Ron Vawter listens so patiently that it starts to feel unkind. We value that precision: he makes professional authority uncomfortable without making a supporting part needlessly conspicuous.
Fi1m perspective
In sex, lies, and videotape (1989), Andie MacDowell's Ann tells her therapist that she has stopped wanting sex and begun worrying about where the rubbish goes. Ron Vawter listens with a patience that makes the consultation feel faintly judgemental. He gives Ann room to speak, but not much comfort. We rate him for that exactness: a supporting actor who can make professional attention feel distinctly unfriendly.
He was a founding member of the Wooster Group in the mid-1970s, working in experimental theatre with Elizabeth LeCompte before taking film character parts in the early 1980s. The title role in King Blank (1983) belongs to that early screen work, but cinema did not replace the theatre. In the solo stage piece Roy Cohn/Jack Smith (1992), he played both title figures, exploring sexual identity and repression. The attention to voice and physical detail in that work is worth remembering when a film gives him little to do beyond sitting and listening.
Steven Soderbergh, who wrote, directed and edited sex, lies, and videotape, also shows the limits of such a part. The therapy sessions keep stating what the other scenes have already made clear, and Vawter's restraint cannot remove the repetition. By the third session we were impatient, because Ann was being asked to explain what we could already see in her behaviour. We wanted the screenplay to stop using him to explain Ann.
His firm voice made him a natural fit for men whose position grants them a hearing. Jonathan Demme cast him as law-firm partner Bob Seidman in Philadelphia (1993). It is the sort of establishment role for which he was frequently cast. We find the film humane and moving, though its cautious screenplay leaves too little life outside the case. Vawter belongs to its professional world, but the film's chief strength is the work of Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington.
Start with sex, lies, and videotape for the precision of the listening. Its quiet comedy gives Vawter's patient attention something to work against, particularly when Ann's worries turn towards the rubbish. Just allow for a screenplay that brings the therapist back once too often.
Biography
Ron Vawter (9 December 1948 – 16 April 1994) was an American actor. He was a founding member of the experimental theatre company The Wooster Group and performed in most of its productions from the late 1970s until his death.
Vawter appeared in films including Born in Flames (1983), sex, lies, and videotape (1989) as a therapist, The Silence of the Lambs (1991) as Paul Krendler, Johnny Suede (1991), Philadelphia (1993) as Bob Seidman, and King of the Hill (1993). He created the one-man show Roy Cohn/Jack Smith (1992) and received an Obie Award for sustained excellence in performance.
