Here's The Thing - 10. Mickey Rourke/John Turturro/Viggo Mortensen

HERE'S THE THING - 10. MICKEY ROURKE/JOHN TURTURRO/VIGGO MORTENSEN (320kbs-m4a/131mb/57mins)
BBC Radio 4 Extra broadcast: 26th April 2021

Alec Baldwin delves into the lives of three celebrated actors, Mickey Rourke, John Turturro and Viggo Mortensen.

Award-winning actor Alec Baldwin gives the listener unique entrée into the lives of artists, policy makers and performers. Alec sidesteps the predictable by taking listeners inside the dressing rooms, apartments, and offices.

Mickey Rourke talks about how he was trying to make it as a boxer when he decided that acting might let him make a buck without getting beat up.

Child of an Italian father and a second-generation Sicilian in Queens, John Turturro was expected to achieve middle-class success, but fell deep in love with acting as both a craft and a field of study.

Viggo Mortensen had a highly eccentric childhood, moving as a young boy with his Danish father to South America where his father managed chicken farms. After his parents divorced, he moved with his mother to upstate New York, and after college drove a truck and sold flowers on the street, before trying acting. It was just one more odd job, at first.

Here's the Thing has its roots in public radio. In 2009, Alec joined with producers Lu Olkowski, Trey Kay, Kathie Russo, and Emily Botein to find fresh ways to engage in conversation on the radio. The group developed the idea of a new show that at its heart would look at what makes interesting people tick and create a platform for new and emerging ideas to be presented.

From WNYC Studios, New York.