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By Jane Wollman Rusoff. Sent by Cordula.
MANDY PATINKIN has three great passions: his family, his career, and his toy train collection. ("I have every single Lionel train my father bought me from the age of nine. I love my trains more than anything. My favorite periodical is Classic Toy Trains. I take it to bed with me just like I did when I was a little kid.")He is a true mensch. He recently gave up his Emmy Award-winning role as Dr. Jeffrey Geiger on the CBS series Chicago Hope because shooting in L.A. took away too much time from his wife and two sons in New York. ("I had cumulative mental and physical exhaustion. I was gonna lose my family. We were gonna fall apart if I kept it up. I'll reconsider going back to the show on a weekly basis in nine years, when my boys are away at school.") He still appears on the program occasionally, and will be back on April 29 and May 6 to plug The Big Apple Clown Care Unit, a real organization that sends clowns into hospitals to cheer up sick kids.
He is a seventeen-year veteran of musical theatre, and a Tony winner for his role as Che Guevara in Evita. He had hoped to reprise the role on film, but ultimately lost out to Antonio Banderas. ("I did that thing in 1979 and 1980, and I've heard about a movie every single day since. At one time, Oliver Stone was going to use me, with Meryl Streep as Evita. We were all set to go to Argentina, and then the whole thing fell through. Antonio Banderas is a great actor and, I'm afraid, a little younger than I. So he got the part, and I lose, and that's showbiz.") He denies Larry King's report that he would like to sing for Banderas in the film. ("No, I would not like to sing for him. When I sing, I want to be there.")
He did get to use his pipes for his new CD, Oscar & Steve, which features songs by Oscar Hammerstein II and Stephen Sondheim. He has two more albums in the works, one of classic Yiddish songs, the other of songs about food--a companion to his mother's just-finished cookbook. ("She was getting sick of my calling her every holiday, asking, 'How long do you put the turkey in for?' So I bought her a computer and told her to write a cookbook. It'll have all my favorite things from when I was a kid: tuna burgers and hot dogs and baked beans. It'll probably be called Things Mandy Loves To Eat or Cooking With Mandy's Ma.")
He was born at Mercy Hospital in Chicago, on November 30, 1953, and that's about all he knows about the blessed event. ("I think my mother said I was eager to get out, that I came out in a second.") He did learn he was named after his grandfather, Menachem Mendal. ("But they made my English name Mandel, which means 'nut.' They called me Mandy from the day they brought me home from the hospital. I like it. But in London, they can't deal with it, because it's a girl's name there, flat out.")
His father, who died of cancer at age fifty-two, was in the scrap-metal business. ("That's right--the junk business, which is now called recycling.") His mother was a secretary, and later a Hallmark Card shop owner. ("She was a wonderful mother, who was entirely supportive of a son who wanted to go into a business that terrified her.")
He was a sensitive child who always did his best to avoid fist fights. ("I ran away from many people. I remember in grammar school some bully was after me and I just ran like hell.") He was miserable at South Shore High because the school didn't provide an outlet for his creative abilities. ("My mother said I should go to the Young Men's Jewish Council Youth Center on Chicago's South Side and get involved in acting. But I thought only sissies did that. Then one day in fifth-period lunch, these two huge football players said, 'Hey, we're in this play called Anything Goes and it's a lot of fun.' So I went over, and I never left.")
He continued his dramatic education at the University of Kansas, then went on to the Juilliard School of Drama. He came to New York in the mid-seventies, appearing in many Shakespeare Festival productions before making his Broadway debut in 1977. He appeared in his first film, The Big Fix, the following year. His big movie break came several years later, when he co-starred with Barbra Streisand in Yentl--a romantic lead that required him to bare more than his soul, without the aid of a body double. ("Yes, that's my tush.")
He and his wife, actress-writer Kathryn Grody, live on Manhattan's Upper West Side with their sons--Isaac, thirteen, and Gideon, nine. He says the family is having a great time now that they're all in one place. ("We read stories at night, sit at the table and do homework together, go out for a pizza, take a walk, talk about nothing. Just hang.") They are planning a holiday in Greece this summer, but not before Mandy stars in a BBC film of Arthur Miller's play Broken Glass and a New York stage production of Molière's The Imaginary Invalid. He is also planning a revival of Kiss Me Kate with Bernadette Peters.
He loves to work and has a hard time relaxing, which is one reason he is learning how to meditate. ("I'm not doing it well yet, but I have a feeling I'd really benefit from its calming effects. I'll do anything to calm down.") He was in psychotherapy for nine years--he stopped four years ago--and is now best friends with his former therapist. ("Therapy was great. I learned a lot about how to have a marriage, how to be a family together. My therapist is my greatest teacher.")
He is careful about what he eats, especially before a performance, when he always has the same meal: broiled fish, baked potato, plain pasta, and a banana. ("That meal is very easy to digest. I don't find it coming back to visit me during a big number: 'Hi! I'm your dinner coming out to say hello to the audience!'") He also loves Häagen-Dazs ice cream--sorbet if he's dieting--and bagels. ("My top bagel is an Everything. My second and third favorites, which are really both second, are onion and raisin. I find blueberry bagels a sacrilege. I like Nova on my bagels and red onion, or a nice white onion that's not the kind that kills you, and a slice of tomato. I like my bagel toasted extra-well-done. If there's a burnt bagel in the basket, I'll take it.")
He dresses off-stage exactly as he does for his concerts--his T-shirt, pants, and shoes are always black. He designed this "uniform" because he can't stand to shop. ("If I find a pair of pants that fit, I buy twelve of them. I buy twenty-four T-shirts, and that's it for two years. My memories of shopping are of going with my mother to Marshall Field's as a kid and being taken to the women's bathroom when I had to pee. Now, when I walk into a store, I instantaneously have to pee and have an anxiety attack that there's no men's bathroom.")
He usually sleeps six or seven hours at night, unless he's doing concerts, in which case he needs ten at night and a two-hour nap in the afternoon. He wears a T-shirt or nothing at all to bed and keeps his windows open. His bed is king size, and he likes plenty of covers. ("I sleep on the left side of the bed--that is, the right side, if you're looking at it. I'm on the left, as I'm lying in it. That's stage left, audience right.")
