Tom Kemp grew up in Long Island, N.Y. His first big film memory was when he saw THIS SPORTING LIFE, Lindsey Anderson’s film and it occurred to him, “I want to do that. I want to plum the depths of knowledge about life and express it so brilliantly.”  Kemp saw something of himself in Richard Harris’s hard ass, working class rugby player who has to fight his way to success. 

Kemp’s father sold radio time in New York City but was previously a big band singer in the Midwest. World War II got in the way and then Tom came along. But his house was always filled with music. Kemp’s father would relax after his long commute from the city by sitting down at the piano for half an hour, playing big band standards. 

Tom came to Boston for college, but soon enough realized that he was not going to fit into the life of an engineer. In 1968, the city of Boston initiated a program called Summer Thing. Tom was hired and later became director of the traveling theater group that performed around on the streets of the city. Sets and actors were transported by a hearse and a milk truck straddled by ladders. Here he met his wife, Judith, community liaison for Dorchester. Kemp was cast in nine rock musicals, started a rock band and belted out blues like Joe Cocker. 

Then Tom joined the Little Flags Theater Company, a left-leaning troupe sympathetic to Fidel and Mao. He grew his hair to play Che Guevara for two years, but declined to go on national tour, not wanting to leave his wife. “The business is so hard. The life of an actor is not pretty. The constant rejection is something you have to cope with. It’s much easier if you have someone who believes in you and loves you unconditionally.” 

SEE HOW SHE RUNS

Kemp had a co-starring part in this movie of the week about a frumpy middle aged teacher who decides to run the Boston Marathon. Played by Joanne Woodward, she is challenged not just physically, but by the skepticism and psychological head games heaped upon her by her colleague played by Kemp. Another colleague was a superficial fashion plate who wore running suits for show played by former Mass Film Office director, Linda Peterson Warren. 

Coming out of the theater, Kemp was used to rehearsal. Suddenly he realized that there would be none. Woodward, however, sat down with Tom in make-up and discussed the back stories of their characters. After the discussion, he realized that in a short time, Woodward had conducted a rehearsal, giving them both the tools they needed to nail the scenes. “Joanne is one of the loveliest women and most talented actresses I’ve ever known. There was something so wonderful about uttering my first lines on screen opposite such a gracious class act.” 

COMMERCIALS 

As the 1970s gave way to the 80s, Kemp found agents in New York beckoning. Asked if he’d audition for commercials, Kemp thought, “Why not?” Off came the long locks and beard. He was hired by Oldsmobile and Miller Lite beer. For the first time in his life he had money. 

Little did he know that his greatest acclaim would come when American Express wanted to present the “new man,” one secure enough in himself that he’s not threatened by a successful woman who picks up the check. Tom was cast as the new archetype so intensely discussed during the 1990s, the ‘nineties man.’ “I was like this all along in the 70s,” thought Tom. This was 1982 when the first generation of women was establishing their own credit. The relationship that Tom and costar Susan Cash portrayed was groundbreaking - around the same time as James Garner and Mariette Hartley won acclaim for their spunky Polaroid commercials.  

“I remember one commercial I did – Swanson TV dinners, where I had to express three conflicting intentions in one line for 1) the product people, 2) the agency people and 3) the director. The announcer asks me, “When was the last time you had a good meal?” My response is, “Does a burger count?” Kemp had to deliver the line 1) wracking his brain to remember, 2) hopefully, 3) sheepishly. 

In the class he teaches at Boston casting director Carolyn Pickman’s CP Studios, he advises his students that every experience they have goes into the backpack they take through their careers. One looks in the toolbox and chooses the tack hammer instead of the big one when doing commercials and film acting. 

A CASE OF DEADLY FORCE 

Working with Richard Crenna in this movie-of-the-week was another eye-opener for Tom. He’d known Crenna as the “aw-shucks” hayseed on the sitcom “The Real McCoys.” Called into Crenna’s trailer, Kemp learned first hand the precision and alacrity with which great television actors hone their craft. They must devise and execute the work so quickly. Somehow within the tight budget and manic time constraints, an actor must honor his craft and bring honesty to the picture. “Dick Crenna just never took a shortcut.”  

