Richard Beymer spent his youth playing sincere young men slightly too well brought up for the films around them, then found, decades later, the part that fitted: Benjamin Horne, the scheming hotel owner of Twin Peaks. Start there, not with the early films.
Fi1m perspective
There are two Richard Beymers and they barely seem related. The first is a boy in an attic in The Diary of Anne Frank (1959), Peter Van Daan, shy and polite, looking at Anne as though he ought to ask before speaking. The second is Benjamin Horne in Twin Peaks (1990), owner of the town's hotel, a schemer who enjoys his own schemes, played loose and for laughs. Thirty years sit between them, and most of another life.
The career runs like this. A child actor on Los Angeles television in the late 1940s, a feature debut for Vittorio De Sica in Stazione Termini (1953), then the studio years: Peter Van Daan, Tony in West Side Story (1961), a private in the ensemble of The Longest Day (1962). Critics found him stiff as Tony, and he agreed with them; he has said he lacked the knowledge to play it and "came out ridiculous." In the mid-1960s he left leading roles for independent film, documentaries and civil-rights work, shooting footage later used in Eyes on the Prize. He came back to acting in the 1980s in guest television parts, and then David Lynch cast him.
We are not much kinder about the early work than he is. In The Diary of Anne Frank his attic scenes with Millie Perkins are the love story the film promises and, we found, its slowest stretch; we kept waiting for either of them to be quick, or unkind, or anything but careful, and neither ever is. That is not entirely his fault. Studio films of the period wanted earnestness from their young men, and Beymer gave it, and earnestness on screen sits very close to stiffness when the picture around it wants heat. He was cast for sincerity and sincerity was all he was allowed to do.
Lynch wanted something else, and got it. Ben Horne is a character part, eccentric and venal, and Beymer plays him with a looseness the studio years never asked for. Lynch, by Beymer's account, leaves a great deal to the moment, and the actor who had been so measured in 1959 turns out to be good at moments. He returned to the part when the series came back in 2017, after a long stretch away from mainstream acting, and by then the hotel owner had become the role most people mean when they say his name.
He has also painted, sculpted and written novels, and the sense is of a man who found acting narrower than he was. If you know him only as Tony, that is the wrong door. Go in through the hotel.
Biography
Richard Beymer is an American actor, filmmaker and visual artist. Born George Richard Beymer Jr. on 20 February 1938 in Avoca, Iowa, he began his career as a child actor and made his feature film debut in Vittorio De Sica's Stazione Termini (1953).
He rose to prominence with roles including Peter van Daan in The Diary of Anne Frank (1959) and Tony in the 1961 film adaptation of West Side Story. Beymer later played Benjamin Horne in the television series Twin Peaks (1990–1991) and reprised the role in 2017. His other credits include The Longest Day (1962), appearances in The X-Files, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Murder, She Wrote, and work as a director.
