MY LIFE IN 10 PICTURES
Revisit Tim Robbins’ most memorable Hollywood roles.
1976 CHILD’S PLAY
“When I was young, I wanted to go to a performing arts high school,” Tim revealed. “[But my parents] said they didn’t want [their kids] to be professionally trained children.”
1986 DUCK AND COVER
“I was worried at the start,” joked Tim of his first “big job,” the flop Howard the Duck.
“In the comic, it was this cigar-chomping, rude, skirt-chasing duck. And it got kind of cute-ified. [But] I wound up getting paid twice for that movie because of all the overtime. So I think more about that than about the quality of the movie.”
1988 PLAY BALL
“After Bull Durham came out, I got [offered] a lot of knuckleheads,” Tim reflected on his breakout role as pitcher “Nuke” LaLoosh. “Why do the same thing again? You’re kind of a commodify yourself. Become a product. You’re the dim, tall, athletic, funny stud.”
1994 REDEMPTIVE QUALITY
To Tim, the appeal of The Shawshank Redemption (co-starring Morgan Freeman) is obvious. “There are very few movies that portray a relationship between two men that doesn’t involve car chases and scoring chicks.”
2008 FATHER FIGURES
“It’s all a mystery, really,” confessed Tim about his role as parent to sons Miles and Jack Henry as well as Susan’s daughter,
Eva. “Sometimes you get it right, sometimes you get it wrong.… You just keep trying to figure out the best way.”
1992 GUARDIAN ANGEL
Before the Hollywood satire The Player came along, Tim said, “I wasn’t crazy about anything, but I was running out of money. I was on the verge of making a movie I really didn’t want to do. When [Robert] Altman offered me this part, it was like an angel had appeared out of nowhere to save me from all that pablum.”
1995 DEAD WRONG
“When someone says, ‘You’re doing a political movie,’ like about Dead Man Walking, I have a problem with that,” said Tim, who directed the death-penalty drama starring then-partner Susan Sarandon. “I think that if you’re talking about things that change someone’s spirit, or their heart…that’s what a good movie should do.”
2011 NEW REALITY
In Cinema Verite, with Diane Lane, Tim helped recreate the first of TV’s many reality families, The Louds: “It’s kind of a deeper question about the whole society — why are we drawn to the train wrecks?”
2004 RIVER’S EDGE
“It’s a Zenlike thing,” Tim said of 2003’s Mystic River director Clint Eastwood’s quiet style, which led to him and co-star Sean Penn winning Oscars.
2015 ON THE BRINK
“You always must dare to tick off the people in power,” explained Tim about his turn in
HBO’s geopolitical comedy The Brink. “I don’t believe the satirist should be invited to a fancy cocktail party.”