Interview with Christopher McDonald
Thursday / October 1, 2026
About Christopher McDonald
American actor known for Happy Gilmore, Thelma & Louise and Quiz Show, and for playing Marty on Hacks. He trained with Stella Adler.
Source: SAG-AFTRA Foundation on YouTube
These answers are taken from Christopher McDonald Career Retrospective | Conversations at the SAG-AFTRA Foundation on SAG-AFTRA Foundation's YouTube channel. You! Backstage did not conduct this interview.
What was your very first experience with acting?
My father directed all the plays in the high school, and I'm stuck in the band. I'm a heck of a trumpet player. They need me. So I just thought, okay, my time will come.
After college I went to Boston and I became a waiter at the Top of the Hub, which doesn't exist anymore, but it was pretty cool. Then Boston was calling, saying, hey, we need singing waiters. At least I'll be performing. And that day there was a matinee of a show called Nightclub Cantata, and it said it needed to replace this actor, auditions tomorrow. And I went, oh, I can do that. I can do that part. After three auditions I was very, very happy to join the company. I stayed there for four to six weeks, I think, and then we got picked up. We're going to go to California. And that's what took me to California, that play. I was 22 years old, 21 maybe. Liz Swados was the winner of the Obie Award that year, and this was her play. So it was a blast. That was like, people were paying to see me. I got the bug there.
What attracted you to begin a career as an actor?
I come from a theatrical family in a little town called Romulus, New York, up in the boondocks of upstate New York. My father came out of the war and he started doing acting. He was doing stuff in college. My mother still did acting until she was into her mid-60s. She did some crazy good stuff. My brothers and sisters played instruments, guitars, they sang. They did everything. I'm in the middle of seven.
What made me want to become an actor more than anything was after I went through college. My last year I took a semester abroad, and I was elected to go to London, England. It was an English major kind of a deal. I was going to be premed. And then I came back: I got to be an actor. I just saw Rocky Horror Picture Show live. It was amazing. Just seeing all those great actors doing their work on the West End was mind-blowing. So I came back and I told my family I was going to do that. My mom and dad were going, you were going to take care of our teeth. But that whole experience really solidified me wanting to be an actor.
What do you enjoy most about acting?
I just love playing those bad guys and finding their Achilles heel. I take it from life, and I've been doing that my entire career.
Comedy comes a lot more easy to me. I do like doing drama as well, because you've got to be able to do everything, and I've done so many different things, so many different shows that have demanded different things of me. And I love the imagination, because the truth of your art is in your imagination. Thank you, Stella. That was the truth. Just find it in life and then put it up on the screen, and it's an absolute joy to do.
What was a great moment for you as an actor?
Robert Redford. It was a pinch me time. They said you need to do this reading. It's for Robert Redford, in a movie called Quiz Show. I said I can't, I'm doing this pilot and tonight's the big night. Can you do it at 9 in the morning? Yes, I can. I went down there and I thought about this guy, Jack Barry, and I just got the feeling for him. Then he's leaving for New York in the morning. What do I do? I get a plane that night. I fly to New York.
He's notoriously late, so I waited around, and I went down to the Museum of Television and found Jack Barry. I didn't want to use him as a crutch and just try to imitate him. But I wanted to get his essence, his panache.
Then Bob comes in, goes to his office, comes right back and says, come on, let's go in. I walk through the doorway, and he goes, I don't have a problem. You're our Jack Barry. My face turned white. I was there with Bonnie Timmermann, the great casting director, and she looked over at me and went, yeah, you got it. I was dumbfounded and thanked him profusely. It was really pinch me time.
How did your acting career unfold?
It was hell. I keep these journals, and I've kept them since I was 21 years old, coming to this big world of show business in Hollywood. At first it was impossible to get anything going in your career. I did 30 plays in LA. That's how I got noticed, to get even an agent or a manager. And then all of a sudden those plays paid off. People would come and watch me in those plays. They'd go, that guy's pretty good. A manager came over. He got me an agent. Got me a commercial agent. Oh my god, I'm making commercials. Making more money than my dad was. At the same time, it took two and a half, three years for me to really get my feet on the ground. And that time right there, Stella Adler jumped into my life, and that was the game changer.
The '90s changed my life, because if you look at my list of things that I did in the '90s, it just was, what? I did so many great things in the '90s.
What advice do you have for new actors?
Napoleon Hill wrote: anything you can conceive and believe, you can achieve. Now run that through your head a few times and say, okay, I want to do this. I want to do it by this date and I want it to happen. So you're putting a goal out there, and I think that'll get you motivated. Keep on getting up, because believe me, we all struggled. I was nearly three years of struggling, hungry, owing people money. Not fun.
It's a tough business. You get beat up pretty good, and then you come back stronger, and that's the way I play the game.
Find ways to say yes, and boom, boom, boom, you start doing things and people meet you and go, oh my god, you'd be great for this. That's how it works. So get out there and put yourself out there and keep yourself out there as best as you can. It makes a world of difference.
Have you progressed in your acting career as you have expected?
I'm blessed. I get to work with great people. I have a really good career, and I don't even know how it happened, to be honest with you. Just kept a job after job.
Never ever give up is my motto, basically. I never ever could give up after my friends in high school told me, see you in six months, hot shot. How could I put my tail between my legs and go home and go, you guys are right, I suck? No, I don't suck. I'm here for the long run.
