Bridgeport Native Brian Dennehy, Veteran Actor, Dead At 81
Sad news: Bridgeport-born actor Brian Dennehy died Wednesday night at home in Connecticut of natural causes at the age of 81. The death was not Covid-19 related.
The veteran actor appeared in many shows on Broadway and in Connecticut, including several at Long Wharf Theatre. Dennehy, who received the Monte Cristo Award from the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in Waterford, won two Tony Awards for Best Actor for “Death of a Salesman” in 1999 and for "Long Day's Journey Into Night.” in 2003. He also starred in O’Neill’s “Desire Under the Elms” on Broadway on 2009. He was also in O’Neill’s “The Iceman Cometh,” in a production starring Nathan Lane at Brooklyn’s BAM.
This is an interview I did with him in advance of a production of “Krapp’s Last Tape” at Long Wharf Theatre in 2011., (He also did “Endgame” and “Hughie” at the theater. as well as a special presentation of “Love Letters” with Mia Farrow.
By Frank Rizzo
In Samuel Beckett's "Krapp's Last Tape," an old, grizzled man looks back at his life, going through boxes of audio tapes he has recorded annually since he was 39. As he listens to his ambitious younger self, it presents an occasion for reflection, comedy and a stark look at human existence.
The Long Wharf Theatre production of the absurdist one-act play, which opens Tuesday, Nov. 29, in New Haven, is also an occasion for actor Brian Dennehy to take on the role he has performed to acclaim at Chicago's Goodman Theater in 2010 and in Canada's Stratford Shakespeare Festival in 2008.
I met with the 73-year-old actor as he began a new set of rehearsals and asked him what he imagined of his future self when he was 39.
"When I was 39 I wanted to get as far away from this as I could," says Dennehy sitting at a wooden table in the theater's rehearsal hall. "This," he says, was "working as an actor in the theater.
"I wanted to be in the movies. I wanted to be a television star. I wanted to make some money."
Dennehy did work a lot in '80s films: "First Blood," "Gorky Park," "Cocoon," and "Silverado," among others, When he was 39 he won the Best Actor Award at the 1987 Chicago International Film Festival for his leading role in writer-director Peter Greenaway's film "The Belly of an Architect." More film and TV roles followed such as "Cocoon: the Return," "Best Seller," "Baz Luhrman's Romeo & Juliet" and "Presumed Innocent." Though he was always employed (he's appeared in more than 100 films and TV movies), the starring roles in major films eluded him.
"And thank god, for the intervening 30-plus years," he says. "I kept doing this. And now I don't have a movie career or TV career for that matter because I committed the greatest sin you can commit in this country — which is to get old. They don't want old people on TV or in the movies. The point is I always had thisand about 15 years ago I realized that this is what I only cared about."
Dennehy was a sensation when he took on the role of Willy Loman in "Death of a Salesman," winning his first Tony Award in 1999. His second, in 2003, was as James Tyrone in "Long Day's Journey into Night" by Eugene O'Neill, a playwright to whom Dennehy had found a special connection.