With the Pacific Ocean about ten feet away, I had some fun last night on the Ray Donovan blue carpet (which was rolled out in front of Nobu’s Malibu location) before heading in to what was one of the best parties of this year (it included a fantastic fireworks display—Great Gatsby-type stuff). Minutes before, Showtime and Time Warner Cable took over all of the theaters in the Malibu Cinemas for a screening of the first episode of Ray Donovan‘s new season, which premiers this Sunday, July 13.
Spurred on by the worst father around—Mickey Donovan (played by Jon Voight, who won the Golden Globe for the role in January and was just nominated for an Emmy this morning)—I decided to ask the multi-award winning actor if he could recall the worst advice anyone had ever given him…
“The worst advice I ever got? That’s a good question. I’ll tell you the best advice I ever got,” he said. “I did a play in Summer Stock. It was very early on [in my career] and I had done one year with a very bad teacher in New York, who made acting very confusing. And I thought I knew all this stuff, you know? I almost had a headache from all the stuff I was trying to accomplish in this play. I was miscast for the role, and my parents came up to see it, and it was dreadful. I was just terrible in it. And so when I came out of it my mother said, which was the kiss of death, ‘You were wonderful no matter what anyone says.’ And then my father didn’t say anything. [Afterwards], we were driving back to the motel and I said to him, ‘Dad say something. You know you haven’t said anything.’ He said, ‘Son, go for a swim.’ That’s what he said. ‘Just go underwater and lose your cares in the water.’ It was ‘Go for a swim.’ That’s all he could think of.”
