One of them was called ‘Greystoke’ and they wanted me to play Tarzan, swinging totally naked through the trees in that one. and I knew what films they were going to have me do.

It was a three-picture deal with a lot of options on the back end. It was called ‘The Clint,’ after Clint Eastwood’s contract and it had all the same bells and whistles.

offered me the biggest contract they had ever offered anyone. “After the first movie that I did, Warner Bros. heard about that performance and that’s how I ended up getting my first movie.”ĭid producers and directors have expectations Hamlin would do nudity on screen since he had already done it on stage? And it actually started my film career, because a casting director from Warner Bros. That’s a risk that you take as a stage actor. “But what I learned from that experience is that once you do something like that, you can do anything. “But also you could hear the sound of the doors closing, because as soon as I took my clothes off, there were always people who were so outraged by it that they left the theater, and you could hear the doors go ‘phumff, phumff.’ So they had ushers that were stationed all over, and if they heard a shutter click, they immediately went over and confiscated that camera and took the film out. You could literally hear a pin drop in that theater, which was a good thing because in those days, a camera shutter made a ‘click’ sound. And every single night when we came to that scene, that audience stopped breathing. “The show was a huge success and I ended up doing it for two seasons. Harry Hamlin in 1981's 'Clash of the Titans.' (United Artists) It was my first paycheck I got $126 a week and it was my first professional acting job. The American Conservatory Theater had won the regional Tony a few years before this, so this was a really big deal for me. But then the part had to be recast and, once again, they came to me. The way it was staged, there was also bleacher seating on stage as well, three or four feet from the actors. The role requires that the character be 100% naked at one point, the full monty, in front of 1,600 people in the theater. The whole play is about trying to find out why he did this. So when I found out that the play was ‘Equus,’ I realized that he wanted me to play this teenage boy who gashes the eyes out of a stableful of horses. And its third iteration was going to be in San Francisco. “And then that play turned out to be ‘Equus,’ which had opened in London and won every award, and then it opened in New York and won every award there. Actor Harry Hamlin's first professional acting job involved conquering his fears.

Naked on stage