Everybody in the theater business is going to be talking about this New York Times interview with Ned Beatty, who is co-starring (brilliantly) with Ashley Judd and Jason Patric in the current Broadway revival of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof:
Ned Beatty is a movie star himself, though not the big box-office kind. And he says Broadway has come to rely too heavily on celebrities, thrusting them into challenging roles they do not have the acting chops to handle.
Tucking into a plate of shrimp scampi after a recent matinee — hold the angel-hair pasta, per the Atkins diet, please — Mr. Beatty engaged in a candid assessment of his co-stars. He said he very much liked his glamorous colleagues personally: Mr. Patric, best known for the film “After Dark, My Sweet,” and Ms. Judd, who starred in “Ruby in Paradise.” He simply thinks, he said, that they are ill equipped for their parts: Brick, a brooding, boozing former athlete mourning his friend’s death, and Maggie, his long-suffering wife who craves his attention.
Mr. Beatty said of Ms. Judd: “She is a sweetie, and yet she doesn’t have a whole lot of tools. But she works very hard.”
And of Mr. Patric: “He’s gotten better all the time, but his is a different journey.”
Read the whole thing here, instantly.