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Jeff Daniels, 71, Marshals His Deep Experience for ‘The Brink of War’
The Emmy winner takes on one of his most challenging roles to date: President Ronald Reagan
“We want viewers to feel like they were right in that room with us,” Jeff Daniels says of portraying President Ronald Reagan in “The Brink of War.”
Angel Studios
When Jeff Daniels, 71, stepped into the shoes of President Ronald Reagan for the film The Brink of War, he knew the stakes were ridiculously high. The veteran actor wasn’t just portraying a former president; he was also bringing to life the frustratingly tense 1986 summit in Reykjavik, Iceland, where Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev met during a critical moment in history to discuss nuclear arms control.
“This is a very serious movie about what happened on a weekend in Reykjavik when the world was at the edge of total annihilation,” Daniels tells AARP.
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To capture the president without slipping into caricature, Daniels immersed himself in YouTube clips and documentaries about The Gipper and found Reagan’s authenticity in the subtle nuances of his speech and mannerisms. “The word ‘well’ was key for me,” Daniels says, noting how frequently the president began conversations using that word. “The nod of his head, the deliberate hand gestures and the specific way he’d say ‘no’ all helped me get into the role and pull the audience in.”
While the powerhouse cast, including British actor Jared Harris, 64, as Gorbachev and J.K. Simmons, 71, as Secretary of State George Shultz, meticulously stuck to the script, one of the film’s most notable moments was a complete accident.
During a heated exchange, Harris slams his fist down in fury. The force rattles the table, sending a small spoon tumbling off a saucer. Instead of breaking character, Daniels simply reaches out, slowly picks up the spoon, places it back on the saucer, and leans back to stare at it. The room goes silent for 10 agonizing seconds.
Jim Carrey and Daniels played lovable idiots in 1994’s “Dumb and Dumber.”
New Line Cinema/Courtesy Everett Collection
Michael Russell Gunn, the film’s director, was so captivated by the unscripted standoff that he shot multiple angles of the interaction.
“He loved it,” Daniels says. “It allowed Jared and me to just sit in that room and let the pauses happen.”
To capture the suffocating weight of the Cold War endgame, the movie was filmed at the original location: Hōfði House, the building in Iceland where the summit took place. The actors even sat in the exact chairs the world leaders had occupied nearly four decades earlier.
“We want viewers to feel like they were right in that room with us,” Daniels says. “Whether it’s the spoon, those heavy pauses or just trying to understand each other, it’s two people talking, and cameras happen to be catching it. That’s what we were going for.”
‘You become the sum of everything you’ve ever learned’
Growing up in Chelsea, Michigan, Daniels says acting wasn’t on his radar until he joined the theater program as a college student at Central Michigan University, where he discovered a passion for performing. In 1976, he left Michigan for New York City to pursue acting with the Circle Repertory Company.
After learning the ropes in New York’s competitive theater world and acting in Broadway and off-Broadway shows, Daniels starred in his first movie, Ragtime, in 1981. What started as a risky move to the Big Apple turned into a career in film, stage and television that has spanned 50 years. He has won two Emmys: one in 2013, for outstanding lead actor in a drama series for The Newsroom, and in 2018, for outstanding supporting actor in a limited series or movie for Godless.
Daniels played a philandering college-teacher husband in 1983’s “Terms of Endearment,” opposite Debra Winger.
Courtesy Everett Collection
“The longevity of sustaining an acting career over decades is not easy,” Daniels says. “I work as hard now as I did 20 years ago, when I starred in the television show The Newsroom, or even 30 years ago, on Broadway.”
Daniels views acting as a discipline built on decades of accumulated knowledge and drawn from a deep well of experience. It has enabled him to convincingly star in a variety of films, including Terms of Endearment, The Purple Rose of Cairo, Dumb and Dumber and The Martian.
“Maybe it’s wisdom, or maybe it’s just the expertise that comes from having done the same thing so many different ways for the last 50 years,” he says. “You become the sum of everything you’ve ever learned.”
Praise for Meryl Streep
Across a career spanning more than 70 films and 20 television shows, Daniels names his two-time costar Meryl Streep, 77, with whom he appeared in Heartburn (1986) and The Hours (2002), as the colleague who set the standard for him.
Daniels explains that it’s not unusual to see actors come to the set with their script, checking their lines or even learning them for the first time. But not Streep.
“She came in completely ready on take one,” Daniels recalls. “She knew the material inside and out. If you weren’t equally prepared, it was hard to keep up.”
Working alongside the award-winning actor transformed Daniels’ approach to his work, a lesson he has carried ever since. Today, he passes the same ethos on to the actors at his own playhouse, The Purple Rose Theatre Company, in his Michigan hometown.
“I tell them, ‘You can be good, or you can be great, but good is a close cousin to good enough,’” he says. “The people who are great outwork the people who are just satisfied with being good, and I saw that when I got to work with Meryl.”
‘You might be surprised by what you learn’
Daniels has been married to his high school sweetheart, Kathleen, for 47 years and raised three children. To him, wisdom is one of aging’s most underrated perks, especially in a world where people decades younger are often convinced they already have all the answers.
“If they’d ask, we could probably tell them a few things that might help,” Daniels says, smiling. “But I’ve learned that you have to wait to be asked; you can’t just offer unsolicited advice to someone who hasn’t lived enough life to want it. Telling them ‘Let me tell you what to do’ doesn’t work.”
For Daniels, patience is key.
Daniels and Olivia Munn starred together in “The Newsroom,” which ran for 25 episodes across three seasons from 2012 to 2014.
HBO/Courtesy Everett Collection
“If my kids come to me and ask, that’s when I can share what worked or what didn’t in my own life,” he says. “It reminds me of that John Prine song ‘Hello in There.’ If you sit down and talk to someone older than you, you might be surprised by what you learn.”
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