When Harry met Winter
HE MIGHT only be an occasional actor, but Harry Connick Jr had to quickly learn how to deal with a sensitive leading lady in his new film, Dolphin Tale.
“We all had to be slowly introduced us to her,” he tells me over coffee in a London hotel suite. “You couldn’t even talk in your normal voice around her. You had to approach her slowly and quietly.”
She may sound like a nightmare, but when you hear that said leading lady is actually a bottlenose dolphin named Winter who had to learn to wear a prosthetic tail after the trauma of losing the vital limb in a crab trap at three months of age, such precious behaviour makes a lot more sense.
In Dolphin Tale — a family movie that has been a surprise critical and box office hit in the US — Winter stars as herself in a dramatisation of her rescue and how, with the nurturing of two kids, a marine biologist (played by Connick Jr), and an eccentric prosthetic specialist (Morgan Freeman), she regained her ability to swim again.
“Man, she’s better than me,” Connick Jr jokes when asked about Winter’s level of professionalism on set. “She showed up on time, and did what she was supposed to do. That’s more than I can say.
“I’d had a couple of dolphin encounters at a resort, and it was fascinating to be around them, but when I got to Florida and started working with Winter, it was just so different. She has been through so much with people, and is so dependent on people around her, that she’s got a different kind of intelligence. It doesn’t seem like she’s just trained to flip or spin around. It seems like she’s got a different purpose in life.”
It makes one wonder if such an experience changed the way the actor views places like Seaworld that keep dolphins for the purposes of entertaining the masses. “It makes you think about it,” he admits. “It doesn’t make me more of an activist to the cause though, only because I think it’s important to choose what you want to fight for very carefully.
“I think that’s especially the case if you have any amount of public recognition, because you can water down your effectiveness very easily. So although I feel for the animals there are people with more knowledge who are suited to being activists on that topic.”
He might have deftly deflected that question, but it’s hard to hold it against Connick Jr, because in person he’s just so damn easy-going and likeable. By his own admission, his level of fame is pretty curious. “I get recognised, but I’m not Justin Bieber or anything. People know me, but they often don’t remember what they know me for,” he says.
The fact is that the 44-year-old is one of the most accomplished popular artists of his generation. A native of New Orleans, Connick Jr was a child musical prodigy, learning keyboard at age three and performing Beethoven on piano with the local symphony orchestra at age nine.
After studying at his state’s creative arts college, Connick Jr moved to New York to further his music study, where he quickly landed a record deal to cut his first album of jazz standards.
By now only 20 years of age, Connick Jr was approached to record and produce the soundtrack to the 1989 movie When Harry Met Sally, which was a huge success, going double platinum and winning Connick Jr a Grammy award. In the past 25 years he’s had more number one albums than any other American jazz artist in chart history, selling 25 million copies worldwide.
In the same time period, Connick Jr has branched into acting, appearing in movies as diverse as Independence Day, Copycat and PS I Love You, as well as a long-running stint as Leo, the husband of Debra Messing’s character in the hit sitcom Will & Grace.
Hollywood has had a tendency to be snobby towards musicians moonlighting as actors, but Connick Jr says he hasn’t seen that inhibit his screen career. “I’ve encountered that attitude in that I probably haven’t got a ton of movies that I would have gotten if I didn’t play the piano,” he says with a smile. “I guess I don’t see it because people just don’t call me. It’s not difficult for me; maybe it’s more difficult for people to hire me.”
Connick Jr shares much of his screen time in Dolphin Tale with two young actors playing his daughter and her friend. Having started in showbusiness at an early age, he sees as major differences between then and young actors who enter the business today.
“I don’t know about all kids, but the whole American Idol way of looking at things is the antithesis of how I approached my career,” he says. “I think a lot of kids want to be famous now. Man, if I had mentioned that word around my teachers I’d have gotten in trouble. It wasn’t about fame at all.
“It was more like, ‘Be quiet, go into the practice room, and don’t come out until I tell you’. We practiced and practiced, and if opportunity came around we would have the skills to be prepared for it. When you’re a kid, if you just see all the glory, it might affect your work ethic. It’s like, ‘Why do I have to work if this guy can be famous after one appearance on TV?’”
Connick Jr himself is father of three daughters aged between nine and 15. Are they interested in following him into entertainment? “My second daughter, Sarah, likes to sing and she wants to be an actress,” he replies. “My third daughter, Charlotte, won’t sing around me because she’s embarrassed, but she wants to be an actor too. My oldest daughter Georgia has a different outlook. She’s a combination of a lot of things, but not music or acting. I’d never discourage them for doing this though. It’s a great life.”
The mother of his children, and Connick Jr’s wife of 17 years, is former Victoria’s Secret lingerie model Jill Goodacre. Theirs has proven to be one of the most enduring relationships in Hollywood, so what’s their secret? “I love my wife, and she loves me: that’s the deal. I got really lucky. Some great people marry, but they end up growing apart. That’s life. I was just lucky to find a girl I was compatible with.
“Also my manager told me a long time ago: ‘You can be as famous as you want to be. It’s about the choices that you make’. Did I have people photograph my wedding? No, I didn’t want them there. When we had our first baby, did I have a bunch of people taking pictures? No. Do I go on the cover of ‘People’ magazine? No. I guess I could have been a lot more famous, but I just didn’t want that.”
Dolphin Tale is in cinemas on Friday
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