Roles of a lifetime

In 2012, actor and Montgomery native Michael O’Neill’s wife, Mary, told him they were moving.

“She turned to me and said, ‘We’re moving to Birmingham,’” O’Neill said. “... I should say about my wife, she’s the brains of the operation. She said, ‘Yeah, your dad is 87. If you want to spend time with him, you need to do it now.’”

O’Neill’s father died a few years ago, but the family remained in Mountain Brook, away from the “spectacle” of Los Angeles. The move, O’Neill said, really helped his three daughters.

“Mary said, ‘I want a different environment for them,’” O’Neill said. “Los Angeles is a really spectacle-driven city … we wanted something a bit more grounded for them.”

O’Neill, whose film and television credits include “Transformers,” “Seabiscuit,” “Secondhand Lions,” “Dallas Buyers Club,” “The West Wing,” “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Extant,” said he enjoys living in the Birmingham area.

“I like this area,” O’Neill said. “I like this part of town. … It’s got texture. I love the confluence of Vestavia Hills and Cahaba Heights and Mountain Brook. It just interests me here, so I was really glad we landed here.”

O’Neill was raised in Montgomery in a family of farmers, where he said he learned to be “tenacious” at an early age.

“We’re not afraid of hard work,” O’Neill said. “I think it sort of put a tenacity in me that I found [is] probably the most significant aspect of my career … because there are a lot of people that are a lot more talented than I am, and they also knew a lot earlier that they wanted to be actors.”

Learning to act

O’Neill graduated from Auburn with an economics degree in 1974 and then drove across the country to California to take up acting lessons. 

“I didn’t know anything about acting,” O’Neill said. “I really didn’t. I’d never been on stage before in my life. … I didn’t read well. I mechanically had difficulty reading out loud. I had to learn to do that and try and make it sound like human speech.”

A few years later, O’Neill went to acting school in New York and spent 15 years in the state. He landed his first role in the 1980s film “Ghost Story,” the last film of Fred Astaire’s career. O’Neill called the film an “incredible experience.”

Through the years, O’Neill has typically been cast as an authority figure, playing the head of the fictitious “Sector 7” in the first “Transformers” film and, perhaps his most notable role, as Secret Service Agent Ron Butterfield in “The West Wing.” O’Neill said he’s been cast as a “turn actor,” as the appearance of his character brings about a change in the plot.

O’Neill’s favorite role is that of the jockey’s father in the film “Seabiscuit.”

“I just related so much to that character, the jockey’s father,” O’Neill said. “The idea of having to give a child away because you couldn’t support them was heartbreaking to me. I had three young children at the time. I knew something about what it meant to worry about being able to support your children.”

Another of O’Neill’s favorites is the show “Extant,” which featured Halle Berry. A recurring role on that show made O’Neill feel at home on set.

“They become your crew,” O’Neill said. “It becomes your set. You go to work everyday knowing those people are there for you to support and for them to support you. I love the family of our industry.”

Another famous role for O’Neill was on “Grey’s Anatomy,” where he played Gary Clark, a man who murdered multiple people in the hospital after his wife was taken off of life support.

“I was very hesitant to take it on, and [show creator Shonda Rhimes] knew that,” O’Neill said. “... I didn’t want a copycat situation, and she was very, very sensitive to that, to her credit. I remember at one point, I said, ‘This frightens me,’ and she said, ‘Michael, it frightens me, too.’”

O’Neill, who had to “decompress” after playing the role, said he was proud of showing that Clark was a man in “incredible pain and conflict.”

“You try to find the humanity of it,” O’Neill said. “If you can do that, if you can make sure that whatever you’re playing has a humanity attached, that’s probably what I was proudest of about that role, was that you could see the man was in incredible pain and conflict.”

O’Neill’s career hasn’t been without its low points, times without any work and wondering what comes next, he said. Still, that tenacity learned during a childhood in Alabama got him through, he said.

“Sometimes you just have to bite the stick and hold on, and I’ve been pretty good at that,” O’Neill said.

His recent filming includes several episodes of “Scandal,” as well as “Shooter.” Upcoming films include “The Stand,” a story about a rancher who tries to regain his cattle after being scammed out of them, and “Clemency,” a film about the death penalty.

The film industry, O’Neill said, has changed a lot since he entered it decades ago.

“I’m not sure I’d want to start now. It’s corporately owned now, so a lot of the films that I grew up with or got to do along the way, they don’t even do those films anymore. They’ve moved the tent pole, as we like to say. … They like the big spectacle,” he said.

While he appreciates the “remarkable” talent it takes to put together the big films, O’Neill said he’s driven by ordinary, human stories, even if they seem small by comparison.

“It’s just harder to find those films now,” O’Neill said.

Life in a small city

Several years after his family settled in Mountain Brook, O’Neill said the area has been good to them.

“The people have been open-armed,” O’Neill said. “They’ve been interesting and engaging, and I think really supportive of my kids. … My wife is very, very smart. It was very, very good for my kids to have this period of time. Wherever they go, whatever they do, part of their foundation is anchored here.”

O’Neill said his family has benefited from their faith community at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church.

“They folded our family in,” O’Neill said. “... It’s just been a great, enlightening community.”

Whether it’s at church or out and about in the community, O’Neill said people are respectful if they recognize the tall Hollywood actor roaming their streets.

“People are friendly,” O’Neill said. “I’m not aware of it as much. My wife and daughter see it, if somebody has clocked me, they’ll know it. I find usually people are respectful and friendly. If they want to talk about something, I’m happy to talk to them about it, or do a photograph or whatever.

“I’m not that important. I’m really not that important. I’m a working actor,” O’Neill said.

With one daughter at Auburn and two more about to begin college in California and Memphis, O’Neill said he’s not sure where he and his wife will end up, but he’s enjoyed living in the Birmingham area and pursuing his hobbies, including gardening, playing guitar, taking his dog hiking at Red Mountain Park or reading.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, one of O’Neill’s favorite things to do is go to movies.

“I love going to the movies,” O’Neill said. “I just adore going to films. I still do. It’s still magical to me, so you can often find me in the afternoon in a theater somewhere.”

While O’Neill enjoys films from the perspective of a moviegoer, his eyes are always looking for that next script, the next job.

“The truth of the matter is, I’m always looking for the next role,” O’Neill said. “I rarely look back. If you ask me, I’ll tell you, but in terms of looking back, I don’t.

“Actors are like sharks. If they stop moving, they die,” O’Neill said.