Five questions with Martin Donovan: Dining with daddy By MEG RICHARDS – The News-Times, May 9, 1997<\/p>\n
Martin Donovan likes a hearty breakfast. At a small restaurant near his Manhattan home, he orders a dish called the Lumberjack – two pancakes, scrambled eggs, bacon, toast and coffee.<\/p>\n
“Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, is it not?” the actor queries between bites. “Isn’t that what your mother told you?”<\/p>\n
Donovan, 39, must be doing something right. A screen veteran who has appeared in about a dozen films, he’s most often identified for his work as the leading man in Hal Hartley’s quietly quirky films such as “Trust,” “Simple Men” and “Amateur.”<\/p>\n
He was critically acclaimed last year for his performance opposite Nicole Kidman in Jane Campion’s “Portrait of a Lady.” His latest film is “Hollow Reed,” Angela Pope’s cautionary tale of child abuse and gay parenting.<\/p>\n
Set in peaceful Bath, England, “Hollow Reed” also stars Joely Richardson, Jason Flemyng and Ian Hart. The movie, which is loosely based on a true story, touches on several hot-button topics and contains some all-too-familiar elements for Americans.<\/p>\n
The young son of a divorced couple is being abused by his mother’s violent live-in boyfriend. His father, played by Donovan, is determined to rescue him. The story grows more complicated because Donovan’s character is gay and Britain’s courts, like those in the United States, don’t favor granting custody of young children to gay parents.<\/p>\n
Born in California’s San Fernando Valley, Donovan says he always knew he wanted to be an actor – his first role was in a high school production of “Bye Bye Birdie.” He later studied acting at the American Theatre Arts in Los Angeles, where he met his wife of 13 years, actress Vivian Lanko. They have two children.<\/p>\n
1. What do you do when you aren’t working?<\/p>\n
Donovan: I don’t really have any hobbies …. I keep telling myself I would like to buy a nice telescope and go out in country and look at the stars with my kids. I know it changed my life when I saw the rings of Saturn from my driveway in my suburban home in Reseda (Calif.). It made me think deep thoughts.<\/p>\n
2. What is the significance of the name of your recent film, “Hollow Reed?”<\/p>\n
Donovan: You would ask that, wouldn’t you? I haven’t a clue! It has something to do with a quote from Pascal… and then somebody said, no it’s not Pascal, it’s somebody else… `a man is just a hollow reed…’ it’s some poetic reference. I don’t know. I feel stupid. (According to Bartlett’s, it’s poet Blaise Pascal’s line: “Man is but a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed.”)<\/p>\n
3. Were there any concerns about how this film would be perceived by American audiences?<\/p>\n
Donovan: No. If you mean American audiences in terms of a mass audience, I’m not interested in a mass American audience, or for that matter any mass audience. That’s not why I’m in it. I’m interested in trying to do intelligent stories that have some relevance to real life. I’m not interested in playing games … not that there’s not a place for entertainment or feel good movies.<\/p>\n
4. There were no big explosions in this movie.<\/p>\n
Donovan: Right, and there were also no easy endings. The characters were far more complex than the characters in your average mainstream film. Even the boyfriend is drawn in a very complex way. There’s a lot of moral ambiguity and I don’t think the ending is particularly satisfying.<\/p>\n
5. What was it like to perform your love scene with Ian Hart?<\/p>\n
Donovan: It was the first gay love scene I’ve ever had. And it was difficult in so far as all sex scenes are extremely difficult. Straight ones are just as bad. If I can get away without feeling like I’ve been humiliated, then I feel I’ve succeeded.<\/p>\n
6. There are so many things about this film that are outrageous on so many levels … was it difficult for you to do as a parent?<\/p>\n
Donovan: I didn’t let that stuff get underneath my skin. First of all, I wasn’t involved with the tougher stuff, with the abuse. I wasn’t around that. All of my stuff was about nurturing the child. I didn’t have to go there, you know? I wouldn’t be able to play a character who would … be physically abusive to a child.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Five questions with Martin Donovan: Dining with daddy By MEG RICHARDS – The News-Times, May 9, 1997 Martin Donovan likes a hearty breakfast. At a small restaurant near his Manhattan home, he orders a dish called the Lumberjack – two pancakes, scrambled eggs, bacon, toast and coffee. “Breakfast is the most important meal of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[45],"tags":[13],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.martindonovan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.martindonovan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.martindonovan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.martindonovan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.martindonovan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.martindonovan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":183,"href":"http:\/\/www.martindonovan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24\/revisions\/183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.martindonovan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.martindonovan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.martindonovan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}