We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful George Gallagher. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with George below.
Alright, George thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.
“I first knew that I wanted to be an actor when I was about four or five years old after having seen the Superman films starring Christopher Reeve. I told my mother I wanted ‘to be Superman.’ Like many youngsters before me, I ran around the house with many a cape and makeshift costume, tried flying off of the furniture (and contemplated the roof), and attempted to run faster than a moving locomotive. At some point, she told me that I would never be able to inherit Kryptonian superpowers, BUT I could become an actor like Superman, go to Juilliard, and pretty much become whatever I wanted to be. That always stayed with me, and I took advantage of opportunities when presented to perform growing up. Years later, I found my acting mentor, the late and great Harold Guskin – who coincidentally – and I had no idea that this was the case when he accepted me as a private student – was the private coach to none other than my childhood hero, actor Christopher Reeve. There are no accidents in this life. Nothing can stop forward progress. Nothing. Except us.”
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
“I want to inhabit roles that make people question the status quo and that inspire, illuminate, and elucidate timeless facets of the human condition. We are living through a time of great transformation, where new ideas are being readily embraced, but if one really examines them closely, they aren’t really that new. Paul McCartney had a great saying, ‘We pushed the establishment, but it came back.’ There is something magical about classical archetypes in story and in life. I was always moved as a child by the original Star Wars series and the influence of Joseph Campbell’s ‘The Hero with a Thousand Faces.’ Gary Cooper, Kirk Douglas, Bette Davis, and of course Brando, Dean, Clift, etc., these artists embodied roles that fit certain archetypes that I feel will make a resurgence in our modern times. Most recently, playing characters who fight for justice in a less than perfect world. Paul Newman’s character in ‘The Verdict’ is one that I was always drawn to. I like flawed heroes and anti-heroes, someone who defends those that others would not, who champions the underdog.
My first leading role was as Brick in Tennessee Williams’ ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,’ a character filled with ambiguity and contradictions, who is at the brink of letting go of his life completely but just keeps one toe in the water of life because others won’t let him go and perhaps because, on some level, he isn’t entirely finished just yet. Williams is hailed by many critics as the greatest classical American playwright and for good reason. He uses these archetypes in a way that combines poetry and layers that the great storytellers of old have readily embraced. Those classic Hollywood stars I mentioned before weren’t always necessarily one-dimensional. When I teach acting, I try to encourage actors to embrace the ambiguity of their characters. One of my mentors, Gene Frankel, used to say, ‘Great actors do not ignore or erase contradictions of character; instead, they willingly embrace them.’ It is our job as storytellers to explore that argument and through art, explore and hopefully discover some objective truth in real-time. If we are too certain about everything, where is the joy of discovery? Sometimes we never find that objective truth by the end of the story, but it’s the pursuit of truth that makes the journey worthwhile.”
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
“I wish I had known that doing everything one can do to get opportunity and exposure with the aim of achieving some outcome or professional elevation isn’t necessarily superior to quality. Don’t get me wrong; you can stay in art school forever or acting class, whatever your pursuit is, and that’s not the aim either. But far too many people in the digital age are more concerned with exposure or ‘getting an agent’ or ‘getting work’ than the quality of their artistry and what story they want to tell. I wish I had understood how to balance those two aspects of being an artist earlier on.”
Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?
“I wish I had known that the actor’s instinct and creation are senior to antiquated techniques that teach actors to deconstruct and reverse engineer art to the point where one loses the impetus to create entirely. I think far too many conservatories use one-size-fits-all approaches that don’t necessarily work for everyone and have nothing to do with what an artist really does. For example, the best way to mess up a baseball player who is having a hitting streak is to ask them to break down their swing for you. As soon as they start trying to reverse engineer a great swing, they get self-conscious and they are no longer in a state of flow – the same goes for the artist. That doesn’t mean there aren’t certain underlying principles one can learn, but frequently, I see people getting overly intellectual about the process, and I think that can really be a hindrance to one’s progress and it can KILL motivation.”
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2483499/
- Instagram: georgegallagher7
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GeorgeGallagher/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/george-gallagher-47593b6
- Youtube: https://youtu.be/HMMLMT7_0a4
- Other: www.theactorsinstinct.com
Image Credits
Photos by Gary Robinson. I have rights and permission to share these photos