Robinson Pens Memoir
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Andy Robinson, best-known to Trek fans for his role of Garak in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, has written a memoir, Stepping Into the Light: Sources of an Actor’s Craft.
The actor explains in the book how his upbringing led him to acting and the effect of his life experience on his acting work.
“Work and our lives are inseparable,” said Robinson. “There’s an incredibly powerful symbiotic relationship.”
Robinson had a bleak childhood. “I wanted something other than the reality of a dead father, an alcoholic mother and this dangerous, dreary place called Hartford,” he said. Robinson discovered the movies, a “safe place where I could sit in the darkness and enjoy the crimes committed and the punishment justly administered.”
In school, Robinson got involved in a drama program and the actor “discovered there’s a real craft where I could learn to actively engage the imagination. It’s what I had been fumbling toward all my life,” he said.
Stepping Into the Light: Sources of an Actor’s Craft, published by Figueroa Press, is available here.
Robinson still teaches and directs, and he will direct Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera next spring at the USC School of Dramatic Arts.
About The Author
Good to see him still around, even if he’s just teaching acting instead of doing it. Too bad that he can’t come back as Garak, though.
Years ago, I spent the evening with him in a London pub. He got drunk as a skunk as the evening wore on, and he was quite hilarious. Severely miss him as Garak. Probably the best actor playing the best character in the whole of Trek.
and among the main positives about ds9 is that it rescued him from years of typecasting after ‘dirty harry’.nplain, simple tailor.
It may not be fair, but IMO he was typecast after playing Scorpio because he was SO good at it. Fortunately for us, he was also brilliant as plain, simple Garak.
Wow, I had no idea he was the actor under the Garak makeup. I remember him better as the crazy in the first “Dirty Harry” movie.