Five Minutes With Actor Henry Vick
The Unsilent Picture is a stroll through another time and different style of filmmaking. The film includes an ensemble cast of actors with varied backgrounds including film, television, and theater. Henry Vick, who stars in the film as Vanderdonk, has a background working in television and theater. His television projects include Deadbeat and The Quitter. His theater work includes “The Imaginary Invalid” with Peter Dinklage. The West Virginian native sat down to talk to us about his role in this inventive film.
Why get involved with this project?
I’ve known Alex since high school when were cherubs at the National High School Institute at Northwestern University. Alex and I have remained close as friends and collaborators since then. He told me he was working on The Unsilent Picture for Historic Hudson Valley and there might be something for me to do and I was happy, as always, to contribute. It’s like Alex and I are pinned together in a rocky crevice by a massive boulder, it would take the loss of a limb for one of us to escape.
How does a 21st-century actor get inside a role like this?
Working on the film was really liberating and allowed me to work in a very different way. I found that I had twice as much freedom to work physically because I wasn’t obligated to find a parallel verbal rhythm life for the character. I had a lot of fun because I had to rely exclusively on his physical vocabulary to find who he was.
How do you prepare?
There was a lot of exploring and clowning in rehearsals because each shot felt like an opportunity to bring out these large characters in a broad way. We approached it as a challenge to see how much of that we could achieve.
Anything else you would like to add?
I’d like to thank the little piece of makeup sponge I put behind my upper lip for helping me find my character every day.
