doing a play or two,\u201d Grier says. He came out to Los Angeles, feeling \u201cdone\u201d with New York, and filmed the pilot for a sketch comedy called\u00a0In Living Color.<\/em> Months went by with no news. Grier felt prepared to quit the business altogether. \u201cI got these books on law school, and very early on, I was like, I can\u2019t do this, this is not who I am, and this is not what I\u2019m going to do,\u201d he says.\u00a0 \u201cAnd then\u00a0In Living Color<\/em>\u00a0broke out. From then on, it was game on.\u201d<\/p>\nThe irreverent and groundbreaking \u201990s series, created by\u00a0Keenen Ivory Wayans,<\/strong>\u00a0reintroduced Grier as he shined alongside the likes of\u00a0Jim Carrey<\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0Jamie Foxx<\/strong>*,<\/strong>*\u00a0his appearances ranging from goofy to cutting to wildly unpredictable. He felt comfortable, unusually so given the new terrain, because here he found a company, not unlike what he\u2019d experienced every day at Yale or in the stage work where he honed his craft. \u201cWe had a fucking ball,\u201d Grier says of his five seasons on the show. He started receiving offers to do stand-up at dozens of colleges and universities. \u201cI never really entertained the thought of doing stand-up and making that a part of my professional career,\u201d he says. \u201cI didn\u2019t even have an act!\u201d He developed one, in any case, and in all that gained financial freedom, the ability to separate what he needed to do with what he wanted to do.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n<\/p>\nThe Wiz Live!<\/em><\/p>\n<\/span>\u00a9NBC\/Courtesy Everett Collection<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\nSource link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Welcome to Always Great, a new Awards Insider column in which we speak with Hollywood\u2019s greatest undersung actors in career-spanning conversations. In this entry,\u00a0David\u00a0Alan Grier reflects on his decades on stage and screen\u2014and how after a long Hollywood career in comedy, he is finally getting a chance to showcase his dramatic bona fides. Read the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13658,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[27,1516,26],"class_list":{"0":"post-13657","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrity","8":"tag-awards","9":"tag-jumanji","10":"tag-saturday-night-live"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13657"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13657\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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