Charles Grodin

The Art of the Poker Face

Charles Grodin never asked permission to be disliked. He had an almost scientific knack for playing self-satisfied men who ended up devoured by reality. In 1972, he starred in The Heartbreak Kid, where he laid the foundations of a style no one has been able to replicate with the same mean streak. He didn't need theatrics because his best weapon was a silence held one second longer than what is socially acceptable.

Before getting into film, he trained with Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio. But Grodin did not fit the intense drama of the era. He preferred dry comedy and complete control of timing. In 1968, he had a small part in Rosemary’s Baby, where his ability to be unsettling and mundane at the same time was already evident. Director Roman Polanski wanted a naturalness that the actor delivered effortlessly.

And it worked.

During the shoot of The Heartbreak Kid, screenwriter Neil Simon realized Grodin could deliver the cruelest lines with an expression of total innocence. That film earned him a Golden Globe nomination. But the actor refused to be blinded by Hollywood's spotlight and preferred to keep a foot in Broadway, where he wrote and directed his own stage plays. He was never a puppet of the studios.

A supporting player who ran the set

In 1988, he shot Midnight Run alongside Robert De Niro. They are one of the best pairings in the history of action movies, even though the process was a constant clash of methods. De Niro improvised to chase physical intensity. Grodin responded with a passive-aggressive calm that drove his co-star up the wall. The result was a strange chemistry that rescued a production that, on paper, looked like just another buddy movie.

He was a master of the pause.

But his career took a different turn when he accepted the role of George Newton in Beethoven in 1992. Many critics did not understand why an actor of his caliber would agree to fight for the frame with a Saint Bernard. The film grossed $147 million worldwide. Grodin understood the business better than anyone, and he knew that this commercial success allowed him to fund his true passion: writing and political commentary.

In 1995, he decided to step away from filming for a while. He had grown tired of the waiting and the luxury hotels. So he signed a deal with CNBC to host his own talk show. He was not a gentle host. He treated politicians with the same skepticism he brought to his fictional characters, and that earned him a loyal audience looking for something different from the usual noise of American television.

Nobody could tell if he was serious.

His appearances on Johnny Carson's show are required study in acting schools. Grodin invented an arrogant, rude character who pretended to be angry at the host. The audience split between those who got the joke and those who called the network to demand he be fired immediately. He made 36 appearances on David Letterman's show, always maintaining that same facade of an insufferable guy.

In 2014, he returned to movies with a supporting role in While We're Young by Noah Baumbach. He took the job because the script had the intelligence he had always demanded from his projects. He wasn't seeking redemption or a final round of applause. In 2017, he appeared in his last film, An Imperfect Murder, alongside Sienna Miller and Alec Baldwin.

Charles Grodin died on May 18, 2021 at his home in Wilton, Connecticut. He was 86 years old. The official cause of death was bone marrow cancer. His film legacy amounts to 55 credits as an actor and an Emmy Award won in 1978 for writing a special for Paul Simon.