I thought, I'm not going to fall back. I aimed for this. I'm going to find a way to keep working. The whole dance keeps going and going, but it's going to go up and down. That's the business. That's the wave you live in.
Of all the roles you have played in the past, which is your favorite?
Marty was a guy that I've played before. A guy's got power, he's got four ex-wives, he's got big cars, he's got a big house, he's got a big life, and his number one person that's been running with him in the Palmetto has been our girl Deborah Vance. There's such a connection between the two that is just palpable. And that's also in real life. I just love Jean Smart. She can do anything, and she is also so collaborative. So we played a lot off each other, and Marty became a guy who needed her as a friend.
It was the best of all cases, because I knew it had to go somewhere. It has so much honesty to it and so much depth and so much history to it, this particular arc, and all the wars we've been through over the five seasons. That arc with her, it's a gift. It truly is. It's a gift that we had all that time to finally put it all together and hug it out.
Who is your favorite actor, and why?
When I was very young, I used to love Andy of Mayberry. God, I could watch that show. And then Barney. I mean, come on, who didn't love that?
I've got to go back to the English theater. Derek Jacobi: when I went there, I saw him do a Cyrano de Bergerac that just kind of blew my mind, and I thought, wow, that is it. And then the next night he did Twelfth Night. How does he do that with all those lines? I was very, very impressed with the English theater, and I'm still impressed with great actors.
Kathy Bates is one of the extraordinary actors that we work with today. She and Jean Smart are right up there, the top two in my life, and they're just extraordinary people, and generous and funny and talented.
Describe your acting style.
Stella Adler changed my life. She went over and studied with Stanislavski, and he said, nope, I was wrong. It's all about your imagination. The truth of your art is in your imagination. She would give these lectures on technique, and I studied with her in Los Angeles and in New York. I think I went back five times. I still think of those things today. I still use it.
If something's sticking in your head, who do I know that does that? Then you go and you see it in life, you see it at parks, you observe. We're observers, and we find a way to incorporate what we see. The way he throws his hair back, different things like that.
Shooter, I find in life these guys that are at the country club. They're not really good golfers, but boy, can they drink at the bar and talk about all kinds of stuff. It's all about their wealth and their attitude about life, and they're bigger and better than everybody else, and I thought, ooh, that's fun to play.
With lines, it's repetition, repetition, repetition. I read the script over and over again, and I apply it to the circumstances in the script.
Tell me about a time where you had difficulty with a character. What was the role and why was it challenging?
Harder? I've got to go with comedy, because I think drama is something you just pull out of yourself and you do it. Comedy is so tricky. You have to get it just right. It's a timing thing, and when you get it just right, it's gold. There were times I had to do it over and over and over again, but I kept trying different things and keeping it fresh and just attacking it in a different way, so that it becomes a joy to do as an actor as well.
What part scared me the most? The worst time, I have to think, was when I had to do nudity. I was again another kind of power figure, and I was with this actress who was wearing very little. Some people are really easy with it. I keep myself in shape, but I don't want to show the world. It was gratuitous, and I found it to be very difficult to be in a robe and then take it off, and here we go.
Tell me something I may not know from reading your resume.
The inside story is Geena Davis and I were engaged to be married, and she fell in love with Jeff Goldblum doing her first movie over there in Europe. I don't blame him. She's stunningly beautiful. But I was broken. I was really, really devastated.
Then, literally five years later, Thelma & Louise was the only thing in town that was actually interesting. I went in and said, I would much rather play the husband. I went home, put on the most gaudy clothes I could find, and there was a chain in my drawer that said number one, and I thought, that's Darryl Dickinson. By the time I got home, I got the word from my agent: boom, I got it.
And then she said to Ridley, really, who'd you get to play my husband? And he said, oh, you'll love him, he's tall, he's funny, Chris McDonald. And she said, I used to go with him. And he said, even better, perfect. So I called her the next day and said, hey, you want to go to lunch? We hugged it out, and then we did what I think is probably the most ironic thing in the world: let's do wedding pictures and put them around the house for the set decorators. We're dear friends now.
Christopher McDonald's Full Biography
Christopher McDonald was born and raised in New York City, New York, to Patricia, a real estate agent, and James R. McDonald, an educator. His breakout role was in Ridley Scott's Thelma & Louise (1991), followed shortly by his role as Jack Barry in Robert Redford's Quiz Show (1994). Other notable performances include Into Thin Air: Death on Everest (1997) as Jon Krakauer and Requiem for a Dream (2000) as Tappy Tibbons (opposite Oscar winner Ellen Burstyn). He co-starred in Happy Gilmore (1996), American Pie Presents: The Naked Mile (2006), American Pie Presents: Beta House (2007), Flubber (1997), and Leave It to Beaver (1997). His television credits include Harry's Law (2011), Boardwalk Empire (2010), and Family Law (1999).
Trained by legendary acting teacher Stella Adler and at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, McDonald was singled out by the New York Times as one of the most prolific actors in Hollywood. He has performed in over 100 films over more than four decades. His roughly 40 stage credits include Billy Flynn in the long-running Broadway reboot of Chicago and the 2013 hit Lucky Guy (opposite Oscar winner Tom Hanks).
Since the loss of two siblings and a parent to cancer, he has been an active supporter of the Make a Wish foundation along with charities which help cancer research. He participates in celebrity fund-raising events throughout the world. A graduate of Hobart and William Smith college in 1977, he is the principal donor for the building of the school's new Performing Arts Center.