The one actor Todd Haynes referred to as an “animal”
Throughout his career, Todd Haynes has been fortunate enough to work with some of the greatest actors in the business. For instance, some of the big names the Los Angeles-born director has collaborated with, including the likes of Julianne Moore, Christian Bale, Ewan McGregor, Cate Blanchett, Richard Gere and Heath Ledger.
Of course, Haynes might not have been able to allure such notable stars to perform for him were it not for the overall quality of his movies and just looking across some of his greatest films, such as Safe, Far from Heaven, I’m Not There and Dark Waters, it’s easy to see why anyone in their right mind would sign up for a Haynes-directed work.
In turn, the result is that those very actors end up dousing Haynes’ moving in their performative quality, so it’s really a sense of give-and-take for the filmmaker. Hayne had once spoken of a time that he worked with an “animal” actor, who gave an acting turn of the utmost intensity in his 2015 film Carol.
Of Kyle Chandler, Haynes once noted in an interview with Pop Entertainment, “What can I say? I just so lucked out. I’ve been watching Kyle’s work and have been amazed by it, as I’m sure most of you have, in Friday Night Lights and films he has been in.” Chandler’s other film roles include the likes of King Kong, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Argo and The Wolf of Wall Street, while he has also made waves on television in Early Additionand What About Joan?
In Carol, Chandler was tasked with playing the husband of Cate Blanchett’s titular character, an affluent woman in 1950s New York City, based on the character from Patricia Highsmith’s novel The Price of Salt. “Casting a man to play opposite Cate Blanchett is not an obvious task,” Hayne had said. “A lot of actors today are just grown-up boys, still wearing baseball caps. You need to have a real grown-up opposite, Cate.”
When Blanchett said that the casting team for Chloe needed an “animal” for the role of Harge Aird, Haynes noted, “We found an animal in Kyle. No, but it’s true. You get what I mean. Just the way he enters that era with such a believability.” Set in the 1950s, Haynes knew that he needed an actor who would be able to look the part, and he referred to Chandler’s role in the TV series Homefront, which was set in the 1940s.
“It just suited him so well,” Haynes said of the first time he saw Chandler wearing Harge’s clothes. “It was just so utterly believable. But this started with the writing, the way Harge is handled as a character, and Richard.” According to Haynes, Patricia Highsmith had treated the men harshly in her novel that Carol was based on, but thankfully, screenwriter Phyllis Nagy managed to bring “a very different complexity and ambiguity to the characters.”
“You felt you understood that they were in a place without any examples around them for what they were going through,” Haynes explained. “They were struggling and not being their very best. They were lashing out at times and being defensive, but they were human. I think just Kyle brings that completely to the film.” However, it was only the “animal” within Chandler that helped the actor take the role in his stride.
