Known for his repertoire of epic films, Charlton Heston carries in life a bit of the strength his larger-than-life characters have on screen.
While entering the doors to the Barber Theatre in the Theatre and Interpretation Center on Friday for an informal discussion with students in the School of Speech, Northwestern alumnus Heston greeted a former professor and almost knocked her to the ground.
“You don’t know your own strength,” said Helen Sullivan Knight, who taught him and Lydia Clarke Heston, his wife, in 1941.
“He and Lydia were taking my speech and voice class,” she said. “They were both good students.”
After making a powerful entrance, Heston sat alone in front of about 120 students for an hourlong discussion of topics including Shakespeare, Moses, Dustin Hoffman and anecdotal experiences as an actor and self-described “lifelong student of the theater.”
“The first thing to do is get a job,” Heston said. “I was very lucky I got jobs quite early. They were just trying to figure out what to do with this new medium of television.”
Heston attributed his film and theater success to confidence and timing. He said the advent of television gave him and other actors such as Jack Lemmon the opportunity to work when job opportunities for actors were scarce after World War II.
“I always thought I would always get the part. I not always did. I suppose in a word it is confidence. It’s a rare beast and you need to catch it,” Heston said while motioning his hand into the air and grasping it. “That was good, wasn’t it?”
Heston answered student questions about the actor’s craft and his career. After clarifying for the audience that he thought the original “Planet of the Apes” was better than the remake, Heston divulged the secret of finding work in Hollywood, Broadway or on a nationwide television broadcast in the 1950s and today.
“I’m a great believer in serendipity,” Heston said. “Which, as you know, is the entirely good consequences of a random choice.”
Heston has starred in more than 70 motion pictures and won an Academy Award for Best Actor in 1959 for “Ben-Hur” and another Oscar for the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. Heston married his college sweetheart he met at NU after serving three years in the Army Corps during World War II.
He spoke to NU students before the final set of performances of “Love Letters,” a play made by special arrangement with the Chicago Center for the Performing Arts, said Anita Hillin, Speech’s director of development.
Foregoing the last 10 minutes of answering student questions, Heston gave up the comfort of his metal chair for the hardwood floor of the theater set and launched into a stirring rendition of Moses from the Bible.
After explaining to the audience that he likes to believe that one of the 47 scholars who undertook the project to work on the King James version of the Bible was “Mr. Shakespeare’s bastard son,” Heston removed his rusty brown coat and performed. The crowd followed his prose with two minutes of applause.
“To meet him or to be in the same room with him is enough of a fantasy,” Speech sophomore Robert Berliner said. “To have him perform Moses is a dream.”
