Jeff Daniels on Playing a Cad in 'Terms of Endearment,' a Bomb Expert in 'Speed,' and More
Jeff Daniels has played a lot of intense roles, but only one left an actual scar. In his Role Recall for Yahoo Movies (watch it above), the Steve Jobs star reveals that his fight scene with Ray Liotta in Jonathan Demme’s 1986 cult classic Something Wild resulted in some very real pain. During one part of the intense fight, which took six full days to shoot (“Six days of just throwing each other around hallways,” recalls Daniels), his “Virginia is For Lovers” T-shirt stuck to the linoleum floor, causing him to slam his jaw so hard on the ground that he blacked out. Two hours and 11 stitches later, Daniels was back to shooting, but still has the chin scar to remember it by.
For more behind-the-scenes stories from Daniels about Speed, Dumb and Dumber, and more, watch the video. Some other highlights from Daniels’ long career:
Terms of Endearment (1983)
In the 1983 weepie, Daniels had to play a big dramatic scene with a baby strapped to his chest. While that was challenging, the toughest part might have been playing a cad who cheats on the mother of his children (Debra Winger) with a much younger woman. “There’s a reason why every young actor in Hollywood turned that role down,” he tells Yahoo Movies.
Speed (1994)
After a series of independent movies in the late ‘80s, Daniels felt his career was losing steam. “Speed and Arachnophobia were two choices to get into something a little more commercial that people might see,” he admits. But the blockbuster sensibility was an adjustment. When Daniels was playing Keanu Reeves’ bomb squad partner in Speed, one scene had them bursting onto a rooftop after climbing 52 flights of stairs. Daniels, naturally, acted like he was out of breath — which irked director Jan de Bont, who just wanted his cops to look cool.
Dumb and Dumber (1994)
Daniels’ approach to both Dumb and Dumber movies was to step aside and let Jim Carrey do his thing. “I made the decision early on to not compete with that, not try to top him,” he tells Yahoo Movies.
The Squid and the Whale (2005)
In Noah Baumbach’s edgy comedy, Daniels played a divorcing professor who begins a relationship with a young college student (Anna Paquin). The awkward part: Nine years earlier, Daniels had played Paquin’s father in the family film about a flock of geese, Fly Away Home. “There’s a scene where we’re in the bedroom and we get discovered by my son, and I’ve got my hands up [Paquin’s] sweater,” Daniels recalls of The Squid and the Whale. The actors had to pause in that uncomfortable position while a crew member adjusted a light: “Anna and I are standing there, and I look out the window and I go, ‘Oh look, geese!’”
Steve Jobs (2015)
After three seasons on Aaron Sorkin’s HBO series The Newsroom, Daniels wasn’t counting on getting a role in Sorkin’s highly-anticipated Steve Jobs biopic. Nevertheless, he threw his hat in the ring — and was pleasantly surprised when Sorkin casually offered him the job playing one-time Jobs mentor John Sculley. “One day on the Newsroom set, he walked up [to me] and he said, ‘I hear you want to play Sculley,’” says Daniels. “I said, ‘Yeah, sure.’ He goes, ‘Okay.’ That was it.”