When Tom later saw BODY HEAT, where Crenna finally got a big screen role playing Kathleen Turner’s husband, he was “knocked out. He was fabulous and it was the sort of thing he was always capable of doing and Hollywood would not let him do it. I was inspired to hone my TV chops, go out to L.A. and audition. So I did that in the late 1990s. I’d gone out ten years earlier but had a bad attitude. I really didn’t like it. Now I find I can really focus on the business.” 

MISS MATCH 

Kemp played the judge in the short-lived Alicia Silverstone sitcom. “She worked so hard. There was so much pressure on her to carry the show, not just as an actor, but to be a leader on the set because she was also producing – so much is on one person’s shoulders.” 

MYSTIC RIVER 

The bestselling novel by Dennis Lehane, adapted for the screen by Clint Eastwood, was an amazing experience for Tom. An actor himself, Eastwood is renowned for running a set that creates the best environment for actors to do their best work. 

“Clint doesn’t say ‘Action’ or ‘Cut.’ He’ll say ‘Okay’ or ‘All right,’” Kemp explains. “My first day on the set, I had a few lines. Kevin Bacon and Laurence Fishburne walk up to the car and talk to some of the cops, I meet them, we walk and talk as we approach the car. We do it once and Clint says, ‘I’ve changed a couple of tiny things. I’ve changed the framing, I’ve changed when the conversation comes in.’ And he changed the side from which I came in. He was composing the shot without changing the performances. The scene ends with Laurence and I on one side of the car and Kevin on the other. And Clint says, ‘All right, let’s move on.’ And Fishburne turns to me and says, ‘What the hell just happened?’ He’d just flown in from Australia where he’d just spent two years doing the MATRIX movies where he said they’d have 36 takes before lunch. Then they’d come back from lunch and do it again. You realize that if Eastwood’s got it; he’s got it and he just moves on. Usually it’s about two takes.” 

THE DEPARTED 

Tom was cast as Leonardo di Caprio’s father. He’s in the first scene where Jack Nicholson, as the Irish mafia kingpin, dresses him down, berating him for having no ambition. In the audition, Kemp realized it was not his lines that were important, but his reaction to Nicholson’s lines. Before Kemp started wearing hearing aides recently, he became good at active listening. “Reacting is every bit as important as saying the lines. Film is being, not showing.” i.e. being “in the zone.” 

Scorsese understands back-story. He wants to search to find whatever information an actor needs to construct his character.

Tom played Whitey Bulger for “Unsolved Mysteries.” Whatever the similarities, Nicholson made this character all his own but he used a line Tom gave him. “I told Marty and Jack that Whitey used to hold meetings under a runway at Logan to obliterate the conversation and they used that.” 

BROTHERHOOD 

Kemp plays Marty Trio, a union boss who’s corrupt and has a crisis of conscience and health leading to a near nervous breakdown. Kemp’s not sure what union he’s the head of – it seems to change from episode to episode. Director Philip Noyce rehearsed his actors and led them through theater games. Tom read the character one way, sure of his intention, but Noyce asked him to try it very differently, as if Trio were reluctant to shake down the politician. 

The character does have a moral compass, although some might find it skewed like when he brings his girlfriend of twenty years to his wife of thirty years’ funeral.

“I think Marty Trio came in to clean up the union. He was going to try to do the right thing. And he didn’t. There’s a speech that

I give where I say that your life is an accumulation of all the little decisions that you make. And all of a sudden you realize you are not the person you wanted to be. The shock of the cancer diagnosis makes him look at his life and say, ‘What have you done? Who are you?’ And that scares him.” 

Kemp’s life, an accumulation of all the little roles he’s played, has become inspirational for the many other great locally based actors. There are enough good actors here that “Brotherhood” mandated drawing from the New England talent pool. Having just finished a stint as a SAG rep, Kemp is hopeful that the tax incentives will bring more work. But he believes it is one part of a triumvirate that must include a state sponsored film office and good will on the part of the unions.