Tonight on Lost, he returns as creepy Other Matthew Abaddon, and on Fringe, you can see him bark orders as Homeland Security agent Phillip Broyles. He’s also had regular roles on The Wire and Oz, and he was in that one episode of Law & Order where the federal government’s “secret courts” almost keep Jack McCoy from prosecuting a murderer. 

But here at The Critical Condition, he’s just Lance Reddick, excellent actor. Recently, we spoke about his career, his friendship with an Oscar nominee, and his strategy for staying invested in his work. After the jump, I’ll serve up highlights from our exclusive interview. 

Though it’s established now, Reddick’s acting career wasn’t always on his mind.

Lance Reddick: It started in high school from this one experience, where we were studying Macbeth in an English class, and the teacher asked us to do a monologue. I enjoyed it, and I knew I had an affinity for Shakespeare.

Acting remained a casual thing while Reddick studied classical composition at the Eastman School of Music. In the eighties, he moved to Boston to pursue a pop career—he still writes and records original music—but like most young artists, he had to get several day jobs. One night, after pulling a double shift waiting tables and then heading out to deliver newspapers, he suffered a severe back injury that laid him up for weeks. While he recuperated, he reevaluated his life.

LR: I started acting almost out of desperation, because it was clear that what I was doing wasn’t working.

By the late eighties, Reddick was getting steady acting work, and in 1991, he entered Yale School of Drama. He quickly learned that the famously rigorous program lived up to its reputation.

LR: It was hard, but when I got to Drama School, I was grateful to be able to work so hard, because I already knew the alternative to not making it. 

At Yale, he also got a taste of failure after he was cast as Trigorin in a troubled production of Anton Chekhov’s play The Seagull. 

LR: I was so scared about playing the role that I didn’t follow my instincts. I was pretty mediocre. My next role was as a statue, and I was certain it was punishment for flopping as Trigorin. 

Happily, his work as a statue—in an adaptation of Don Juan—was well-received. Meanwhile, his three years at YSD overhauled his perspective on acting and launched his lifelong friendship with classmate Paul Giamatti.

LR: I didn’t realize it [when I got to Yale], but I had a narrow opinion of what great acting was. For me, if you weren’t doing it the way Daniel Day-Lewis or Meryl Streep were doing it, and I mean transforming yourself in every performance, then you weren’t doing it right.

Paul Giamatti and I would argue all the time about what great acting was. His favorite actor was Robert Duvall, and he didn’t really get Daniel Day-Lewis.

In class and in school productions, Giamatti taught Reddick about “staying grounded,” or being fully connected to every moment of a scene. Reddick says that while Giamatti may not “disappear” inside roles with new wigs or accents, he’s always so committed that he “makes you forget you’re watching an actor acting.”

LR: It took me a while to learn that there isn’t a universal set of standards. Ultimately, how great an actor you are depends on how you work with the strengths and weaknesses you’ve got. You’ve got to find what makes you unique.

Asked what his own strengths are, Reddick says he’s “athletic, good with [his] body,” and that he has a knack for accents. He sees himself as a “transformational” performer, and he tries to alter himself as much as possible for each role. 

Those transformations become important when he plays similar roles, like the stern officials he portrayed on both The Wire and Fringe. Speaking of his Fringe role, he says:

LR: He’s a very functional character, and I have to find ways not to get frustrated with that and to keep bringing him presence. The key is to keep doing the fundamentals, even if they start to get boring.

For Reddick, those “fundamentals” always involve his body, even when he’s learning his lines at home.

LR: I need to inculcate my lines physically, moving around with them, because I’m much more kinesthetic than visual.

Reddick also does “mirror work,” meaning he rehearses his lines by delivering them to himself in the mirror, as though his reflection were his co-star. It not only makes him aware of what he’s doing with his own face, but also gets him used to seeing another pair of eyes when he’s performing.

LR: Sometimes actors can get so busy acting that they forget about the other person in a scene. You can’t be that internal about it, because then you won’t be prepared for what the other person is going to give you. You have to be able to look at someone in a scene and not have their eyes throw you. 

To be fair, anyone on the receiving end of Lance Reddick’s “I’m boring a hole in your spirit” glare might get thrown for a loop. But when you’re playing an Other or a Stern Government Official, that’s exactly the look you need.