Danner on life offscreen
THE BRUCE PALTROW FUND
Blythe Danner’s husband, director Bruce Paltrow, died in 2002 of oral cancer. Danner has been active in the fight against the disease ever since.
“My husband won the first diversity award for helping women and minorities in our business from the Director’s Guild, a very important award to him. So his Bruce Paltrow Fund, under the umbrella of the Oral Cancer Foundation, goes into disenfranchised neighborhoods to give free screenings. It’s a very high rate in those communities.
“We’re trying to get young people to get immunized now against the HPV-16 virus because it’s an epidemic. … It was heretofore an old man’s disease — smokers and drinkers. I think around 2000 it became a young person’s disease. It’s one of the few cancers that hasn’t stabilized.”
HAROLD PINTER
Danner performed Harold Pinter’s “Betrayal” on Broadway with Roy Scheider and Raul Julia. When director Peter Hall had to leave the production, Pinter took over.
Pinter “was very American in his approach. Peter was very musical — he’s a great musician. Harold let us explore all the emotions below the surface, whereas Peter wanted to hit it like an orchestra. Harold wanted us to find the emotions underneath and then ‘sit on it,’ is what he said.”
Pinter’s scripts are known for their carefully placed pauses, written in the stage directions such as “long pause,” “short pause” or, on rare occasions, “silence.”
“There’s only one ‘silence’ in the play. He would say, ‘Longer.’ Roy used to time it. It went from nine to 13 seconds. He was actually timing it on his watch as we were locked in a gaze as he finds out my character is having an affair with his best friend.”