BRUCE DAVISON: It's About the JOURNEY

The 1923 actor looks back at his five-decade career and more

- Natalie Posner

When Bruce Davison was a young actor, an experienced director advised him not to become a leading man. “Robert Aldrich, who did The Dirty Dozen and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, said, ‘You don’t want to be a leading man. You’ll do six pictures and nobody will ever hear from you after you’re 30,’ ” Bruce tells Closer. “He said, ‘Be a character actor. Do the supporting roles, play the villains and the victims, the doctors and lawyers.’ And that’s what happened to me, basically.”

It was sound advice. Today, Bruce, 76, has more than 300 credits in a career that has spanned five decades. The Philadelphia-born performer and dad of two burst out of the gate with the 1971 horror film Willard. A little over a decade later, he won a Golden Globe Award and an Oscar nomination for his performance in the groundbreaking 1989 tearjerker Long­ time Companion. Bruce recently appeared in the fourth and final season of Ozark, and he can currently be seen as Arthur on the hit historical drama 1923.

Tell us about your character in 1923. 
I play an English lord in the Africa sequence. I introduce the lead actress, Alexandra, when my son is engaged to her. We’re doing the wedding toast when she first meets Spencer.

Did you shoot on location?
Yes, all our stuff was shot in Africa, Malta and on the Queen Mary. In Africa, we went into the jungle in places that could stand in for 1923 Nairobi. There was so much wildlife there. Production would say things like, “Wait for the herd of elephants to get out of the shot.”