An Interview with Eric Roberts

Abstract

Eric Roberts comments on his performance style as a young actor: “I was really out there, man.” Indeed, Roberts possesses an astonishing intensity in his earliest film work—King of the Gypsies (1978), Star 80 (1983), The Pope of Greenwich Village (1984), and Runaway Train (1985)—each in their own way a spectacle of explosive, unbridled passion. Roberts’ hyperkinetic physical presence is counterbalanced by the suggestion of a hidden inner life, an unspoken, supressed text of pain and vulnerability only thinly disguised by motion and chatter. Two of Roberts’ favorite performances, adaptations for PBS—Nathaniel West’s Miss Lonelyhearts (1983) and Willa Cather’s Paul’s Case (1980)—display the actor in a contemplative mode. In both instances, Roberts has little recourse to language, and the performances rely on Roberts’ moody, haunting sensitivity to convey his characters’ silent suffering. Like most successful film actors, Roberts has a special relationship to the camera—his expressive face is like a screen registering the extraordinarily subtle range of his feelings. Paul’s Case and Miss Lonelyhearts give Roberts an opportunity that has been all too rare in his career: to focus on the internal rather than the external dynamics of emotion.