WEB EXCLUSIVE: Cliff Robertson
Interview by Jeff Burger - April 12, 2010
Cliff Robertson told us that he began acting as a way to avoid work. “I learned in third grade that if you volunteer for that stupid class play where they extol the virtues of vegetables and somebody plays the carrot and somebody else plays the bad food, you won’t have to stay after school and clean the erasers,” he said. “It was a way to avoid stuff you didn’t want to do. I found it of use later in prep school and military school. I’d volunteer for the play and I wouldn’t have to walk around the quad with a 40-pound pack and a rifle. I was lazy.”
Well, maybe. But Robertson also talked to us about his work ethic—and it offers a better explanation for a career that has encompassed roughly a hundred films, including PT-109 (John F. Kennedy suggested him for the lead), Star 80 (he played Hugh Hefner), Three Days of the Condor (with Robert Redford) and Charley (which won him a 1968 Oscar). He has also tackled TV roles dating back to the 1950s, when he starred in Playhouse 90’s Days of Wine and Roses and a pair of classic Twilight Zones.
Robertson’s work ethic also explains why, at 86, he remains busier than many people half his age. He’s still acting—most recently in an adaptation of Stephen King’s Riding the Bullet and a trio of Spider-Man movies—and is also involved with numerous charities and finishing an autobiography.
He devotes many of his remaining hours to aviation, a field he once compared to “a beautiful woman you can’t forget.” He writes a column called “Cliffhangar” for Airport Journals, a monthly trade publication; and he spends considerable time flying his stable of vintage aircraft. He was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in 2006.
Where did you get your work ethic? Not from your father, I understand.
Well, he was a bright, well-educated man who had every opportunity, but he chose to just spend the money his ancestors had earned. So I was determined in my youth to never be one of those playboys. I remember lying about my age when I was 10. I said I was 11 so I could sell magazines and earn my own money.
The work ethic came from a desire to not be like your dad?
Yeah. I was embarrassed when other kids would talk about their fathers. They’d say he’s a lawyer or doctor or whatever. I couldn’t say, “My father is a playboy.”
By now, you’ve accomplished more than most people. What keeps you working hard at your age?
Playing doesn’t fit my Calvinist work ethic. Joy comes from work. If you’re working, you’re not being wasteful. God gave you tools and you should utilize those tools.
How did acting become your profession?
I wasn’t thinking of it in terms of a career. I was thinking of journalism because it was the one thing that came fairly readily. There was a paper I worked for in New York and they said I had a certain talent and should start writing for the theater. So after World War II, I came back to New York. Next thing I knew, I got acting jobs off-off Broadway. And I seemed to do all right, because I got paid about $5 a week. After a while, it was evident that I could eke out some kind of a living.
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