AC Interview: Richard Jenkins Talks About Being "The Visitor"

Though he normally provides excellent supporting work in films such as "Silverado" and "The Kingdom," character actor Richard Jenkins moves front and center in "The Visitor," a movie that looks at how music connects people from all walks of life. "Music is such a big part of the movie; it's there in the consciousness of the movie all the time, whether it is the piano or the drum," Jenkins said while relaxing in the lobby of the Four Seasons Hotel in St. Louis.

Jenkins Plays a Widowed College Professor in "The Visitor"

Here, Jenkins is Walter Vale, a professor at a Connecticut college who has been focusing less on his classes and more on writing an economics book. Walter also has lost his wife, a noted concert pianist, and one of the most painful early scenes in the film shows Walter attempting to play the piano. "It's almost like he's trying to keep that memory alive of his wife. She was a concert pianist, so there was music in the house," Jenkins said. "I always thought he was trying to break out, trying to live a life, but looking for different answers in the same places; one of them was the piano."

Professor Vale Gets an Unexpected Surprise in New York City

Walter finally reconnects with the rest of the world on an unexpected trip to New York City. After agreeing to present a colleague's paper at a conference, Walter heads to the Big Apple and goes to an apartment he has maintained in New York for years. When he gets there, however, he finds Tarek (Haaz Sleiman) and his girlfriend Zainab (Danai Gurira) have "rented" the apartment from an unscrupulous friend.

In an odd moment of generosity and charity for Walter, he asks the couple to stay with him until they make other arrangements. "There is something about Tarek that is so open, so real, that you want to have a part of that. There is just Karma there that is just good. At the time when we filmed it, it just felt so right, it felt so right to ask them to stay," Jenkins said.

The Visitor and His Guests Bond Through Music

Walter and his new roommates bond thanks to the African drum, the instrument that Tarek plays. Though Walter had little aptitude for the piano, he's a natural when playing the drum. "He may have been a closet drummer his whole life and not known it. There was an incredible emotional attachment to the drum, that sound, those kids playing on the street. Here's this 60-year-old man finally connecting with something that he had never been exposed to," Jenkins said.

Some viewers are surprised at how close the buttoned-down professor and the more open Tarek become as the movie progresses. "They were talking to Haaz (who plays Tarek in the film) in one of the Q&A's we did and he said 'You don't understand. I'm an Arab and when somebody does something like Walter did for me, we owe him everything. From that day on, we owe him everything and we can't do enough for him. He gave us a place to stay. In the culture, that's what it's like. I find that an odd question. That's who we are.'"

"The Visitor," rated PG-13 for brief strong language, currently is playing in theaters across the country.