Mandy Patinkin: ‘I Behaved Abominably’

Graeme Mitchell for The New York Times

Mandy Patinkin in Charlotte, N.C., on the soundstage for "Homeland."

It was the fifth take, or maybe the seventh or maybe the ninth. Down in the bowels of Langley, or at least in its reasonable facsimile in Charlotte, N.C., where Showtime's "Homeland" is shot, Saul Berenson, currently the acting director of the C.I.A., was talking to a new hire, a young analyst, Fara Sherazi. Abu Nazir, the mastermind terrorist, was still dead. They were chasing someone else now. There's always someone else.

Photograph by Marsha Patinkin

Patinkin, 5, with his father, Lester, in 1957 in Chicago.

Mandy Patinkin, who plays Saul, was the model of concentration. He spoke softly, thoughtfully, almost to himself. Nazanin Boniadi, who plays Fara, had blown her lines twice, two scenes in a row. She had a lot of technical information to impart and her character had been up all night, wanting to impress her boss. She was rushing. After the second time she went awry, Patinkin looked at her kindly. "You can go slower," he said. "Remember, I'm an old man."

At 60, that is hardly true. Though for Patinkin, getting older has actually meant getting wiser, which for most people is something like winning the lottery. And he needed to win it. If temperamental actors are referred to as "handfuls," Mandy — as he is known in the business, not quite Cher, but close — is the motherlode. He is a man whose abilities and doubts have waged torturous battle for nearly four decades: The Tale of Two Mandys has played as a sideshow to his actual work. Preternaturally talented as both an actor and a singer, Patinkin attended Juilliard but never graduated; he has released seven solo albums, won a Tony Award as Che Guevara in "Evita" and a Tony nomination as the pointillist artist Georges Seurat in Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's Pulitzer Prize-winning "Sunday in the Park With George" (his voice is "a gift from God," Sondheim has said), but cannot read music. Cast in the CBS hit "Chicago Hope" in 1994, he won a best actor Emmy for playing the thorny Dr. Jeffrey Geiger. But while working in L.A., he was so distressed at being separated from his family in New York that he quit. (During his brief run on the show, he also famously confronted Don Ohlmeyer, of NBC, about his "poor sportsmanship" in programming a rerun of the "ER" pilot opposite them for one night.) In 2005, CBS made Patinkin the lead in "Criminal Minds," a series about F.B.I. criminal profilers, but he was so disturbed by its content that after the second season he went AWOL. As the executive producer said at the time, he was "the father who goes out for a carton of milk and then just never comes home." (Patinkin did write personal apology notes to his cast mates, wishing them luck and actually returned to film a final scene.)

Lapine, who directed him in "Sunday" and by his account, happily several times since, told me: "Mandy was a handful on that show, but he's not neurotic, oddly enough. He's myopic. He would lose himself so much in the work, and he was playing an obsessive, which goes hand in hand. He doesn't do things by halves — to prepare, he took a drawing class at the Art Students League of New York. He's just unbelievably intense, maniacally focused. He was never mean, but that intensity may not always be to other actors' tastes."

When Patinkin reigns himself in, he can be magnificent. The "Do Less" Mandy is who Rob Reiner directed in the classic film "The Princess Bride." Playing a world-renowned swordsman wounded by the villainous Six Fingered Man, Patinkin's now-iconic greeting — "Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die" — is a model of restraint, building in force like a symphony movement as he gains the strength to avenge his father's death. His Georges Seurat, brilliantly talented yet so distant and driven that he couldn't connect emotionally with the mother of his child, who leaves him, was heartbreaking. Less Mandy is best Mandy, always has been.

The other Mandy is the "Too Much" Mandy, a sight perhaps less pleasing. This Mandy doesn't just wear his heart on his sleeve, he slices it up and serves it on Triscuits. During a Broadway concert, to highlight the troubles in the Middle East, he ended the show by propping Israeli and Palestinian flags on a table and singing the Israeli national anthem in Hebrew, followed by an angry version of "You've Got to Be Carefully Taught" from "South Pacific." Then the flags were knocked on their sides while the pianist slammed the keys to sound like an explosion. Patinkin followed that with "Children Will Listen" from "Into the Woods." (Post-9/11, he scrapped the flag bit and sang both songs softly, as a lullaby.) On a lighter note, he toured "Mamaloshen," a concert all in Yiddish in which he led the audience in the hokeypokey, also in Yiddish. If you've ever pondered the ultimate meaning of "oy," this is it.

Alex Witchel is a staff writer for the magazine. Her most recent book, "All Gone: A Memoir of My Mother's Dementia. With Refreshments," will be out in paperback this fall.

Editor: Sheila Glaser

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