The part as actually written to be just a day’s work: It was the funeral scene at the beginning of the movie where there are some Amish men and boys walking through a cornfield, down to the farm where Kelly McGillis’s character’ family lives. It was a funeral for her husband. I think I had one word in German and that was it. It’s funny, the same day that I was offered the Witness job in Pennsylvania — I was living in New York at the time — I was also offered a part in a production of Shakespeare in the Park for that summer. That was the thing to do obviously, I thought, but my rep, Bill Treusch, said, “Not so fast. It’s not often that you have someone like Peter Weir coming through town and casting a movie. You can do a play anytime. Trust me, just go down and do this thing.”
So I took the train down to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, did the day’s work and at lunch Peter Weir came over to the table where I was sitting with some of the other actors and asked, “Can I talk to you for a minute?” I felt like maybe I said the thing in German wrong! He looked very serious. He says, “What are you doing the next six weeks?” I said, “I don’t know, nothing?” He said, “I was looking at [co-star] Alexander Godunov and I think I will make you be his brother if you are willing to hang around. Wherever he is, especially when he’s interacting with Kelly McGillis and Harrison Ford, you are sort of the audience’s eyes watching and seeing their relationship develop, and your brother get jealous. I can’t tell you what you will be doing, but we will figure it out as we go along.” I worked once or twice a week at most, mostly just background. That movie gave me the absolute wrong idea of what filmmaking is like because the director was polite and there was no yelling, and everything ran smoothly and professionally.. [Laughs.] Work always finished on time or a little before. It was like, “Wow, what a great business!” Then it took me another 20 years to have another experience like that.
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