Man of the Year: Tim Robbins Will Bring Politics, Humor to Cambridge

Catherine Zeta-Jones is not the only star coming to Harvard this week. Two-time Oscar winner Tim Robbins, this year’s Hasty Pudding Man of the Year, will take his turn on Holyoke Street tonight.

Anyone who’s seen Tim Robbins’ stunning performance of a damaged man coping with a horrible secret in 2003’s Mystic River or his quiet portrayal of the falsely convicted Andy Dufresne in 1994’s The Shawshank Redemption knows what a truly gifted actor is about to come to Cambridge. Robbins won Academy Awards for both those roles, and was nominated for Best Director for 1995’s Dead Man Walking. He’s also won acclaim for his roles in 1992’s The Player, 1990’s Jacob’s Ladder, 1990’s Cadillac Man, and for his break-out performance in 1988’s Bull Durham. Real cinema buffs also recognize Robbins for his roles in 1999’s Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, 2000’s High Fidelity, 1986’s Top Gun, and the so-bad-it’s-good 1986 Howard the Duck.

One of Hollywood’s biggest power players, Robbins has achieved success where few other performers have, moving back and forth between the realms of directing and acting. But for Robbins, success cannot be measured solely by awards and box-office numbers.

“There’s more to movies than the rat race of Hollywood,” he told Cineaste. A member of the Green Party who’s been politically active since his teens, Robbins has used his celebrity to advocate for AIDS relief and against the war on Iraq. Films like Dead Man Walking, about a man on death-row, and 1992’s Bob Roberts, a “mockumentary” about an uber-conservative senatorial candidate, also purveyed politics.

And then there’s always his family. He has two children with Susan Sarandon, his partner of 17 years. “Now that I have a family, I find I’m much more happy when I’m with them,” Robbins said in a July 1999 interview with Cineaste. “But when you’re acting, or especially directing, it requires such a concentrated commitment that you have to leave it all behind. And that’s tiring. So now I find myself only making movies that really grab me.”

Robbins was first “grabbed” by the acting bug during his childhood in New York City’s Greenwich Village. Born on October 16, 1958, in West Covina, California, Robbins had discovered acting by the time he was 12. In New York City he joined the avant-garde troupe “Theater in the New City,” and by 1979 was studying drama at UCLA.

He graduated with honors in 1981 and immediately formed the Los Angeles-based “Actor’s Gang,” an innovative group that John Cusack later joined. The troupe lives on today, producing innovative theater in the L.A. area.

Unlike Zeta-Jones, Robbins has not mandated a tight fist over the publicity for his Man of the Year award. He plans to talk to FM this afternoon; look for that conversation next week.