#341: Reed Birney: I Didn't Die

Reed Birney has been working in film, television and theater for decades. Among his earliest credits are Albert Innaurato's Broadway comedy GEMINI in 1974 and Arthur Penn's FOUR FRIENDS in 1981. A celebrated member of the New York theatre community, Reed has won a Tony and numerous other awards and nominations for plays including THE HUMANS, CASA VALENTINA, MAN FROM NEBRASKA, UNCLE VANYA, BLASTED, and CIRCLE MIRROR TRANSFORMATION. Most recently he starred opposite his son Ephraim Birney in CHESTER BAILEY at Irish Rep, and in the highly successful run of Donald Margulies's LUNAR ECLIPSE at Second Stage, following a sold out run at Shakespeare & Company. On television, he was recently seen recurring opposite Kim Kardashian in the most recent season of "American Horror Story". He was also recently seen in Peacock's "Poker Face", and "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds." Other TV credits include HBO's "Succession" and Hulu's "The Handmaid's Tale", as well as the Apple TV+ series "Home Before Dark". He is also well known for his performance as Vice President Donald Blythe in the Netflix series "House of Cards". Next he will be seen in a series regular role on the upcoming season of "Silo" on Apple TV+, and also recently joined the cast of the limited series "Rabbit, Rabbit" for Netflix. In film, Reed received a Gotham Award nomination for his performance in the Bleecker Street feature MASS opposite Ann Dowd, Jason Isaacs and Martha Plimpton. The film's cast was also honored with the Robert Altman Award at the Independent Spirit Awards. Other recent film credits include THE MENU opposite Ralph Fiennes and Anya Taylor-Joy, the Universal/Blumhouse thriller THE HUNT, and Netflix's THE FORTY-YEAR-OLD VERSION and LOST GIRLS. Reed recently shot an independent feature THE STEEL HARP with Lois Smith and Cherry Jones, as well as BLUE FILM which debuted at Edinburgh Film Festival in August.  We chat about almost quitting 3 times, regrets, 35 bad years & breakout roles 'later in life', embracing fear, being a LIFER, rejection & nasty things people say, spreading the ashes of one of his teachers, terrible plays, His Tony speech, good and bad agents, not working for a year + more! Check out BLUE FILM (tickets currently out) https://obscuredreleasing.com/films/blue-film ------------------------------------------- Follow @Funny in Failure on Instagram and Facebook https://www.instagram.com/funnyinfailure/ https://www.facebook.com/funnyinfailure/