How Patinkin overcame perfectionism

Mandy Patinkin hopes one word defines his life and career: “connect,” said Rachel Syme in The New Yorker. The need to connect to other human beings was a key theme in Sunday in the Park With George, the 1984 musical that Patinkin, a legendary Broadway countertenor, calls the artistic project of his life. Younger fans might know him as Saul on Showtime’s Homeland. For most of his storied career, Patinkin, who trained at Juilliard with Robin Williams and William Hurt, was crippled by perfectionism. “I’ll give you a beautiful story,” says Patinkin, 67. One day on a walk, his son Gideon said, “I watched you suffer over things that I could never understand, because I was there and I saw it and it was great. I watched you suffering, and I learned that it was for nothing.” Patinkin wept. “All that suffering ended up being a gift to my sons,” he says, “who knew that it was never worth it.” One role Patinkin always relished was his portrayal of the Spanish swordsman Inigo Montoya in The Princess Bride. “I got to train with the Olympic fencing coach from Yale for two months before I went to England,” he says, “then the movie opens and it was a modest success,” only to become his generation’s Wizard of Oz. “I pinch myself every time that I got to be that guy.”

Hayek’s struggle with stereotypes

Salma Hayek took a gamble by moving to Hollywood nearly 30 years ago, said Candice Frederick in Elle. She was the star of the wildly successful soap opera Teresa in her native Mexico, but colleagues told her that American studios wouldn’t cast someone like her. “They were not hiring Latinas,” Hayek says, “unless it was the maid or the prostitute.” Her break came when director Robert Rodriguez asked her to audition for the 1995 action film Desperado. She and other Latina actresses faced one unexpected marquee competitor: “Cameron Diaz was huge at the time,” says Hayek, 54. “Her last name was Diaz, so [the studio] said she can be a Mexican.” In the end, Hayek landed the role. During filming, she was told to perform a sex scene that wasn’t in the script. “I flipped out,” she says, viewing it as a classic case of oversexualizing Latina characters. Hayek finally agreed to do the scene on a closed set. In 2002, Hayek earned an Academy Award nomination for Frida; she was nonetheless disappointed that the film wasn’t widely seen. While discussing the ongoing prejudice facing Latina actors, Hayek stops herself. “What needs to be a stronger conversation is the kids that were separated [from] their parents” at the U.S.-Mexico border, she says. “What happened to them?”