Consider the tools of Gustav Vintas's trades: the rifle, the microphone, theDiagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Fortunately, none are used simultaneously. The Argentinian-born Vintas is a child psychiatrist/actor/singer who's played sinister turns in Lethal Weapon, Tales from the Crypt, and the new Cindy Crawford thriller Fair Game, in which he portrays a hacker-turned-assassin. Like any good villain, he has charm and a vampiric accent his grand-parents are Romanian.
PT: Is there common ground between acting and psychiatry?
GV: I believe there is. Take a patient who is extremely reserved, distant. As a Performer, the idea is to bring the audience in. I use what I know about acting to help that person open up.
PT: Does psychiatry help you act?
GV: When she received her Oscar, Maureen Stapleton said: "I'd like to thank everyone I've met in my life." I have met many heavily disturbed people, including a population in psychiatric asylums. I am sure I am somehow using that, though not in a planned way.
PT: Why are you repeatedly cast as a villain? Is there a dark part of you?
GV: Evil is part of our make-up. All of us think at some point about suicide or murder. But I have been playing evil because this is what has been offered to me. I would love to play Cyrano.
PT: Does playing villains contradict what you are doing in therapy?
GV: No, because in these films good prevails over evil. Humans are complicated. If there is a stable, warm family unit, that influences the way people turn out. So to focus on films with guns--what about children who see parents beat each other up? What if they are left alone, or in front of the TV for hours?
PT: How does it feel to be immersed in an evil role?
GV: These roles take me away from the horror of life. In Fair Game I spent my first week of filming in a truck with a shotgun, shooting the hell out of Cindy Crawford and William Baldwin. And as a memento, I kept the empty cartridges because it was such a pleasure to shoot that gun at the two of them.
PHOTO (BLACK & WHITE): Gustav Vintas
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