'24' actor Haysbert never too 'Far From Heaven'
By Susan King
Los Angeles Times
Dennis Haysbert brought tears to the eyes of writer-director Todd Haynes when the actor auditioned for the role of the gentle, intelligent gardener Raymond in "Far From Heaven." And his delicate, honest performance in the acclaimed drama has been causing many a tear to well up ever since.
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"He ended up being the very first person who ever read a scene from the film to me," Haynes says. "There was no one who completely fit the role in so many aspects. He understood the character, but he also understood the meter of this kind of (spare) writing and this kind of acting — without doing anything over big. He is very quiet and contained."
Julianne Moore and Dennis Haysbert play a housewife and a gardener who enter an unlikely friendship in "Far From Heaven."
"Far From Heaven" is Haynes' homage to the "women's films" made by director Douglas Sirk in the 1950s — films such as "All That Heaven Allows" and "Written on the Wind" that present a picture-postcard world on the surface, disguising the universe's ugly underbelly of lies, deceit, gossip and hate.
Haysbert also has attracted attention on the small screen, as President-in-crisis David Palmer in the Fox network's serialized thriller, "24."
Relaxing in a hotel lounge on a recent rainy morning, the 6-foot-4 Haysbert, 48, is charming and friendly despite battling a bad cold.
On his right hand he's wearing a brace: He recently broke his hand doing an intense scene for "24."
This season, Palmer is trying to prevent a nuclear attack on Los Angeles, but Haysbert won't discuss the particulars of the scene in which he injured himself, "otherwise," Haysbert adds, smiling, "I'd have to kill you."
Set in Connecticut in 1957, "Far From Heaven" finds Raymond, a black widower with a young daughter, falling in love with white housewife and mother Cathy (Julianne Moore), who has just discovered that her emotionally distant husband (Dennis Quaid) is gay. As Cathy and Raymond become closer, though, they find their budding relationship the object of gossip and prejudice.
Haysbert had seen only one Sirk film, the 1959 melodrama "Imitation of Life," which deals with racial prejudice.
"It's one of my favorites," he says. But he didn't watch any of Sirk's other films before production began because "everything I needed was in the script. The film draws you in. You think you are in this kind of 'Donna Reed,' 'Father Knows Best,' 'Leave It to Beaver' world, and then you see this terrible underbelly.
"You start to see the world as it truly is rather than the one that people want you to see. All Raymond wants to do is live his life."
In one sequence that captured his heart, Raymond takes Cathy to a black bar and grill to illustrate to her what it is like to be the only one among many.
"I have never read a scene that was written like that," Haysbert says. "I have never seen where it actually turns the tables and said, 'Oh yeah. I am indeed alone, the only one, but there are places where I am one of many and the situation is reversed.' I bring her in to kind of teach her that.
"In a way Cathy and Raymond's biggest flaw is their hope, the wish for a different way the world could be. But the world is much less open than they are as people, and they are burned by it."
