William H. Macy backstage at the 2017 Screen Actors Guild Awards

January 30, 2017

by Carla Hay

The 23rd Annual Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Awards took place on January 29, 2017, at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles.

WILLIAM H. MACY

SAG Award win:

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Comedy Series

(“Shameless”)

Here is what this SAG Award winner said backstage in the SAG Awards press room.

William H. Macy at the 29th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles on January 29, 2017.
William H. Macy at the 2017 Screen Actors Guild Awards in Los Angeles. (Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images)

BACKSTAGE INTERVIEW

In “Shameless,” there’s no limit to what you do. Are you more fearless about what you can do?

What a great question. I certainly have done things I never thought I would do. I grew up in western Maryland. I’m Lutheran, for God’s sake, so I read the scripts with this same horror that the audience has in watching it. Yeah, I think it’s made me bolder. Perhaps it’s my age, but I think Frank Gallagher has something to do with the fact that I feel freer to say what I really think. I don’t need your pity

You thanked your wife, Felicity Huffman, in your speech. How does she you support you, and what does that means you?

It’s a fairytale. We both love acting. We met in the theater when we were one of us was very young, and the other was a little bit older. And it’s all we’ve ever done. It’s the language that we have. Felicity’s about to start a new series. She’s about to do a pilot. We read each other scripts to each other. We work together. Don’t try this at home, but it’s what we do, and it seems to work. And I’m blessed. I am blessed. We have a blast. That’s it.

Do you have different closets for your awards?

I’ll admit to having a number of trophies and our house. We have a balcony and we put them up there thinking it would be discreet. And then I was going to direct a film, and I they said, “Where you want to do the first reading?” And I had all these young actors come to our house. And I said, “We’ll sit around that table in the balcony.” And I realized halfway through the first rehearsal that they were there were all these awards to William H. Macy behind them. And I realized this wasn’t the best place to do it after all. I think it may be have to be an actor to understand.

You’ve done versatile roles and characters. Is there a particular character or personality that you haven’t done that you want to do?

That’s a lovely question. The bad guy, but more than bad—the truly evil guy, which is tough because I don’t like violence. I don’t like going to movies that have a lot of violence. It upsets me, and I find it’s stupid sometimes. I’d like to play the bad guy, you know maybe it’s because I played Frank Gallagher. I’d like to play the unplayable roles: the Nazi, the racist, the Ku Klux Klan guy. I’d like to give a shot at those roles.

I love comedy. I have a tendency myself to only go to films that make me laugh. I’d rather laugh than anything else. I’m growing into my age. I can’t wait to play the older guy, whatever that is. The president, the senior lawyer.

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