He Gets Wrapped Up in Other People's Lives
by Leslie Bennetts, The New York Times, Dec. 12, 1982
temperamentally unsuited to his profession, he had left New York "in the most profound kind of
confusion" to roam around Europe and the United States.
"I was traveling like some sort of pilgrim in search of an urging," the actor recalled the other day. "I
didn't know what I was going to do."
No one knew where he was or how to get in touch with him, and he hadn't been in contact with his
agent in months. But suddenly, while fishing in Minnesota, Mr. MacNicol was struck with the urgent
thought that he should call New York. "It was the most compelling kind of voice," he said, "the kind that
says, 'Hurry home, you left the oven on.'"
He called, and within hours he was on a plane, trying to make it back to New York for the last day of
casting for the crucial part of Stingo in the film "Sophie's Choice."
"Everyone was assuring that I wasn't going to get the role," Mr. MacNicol added. Among other
problems, Stingo is supposed to be well over 6 feet tall, but the 25-year-old actor is short and slight. "I
bought a pair of cowboy boots with four-inch heels," he reports. "It was like walking in on Folger's
coffee cans."
Audition Does Trick
His audition doubtless had more to do with it than his footgear, but he got the part. And when
"Sophie's Choice" opened to critical acclaim this month, Peter MacNcol was hailed for his portrayal of the
young Southern writer who becomes entranced with the exotic lovers who live upstairs in the same
Brooklyn rooming house.
The role is deceptively difficult. Stingo is an essentially reactive character, who exists less as a
personality in his own right than as a vehicle to reflect and interpret the lives of Sophie, the passionate
Polish Catholic haunted by her experiences at Auschwitz, and Nathan, the charismatic Jewish
intellectual she loves. "Stingo lives in their pauses, and only in their pauses," Mr. MacNicol observed.
He identified strongly with the part, however. "It fitted like a hand in a glove," the actor said. "Finding
the common ground between Stingo and myself was to go into the loneliest country in my own life: his
complete awkwardness, his bashfulness, his uncertainty about himself. We're both off to the side of
things; Stingo watches other people's lives, and that's exactly what I do. I just get wrapped up in other
people's lives." But what about his own life? Mr. MacNicol looked confused, as if startled even to be
reminded he had one. "I'm not very much involved there," he admitted.
Actually, he stared out to be a paleontologist. Growing up in Texas and in Minnesota, he dreamed of
probing for fossils in the Gobi Desert, but a growing interest in theater eventually led him to the Guthrie
Theater in Minneapolis, where he spent two years in repertory. then it was on to New York, which he
promptly left to do his first film, "Dragonslayer." It was a painful experience and precipitated Mr.
MacNicol's crisis of self-doubt over whether he was "too sensitive" for his profession.
But his return to New York brought him the role of the young Southern lawyer in "Crimes of the Heart,"
a performance for which Mr. MacNicol won not only praise but also the admiration of Alixe Gordon, the
casting director for "Sophie's Choice."
At the moment, Mr. MacNicol is rehearsing for the role of a young Communist student in a British public
school in a play called "Another Country" by Julian Mitchell, which will open Jan. 5 at the Long Wharf
Theater in New Haven.
Does he feel more comfortable with his choice of career now?
Mr. MacNicol sighed. "Intermittently," he said, looking glum. "The problem is that I only love acting when
the situation is perfect, which is so rarely is. I'm not one of these people who can just love doing it for
the sake of doing it. It takes you into areas of your own experience that can be unpleasant, even awful.
There are people for whom acting is as natural as respiration, but for me it's always a journey."
