Jeff Daniels What I Know Now

Tony-nominated For The Veteran Actor Talks Fame, Family And Why He Left Hollywood For His Michigan Hometown

- Alicia Dennis

Taped to the mirror of his dressing room in New York City’s Shubert Theatre is a photograph Jeff Daniels keeps of a close family friend, the first black man he ever met. When Daniels was 8, growing up in the small, predominantly white town of Chelsea, Mich., his father, a lumberyard owner, made a point of introducing them. “My dad turned to me and said, ‘This is Herbie Pearson. He’s a friend of mine,’” Daniels recalls. “That’s just who Dad was.” The matter-of-fact welcome and lasting bond— Pearson died last year at age 84—made an indelible impression on Daniels, one that he takes with him onstage for eight shows a week as fair-minded Alabama lawyer Atticus Finch in Aaron Sorkin’s adaptation of the classic Harper Lee novel To Kill a Mockingbird. The role earned the 64-year-old his third Tony nomination for Lead Actor. “I could be known for this and call it a day, you know?” says Daniels, seated on a brown leather sofa in his Broadway dressing room, a guitar hanging on the wall near family photographs. “You don’t have to top this.”

Despite more than 80 movie and TV acting credits, two Emmys and his passion for the stage, Daniels is most comfortable back in his hometown with Kathleen, 59, his high school sweetheart and wife of 40 years. They left Hollywood to raise their kids, Ben, 34, Lucas, 31, and Nellie, 28, in Michigan. Daniels opened a local nonprofit theater, the Purple Rose, for which he’s now writing his 18th play. He also performs in a folk-blues band with son Ben and daughter-in-law Amanda. Chelsea is where he learned life lessons from his parents, Robert Lee and Marjorie, that resonated through four decades of stardom. “Find what you love doing and comes naturally,” he says. “Then go spend the rest of your life getting better at that thing.”