Jeff Goldblum brings his quirky style to Broadway on Astini News
(CBS News) - For the past 35 years, actor Jeff Goldblum has been delighting and confounding audiences in movies like "The Big Chill," "The Fly" and "Jurassic Park."
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Currently, he's starring on Broadway in "Seminar," a new comedy about a relentlessly critical writing teacher who leads his students through the crises of confidence, emotion and relationships in a private writing class.
On "CBS This Morning," Thursday, he spoke with Gayle King and Erica Hill about the role and his real-life role as an acting teacher.
"I'm a very passionate teacher," Goldblum said. "I love to do it. I had great teachers myself... Sanford Meisner encouraged us to be unlike anybody else -- encouraged us to find our voices, like this guy is telling his students to be."
In "Seminar," Theresa Rebeck's new play, four aspiring, young novelists sign up for private writing classes with an international literary figure, played by Goldblum. Under his unorthodox instruction, some thrive and others flounder as innocence collides with experience and wordplay turns vicious.
"These are people who want to be involved in creative things," Goldblum said of his onstage students. "That means that they have to be -- bring all of themselves to it and learn quick and hard lessons. So I rip band-aids off psychologically and ego-wise."
Goldblum is best-known for his eccentric, nerdy, and quirky characters and his stuttering/halting style of speech involving head movements and hand/finger gesticulations. He said that he has always had a love of acting and that it is still very much with him today.
"I was given a gift of passion early on," he said. "In high school, I would write on my shower door, when it was steaming - I would write, 'Please, God, let me be an actor,' and then wipe it off."
Goldblum also discussed his other love interest, Canadian gymnast and acrobat, Emily Livingston. She recently coaxed him out of his comfort zone and on to a flying trapeze for the first time.
"It was fantastic, but scary," he said about the experience. "Just like everything worthwhile."
