From pining for Jessie’s girl, to the creepy cosmetics of hisTrue Detectivecharacter, to acting alongside Meryl Streep in new filmRicki And The Flash, Rick Springfield is a man of many faces.
We meet in a small, charmless room in The Rocks, which, despite being spitting distance from the water, is tucked completely out of sight. It’s oddly fitting; here, engulfed by one of the most recognisable vistas in the world, we are hidden, and Springfield can choose his mask at leisure. Yet no matter what the character or environment, there will always be some shade of truth peering from behind the curtain.
“Everybody uses a different approach in acting,” he reflects, his accent an unexpected blend of Californian and Australian. “But whatever that approach is, the idea is to make it seem as real as possible. You need to react in a truthful manner. We would do scenes and Meryl would do different things every time, trying to find the truth of the character. I liken it to playing Cops and Robbers as kids. You believe it at the time with such ease, and what we’re doing here is just an extension of that. Whatever it takes to turn off the critic in your mind so that you can believe your part.
“I’ve been hurt before, so I know the feeling, and when Meryl delivers hard lines like that, it hurts. It really does. You use whatever you can to make it real – I think that’s the bottom line. It’s whatever you can pull in to make that moment work.”
While his latest role as Streep’s bandmate and love interest in Ricki And The Flash is the most prominent billing Springfield has taken of late, he has long been adept at wearing another’s skin. His recurring role on General Hospital spanned many years, and though he attempts to bring as much depth to characters as possible, he finds a truly memorable performance depends on the author.
“In the end, it depends on the writing. I wouldn’t be the first one to say this, but soap opera writing isn’t exactly the best in the world, mainly because it’s a difficult job. To write 60 pages a day is hard. Obviously, the better the writing the better the performance. I just had a role in True Detective, where I only had a couple of scenes, but it moves pretty drastically from scene to scene, and the writing is incredible. So it made those transitions more organic.
“You can’t be stumbling over the writing. If you’re overthinking while you’re working, you’re not connecting. If I’m thinking, say, ‘Wow, this is Meryl Streep,’ you won’t connect. You’ve got to get past all that stuff. I think the writer in me goes over it all when I first read it, and certainly on something like a soap opera they allow you to make changes to make it feel better in your mouth. Writing for TV used to be just terrible, but now it’s pretty amazing.”
Curiously, though his output is firmly placed in real-world representations – the familiar jealousy of ‘Jessie’s Girl’, for instance, or his pub band guitarist in Ricki – Springfield’s writing sensibilities derived from a deep resonance with genre fiction.
“I used to go into a second-hand bookstore when I was a young teenager in Melbourne,” he chuckles, “and I’d buy one book and stack a bunch under it and walk out. My mum knew I was stealing these books, because I had this big cardboard box just full of them. She’d say to my dad, ‘You know, I’m sure Richard’s stealing.’ But I’d read Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke – I love sci-fi and horror. H.P. Lovecraft, Bram Stoker. That was what helped give me a love of the written word, which I then translated into lyrics. I was a big horror fan – I couldn’t get enough Stephen King.”
The mention of King suddenly takes the conversation to another level – it seems we’re both not-so-closeted fanboys. Springfield trumps my own long-distance infatuation, however, having actually met the man.
“Well, when my first novel came out last year, my publisher called and said, ‘You’ve got to look at this.’ It was King’s book, Danse Macabre, and it had been signed, ‘To Rick Springfield. I don’t watch General Hospital, but I sure love your music. Stephen King, 1981.’ I’d been on tour with the record while he’d been promoting his book, and we met at a hotel somewhere. He signed it for me and I kept it, but I guess in one of our moves it got lost somewhere. But it found its way to eBay, so my publicist said, ‘We’ll add 600 bucks to your advance, go buy the book.’”
Between Springfield’s writing, the music and the acting, there is great talent and dedication, to be sure – but the overarching lesson he wishes to impart is more practical.
“I think courage. That’s the only thing that can really be traded across them all. I think of them all as being various parts of the same career choice. They come from the same place in me, there’s no hard division. They might each require slightly different tools, but they’re stored in the same place. It’s still me.”
Ricki And The Flash (dir. Jonathan Demme) is in cinemas Thursday August 27.
