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Timothy Hutton – Prince of Theives

Posted on 20. Dec, 2008 by Administrator in Profiles

words by Devoe Yates

Amidst the throes of our current economic crisis, where the territory between the wealthy and impoverished seems to have grown to an epic girth under the outgoing Republican administration, it’s comforting to think that somewhere out there, there is a modern day Robin Hood. Someone is out there who can balance the playing field and affect these nefarious financial bohemoths, take their holdings and redistribute them to the people who have been wronged by their very institutions. Even if we can’t have this glorious Robin Hood in real life, at least we can have him in the form of Timothy Hutton’s Nathan Ford, the leader of a band of such honorable thieves in TNT’s new series Leverage.  

In Leverage, produced by Dean Devlin (Independence Day, Stargate), Hutton plays one of the best detectives that an insurance company can buy, finding stolen relics and saving them millions of dollars. But when Nathan Ford’s employer refuses to pay out the money needed for his dying son’s “experimental” treatments, Nate loses his son and turns his talents against those he once had faith in – corporations built on perilous greed. At Hutton’s side is a crew of seemingly reformed grifters: a computer geek, a sultry femme fatale, a brawny ass-buster, and a thrill-seeking demolitions/stunt gal, all out to give sneaky lying corporations the come-uppance they deserve. Having just begun this December, Leverage promises to be a slightly nutty series of complex capers with a good amount of fun slickness thrown in to make it worthy of a take out meal and some microwave popcorn
on a Tuesday night. 

Timothy Hutton is no stranger to the realm of television, having starred in A&E’s A Nero Wolfe Mystery series and NBC’s short-lived Kidnapped fiasco. But it was the lure of a heist series that brought him back once again. “I like heist adventures, the Ocean Elevens and the Mission Impossibles, but I especially like the idea of it being done not for personal gain but to give it back to somebody who’s been ripped off or taken advantage of, that makes it even more fun in a way.” 

  And while he’s probably best known for his prolific film career, to Hutton, there’s little difference between the worlds of television and film. “It’s the material. To me, it doesn’t feel like jumping back and forth. It’s the same equipment, the same crew, the same stages. With television, the schedule might be a little tighter, but it’s not really any tighter than a really good independent film. So, it really comes down to the material.” 

 A key to any great heist extravaganza is the sum of its many quirky characters, and the chemistry found within their playful interactions. With the cast of Leverage, Hutton admits things seemed to fall into place rather easily. “It’s one of those things; it either works or it doesn’t. In our case it worked from the first day when we were filming the pilot in Chicago. We were spending a lot of our off time together, we went out to dinner every night and spent a lot of time on the set just talking about, not the show at all, but life stuff, experiences. We all found a connection right away.” 

photo by Michael Muller

 But I wonder if any of these fresh faces on the acting scene were at all intimidated by Hutton’s wealth of experience, having won an Oscar at age 19 for his role in Robert Redford’s Ordinary People, and gone on to work with the best of the best, from director Sidney Lumet (Daniel), to acting powerhouse George C. Scott. Hutton replies, “No, once you’re cast in a show, everyone is on equal footing. They all know their characters so well, I certainly wouldn’t have anything new to say. All of them
are so incredibly inventive.” 

 As for Hutton’s own take on acting, he is humble, citing that his process is the product of many amazing teachers. “In the beginning, I probably had a little bit of a sense of what I was doing. When I started out I just watched how other people on the set were conducting themselves, how they were preparing. I just wanted to be as prepared as I could and show up with ideas and see how those ideas worked in rehearsal – and then modified them as need be. I found that the best way to approach it was on the job. But you learn from everybody, every single person. Everyone I’ve worked with I’ve learned something from. I absorbed the way in which they approached their day’s work because everybody has their own way of doing it. And you remember it, sometimes not consciously at first, but when you’re approaching something and you have to make a creative decision, you realize after the fact that it was probably working with Lumet or Redford or Schlesinger or somebody else that pulls you through a certain situation.”  Hutton also believes acting to be a sport of sorts, remarking, “You get better and more comfortable
the more you play.”

And nowhere did Hutton seem more comfortable than in the shoes of Conrad Jarrett in Ordinary People. One would wonder if winning an Oscar at such a young age would put a terrible weight on Hutton’s shoulder in terms of his ensuing career choices. “No, I felt like Ordinary People didn’t really have anything to do with anything else that I may or may not have chosen to do. It was its own thing. I mean, again, I was fortunate the Sidney Lumet script for Daniel came along and the Taps script came along. But no, there wasn’t a time where I said, ‘Now I have to do a certain kind of movie.’ There is no formula for success, and there are a lot of movies that start out very well thought out and well intended to be something that will appeal to or move audiences, but they don’t always turn out that way, so there’s no real science to it. So, either it has magic on it and it turns out to be a beautiful and compelling story-work, or in some cases it doesn’t. You just want to do things that you feel are interesting stories and that’s about as far as you can take it.” 

Presently, Leverage promises to be an interesting and fun bit of storytelling. While each episode has its own self-contained caper, there are story arcs that spread over the first season and beyond. Hutton teases slyly: “There are certain things with each of the characters that you see glimpses of in the first couple of shows, and those play out as the season goes on. One of them is how Nate’s going to control or not control his drinking, and how that’s going to affect his work. The other thing is the fact that all of these people worked alone before, and not as a group, and whether or not they’re going to want to stay together and keep doing this thing or go back to what’s more familiar and more comfortable. Those are some of the dynamics that happen
in the first season.” 

In times such as these, it’s more than enjoyable to see the slippery eels in the corporate world get what’s coming to them, and though it may not be certain what’ll happen to Hutton’s band of swindlers,
it is comforting to know that an actor of his caliber is leading the
charge, humbly and happily. 

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Tags: Dean Devlin, Leverage, Timothy Hutton