An Interview with Aidan Quinn

Abstract

When Aidan Quinn appeared in his first movie, Reckless, in 1984, he was widely extolled as the latest incarnation of either James Dean or Montgomery Clift. With his troubled, brooding sensitivity, slender good looks, and soulful eyes, Quinn rode through high school corridors on a motorcycle, wearing a black leather jacket and defying authority figures; the comparisons with Dean and Clift were fitting, if obvious. But there is a scene in Reckless when Quinn, at a high school prom, breaks into a wild dance, springing with abandon around the floor of the gym. It is that ability to release physical tension, to be comfortable with himself, that makes Quinn a very different performer from either Dean or Clift. He is able to act an anguished character like Johnny Rourke in Reckless without being in agony himself. Quinn’s trump card is his ability to play the down-to-earth, ordinary Joe, with the suggestion of subterranean depths of passion. It affords him the opportunity to avoid being typecast as a rebellious outsider and to play a variety of roles, from the AIDS-afflicted gay lawyer in Early Frost (1985) to the family man in Avalon (1990), to the sympathetic mechanic-brother in Benny and Joon (1993). There is a piercing clarity about Quinn’s work; he posseses the gift of penetrating directly to the heart of the material, eliminating the unnecessary.