The actor John Goodman waited 40 years to work with: “He’s just an interesting man”
Being a beloved character actor means that you get to work with some of the best stars in the business. This is especially true if you happen to be a favourite of the Coen brothers.
Since his collaboration with the Oscar-winning duo began in 1987, John Goodman has appeared in six of their movies — Raising Arizona, Barton Fink, The Hudsucker Proxy, The Big Lebowski, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, and Inside Llewyn Davis. The directors usually reserve their greatest monologues for him and make him the most outlandish character of every film, whether he’s playing a volatile Vietnam War veteran or a one-eyed Bible salesman.
Even beyond his work with the Coens, Goodman has had an undeniably starry career. He’s worked with Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, and even David Byrne, and acted alongside legends like Peter O’Toole, Denzel Washington, and Charlize Theron. He might not be an A-lister like George Clooney or Matt Damon, but he still manages to upstage all of them.
Despite the respect he’s garnered in the industry over the years, even John Goodman is capable of being starstruck, especially when the star in question is someone he’s looked up to for decades. In 2012, he appeared in the Ben Affleck thriller Argo, which chronicled the covert operation to rescue six diplomats from the US Embassy in Tehran in 1979 by staging a fake science fiction movie shoot. In the film, Goodman plays the Oscar-winning makeup artist John Chambers, who recruits a powerful producer, played by Alan Arkin, to create the script for the fake film.
Goodman was thrilled to work with Arkin. In an interview with Uproxx, the actor revealed that he’d been wanting to work with the Oscar winner ever since he saw him in Norman Jewison’s 1966 comedy The Russians Are Coming the Russians Are Coming. Arkin’s performance as a Russian military officer tasked with freeing a grounded submarine off the New England coast earned him his first Oscar nomination and leading man status.
“I’ve always admired him,” Goodman said. “He’s funnier than hell, and dry, because he just tells the truth. There’s no waste.” He was pleased to discover that, even after 40 years of hero worshipping him from afar, Arkin lived up to his sky-high expectations. “Usually when you meet somebody you admire, it’s always a letdown,” Goodman said. “They’re never as good as advertised.”
Luckily, he found that Arkin was still passionate and engaged with his craft, even after nearly six decades in the business. “He’s still interested in acting, which was great because I’d just pick his brains about it, his theories and stuff,” Goodman said. “He’s just an interesting man.”
It would be a cinephile’s dream to be a fly on the wall during those conversations, but at least we can content ourselves with enjoying the scenes in which Arkin and Goodman’s characters dream up the wild Star Wars-adjacent film in Argo. People can spend as much time as they want debating whether Affleck’s thriller deserved the ‘Best Picture’ Oscar, but it’s hard to deny that Arkin deserved a nomination for his performance.
