The most unpredictable actor Alfred Hitchcock worked with: “That’s why you’re in this film”
Unpredictability doesn’t seem like something Alfred Hitchcock would enjoy on his sets, with the director earning a reputation for maintaining the utmost level of control over every aspect of his productions.
Whenever anyone signed on to star in the latest offering from the ‘Master of Suspense’, there was only one person who called the shots, and it wasn’t the actors. In fact, Hitchcock didn’t even view actors as being important to the creative process at all, offhandedly dismissing them as “cattle.”
While the legendary filmmaker may have tried his best to distance himself from the longstanding rumour that he despised thespians and saw them only as a means to an end who existed solely to realise a vision that was his and his alone, there’s enough evidence to the contrary to suggest that Hitchcock was hardly a fan of those who performed in his pictures. Unless they were a blonde woman, of course.
Hitchcock did bring out the best in established A-listers like James Stewart and Cary Grant, but things weren’t quite the same when he collaborated with Paul Newman. Casting any actor in any movie can be a crapshoot, but it’s still against type for the director to go out of his way to recruit a loose cannon.
Bruce Dern had already worked with Hitchcock in Marnie, but in the intervening period between their first film together and 1976’s Family Plot, he’d become intrinsically associated with the ‘New Hollywood’ movement, the rise of counterculture cinema, and the seismic shift it caused in the industry.
He’d partnered with Jack Nicholson, Dennis Hopper, Peter Fonda, John Frankenheimer, Sam Peckinpah, Kris Kristofferson, Robert Towne, Harry Dean Stanton, and Robert De Niro in various capacities, so he knew many of the era’s key players. However, unlike the vast majority of them, Dern wasn’t a drug user or a heavy drinker.
That said, his acting style fit perfectly with ‘New Hollywood’, with his wild-eyed charisma and intense screen presence yielding several stellar performances. As he recalled in his autobiography, that was exactly what Hitchcock wanted him to bring to his blackly comedic thriller.
“You know why you’re in the picture?” the director told him. “Because you’re unpredictable. I know the frame is perfect because I have it in my office. And my setup is perfect, but within the setup, I have to be entertained. And you’re entertaining, Bruce, and you’re unpredictable. That’s why you’re in this film.”
A ringing endorsement from one of cinema’s greatest-ever auteurs in what turned out to be their final feature, with Dern earning the rare opportunity to take some risks with his performance, something Hitchcock didn’t afford to many of his actors when he was known to rule his sets with an iron fist.
