The baby is spanking clean, smells good, ready to be taken out into the world. So as I gear up to begin another query campaign (a necessary evil which I hate more than a sinus infection, which I'm suffering with as I write this), I figured this was was as good a time as any to muse on my muse, the fabulous, vastly underrated Ted Levine.
It's become the standing joke in my household that Ted is the only man I'd leave my husband for. Besides being handsome and sexy as hell, Ted is a great actor, and I don't say that lightly. You've probably seen him in dozens of movies and not realized it was him. From his spellbinding turn as "Buffalo Bill" in SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, to Starbucks in MOBY DICK, Silas Kincaid in HARLAN COUNTY WAR, and of course, Capt. Leland Stottlemeyer in MONK, Ted Levine has always been outstanding, (yes, even in stinkers like EVOLUTION). When Ted's nice he's wonderful, and when he's nasty, he's even better. No one can turn on the "creepy factor" like Ted.
So my last couple of screenplays, I've purposefully written meaty roles that I'd like to see Ted play (hey, a girl can dream). In BOBBY VALENTI, he's a hard working cop and devoted family man; in HEAVEN KNOWS, he's an oddball trust fund hippie father; in THE FUCK IT LIST, he's a sexually frustrated Dad; and in THE RETURN, he's a loving husband and father who tries, under desperate circumstances, to keep his family safe in a frightening new world order. Versatile. That's what Ted is.
