When Jeff Daniels takes the stage at The Carriage House Theatre this Thursday, in front of a sold-out crowd, he anticipates he’ll be quite relaxed. The actor and musician says it’s much easier for him to face a live audience and blaring stage lights than it is to face a gathering of grips, producers and the heat of soundstage lighting.
“I have less at stake when I walk out with a guitar than when I step out in front of a camera,” he says. “I enjoy it.”
It makes sense. In recent years, Daniels has taken on increasingly serious and heady roles—both on the silver screen and for television.
Until recently, Daniels’ best-known role may have been that of Harry Dunne, the dense sidekick to Jim Carrey’s even denser Lloyd Christmas, in the 1994 slapstick comedy Dumb & Dumber.
These days, however, Daniels is known for his role as Will McAvoy, the cable news anchor who in Aaron Sorkin’s HBO drama The Newsroom delivered a now-viral diatribe on why America is not the greatest country in the world anymore.
More recently, Daniels played NASA’s director, Teddy Sanders, in the box office-smashing, sci-fi film, The Martian, as well as former Apple CEO John Sculley in the Michael Fassbender-starring Steve Jobs.
These kinds of performances are demanding, he says. But getting up on stage, with his acoustic guitar and his son’s band—the Ben Daniels Band—is “a welcome relief.”
“The music is more personal,” he says. “It’s more me. I’m not playing a character. I can take it anywhere I want to take it. I enjoy that creative freedom. That’s not there with acting.”
At 60, the veteran actor, says he knows who he is—more than ever before. But even so, and even though he’s been playing guitar since 1976, he says he is still discovering he is capable of new and exciting things.
For example, Daniels says he used to feel like he had to be funny in order to connect with a crowd. But with his latest album, Days Like These, he says he doesn’t feel that need anymore.
His impassioned speech on The Newsroom also taught him something, which he documented on the song “Now You Know You Can,” a song about not knowing exactly where the road ahead is leading, but understanding that things are going to be all right.
Jeff Daniels plays the Carriage House Theatre at the Montalvo Arts Center in Saratoga Nov. 5 at 7:30pm.
.Jeff Daniels: Success At 60
