For Tony Goldwyn— Scandal's President Fitzgerald Grant—the soft power suit is just one more way to show who's in charge
Show business was either the best thing or the worst thing that happened to me as a young man,” says Tony Goldwyn. “It was very difficult for me to figure out my place in the Goldwyn constellation.” In Hollywood, his famous name may exert a certain soft power of its own. Like President Fitzgerald “Fitz” Grant III, the compelling, morally challenged political scion he portrays on ABC’s Scandal, Goldwyn was born handsome, ambitious and with family in the business. Goldwyn’s grandfather Samuel, the “G” in MGM, was a cornerstone figure in Hollywood’s golden age, dad Samuel Jr a prolific producer and brother, John, a former president of Paramount Pictures. But Tony Goldwyn has proudly made his own path down the red carpet.
Now 54 and an actor-director-producer, Goldwyn was, he remembers, turned down for the first role he auditioned for, in a high school production of Inherit the Wind featuring brother John. In the end he nailed a one-line speaking part as little Timmy. “I yelled, ‘Pa, the train’s comin’ down the track!’ Somehow, that was enough for me. I was hooked.” Into the family business he went.
He also poured energy into projects on the other side of the camera. Three years into a writing collaboration that became A Walk on the Moon, he realised he couldn’t bear to see anyone else direct the project. And so began his estimable career as a director—“kind of organically”. His 2010 film, Conviction, the true story of an innocent man imprisoned for murder, was a leap of faith that took eight years to get before the cameras. Some of its gritty social realism can be glimpsed in The Divide, co-created with Richard LaGravenese, which premiered this summer.
(This story appears in the Nov-Dec 2014 issue of ForbesLife India. To visit our Archives, click here.)