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| Talented, handsome,
and yes…Neal McDonough is a gentleman too. You may have seen him in
Spielberg’s and Hanks’ HBO mini-series Band of Brothers, or in
Spielberg’s Minority Report for 20th Century Fox, in which he plays
opposite Tom Cruise. He will also be seen in the recently picked-up
show for NBC, Boomtown, as well as in Richard Donner’s upcoming project
Timeline. Although McDonough’s decade-plus acting career has had him playing everything from a killer to a family guy to an idiot, lately he’s found himself taking on a variety of roles of a similar nature — namely the All-American, dependable, tough-guy type of character. “In the last couple of years I’ve been lucky to find out what I’m really good at, and I’m really good at playing that dependable guy, that almost John Wayne-y, Lee Marvin-y type of guy, but, you know, a little more flawed, more realistic. Every time I play one of these dependable guys there’s some twist that happens near the end, or some kind of emotional challenge to these characters. ” And how close is his real personality to that kind of character? “I’m pretty darn close to  that type of
guy,” admits McDonough. “I’m the kind of guy where, if my friend is
having a problem with another guy at a bar, I’ll be the first
knucklehead to jump in and knock the other guy out…or take one in the
nose for my friend.” So basically he’s the loyal type. “Yeah, I guess
I’m like a big Labrador retriever type of person.”When acting, McDonough tends, to a large degree, to mirror in his own life the emotional aspects of his characters. “For Band of Brothers,” he gives as an example, “I knew my character was going to have a very big emotional breakdown, and we were shooting the project for 10 months. So I knew it was coming and it was very difficult to live with that all the time. As it got closer and closer to that time, I became a little bit more detached about things, and a little more melancholy about things. My girlfriend could tell you all about that,” he laughs. Though McDonough looks forward to playing his first lead role, his main focus for the future is broader. “I want to always keep striving to tell the truth in whatever character I play, and for those types of roles. I’ve had a great run for the first 10 years, and I hope the next 10 years are as great as the first — and that I can spend as much time back in Cape Cod with my family as possible.” |