HARRY VAN GORKUM
It’s hard to look away when actor Harry van Gorkum walks into a room. For starters, he stands 6′ 2″ with perfect posture and a casual English elegance. But it’s his piercing blue eyes that sparkle, twinkle, and illuminate the space all around him.
Harry was born and raised in London, England to an English mother and Dutch father. He attended Lancaster College where he was classically trained as an actor and went on to work all over England in numerous theatre productions until he landed a role in the award-winning play, Being At Home With Claude. It wasn’t long before all of his hard work training and performing on stage, would pay off and catapult him into a career on the big screen.
In 1994 after a very successful acting career in London, (stage, film, television and countless television commercials), he moved to America and settled in Los Angeles.
America has been very good to Harry… his resume includes many notable television shows and movies from, Seinfeld, to Friends, Just Shoot Me, CSI, Jag, The Nanny, 24, NCIS, to name a few, and in films like, Gone in Sixty Seconds, Escape Under Pressure, The Foreigners, Tears of the Sun, Avenging Angelo, Pink Panther 2, Karate Kid, and most recently this years Oscar contender, The 12th Man, as well as commercials, video games, and voice over.
Besides his immense talent on the screen, he is also a professional photographer. He loves being in front of the camera creating a character as much as he does being behind the camera capturing breathtaking images.
Harry’s two most remarkable achievements, however, are his two daughters 7 and 5, with his lovely wife, Victoria, a professional viola player, who studied at London’s Royal College of Music.
We sat down with Harry at Cavatina inside the Sunset Marquis in West Hollywood to discuss his career, his childhood in the UK, and his LA life with his family.
Please share with us one of your most precious
childhood memories.
Dad would always buy second-hand boats. He would then spend weeks and months doing them up, restoring them and getting them ready to put in the water. The boats were always too small, really only suitable for two people. There were five of us in the family, my parents, my brother, and my sister. Because the boat was too small, it wasn’t possible for all of us to sleep there so my brother and I would have to go camp in a field next to the boat. We slept in a tent (a second-hand tent) on the ground in the rain! My sister would sleep on the deck of the boat. I recall that as a child they were very wet holidays, we never seemed to get fully dry.
One of the things that happened over and over again is that my sister would fall off the boat and into the water. I don’t know why she’d fall into the water, but I guess she was told that if she ever felt she was in danger that she should jump off the boat. When I was a young boy I had long hair. I looked like a girl. One day I fell off the boat and I was in the water trying to swim back to the boat. This fellow nearby was signaling to my mother that her daughter had fallen in the water. My mother ignored him thinking it was just my sister again in the water. But instead, I was in the water swimming and frantically trying to get back to the boat safely. Looking back on all those boat trips with my family, I realize now that even though they were wet and cramped holidays for us as children, they were some of the most memorable times of my childhood. I have very fond memories that I now treasure. They were the happiest times. It was just my family, all five of us, together, on an adventure, never knowing what was going to happen next. Now that I have my own family, we have bought a small travel trailer and I really enjoy taking my family on it to experience what I experienced as a child – journeys to the mountains, desert, beaches, and always looking forward to the unexpected. My father’s first boat was called Poppy and my youngest daughter is called Poppy. That name is very special to me.
When did you first know you wanted to be an actor?
I knew it before I decided that I wanted to be an actor. At school when I was about seven, they did a production of The Pied Piper of Hamlin. For some reason, I was cast as the lead. I was a small boy (did not have my growth spurt until I was 18) yet there I was, the lead, leading all these people around. I felt very important. I had no fear. I didn’t understand why people had stage fright. I couldn’t wait to get up on stage.
Did your parent’s ever think of pursuing a career in the entertainment business?
My mother was an actress. She was very well trained at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Arts and I am sure she would have been very successful, but she left acting to go take care of her sick mother and gave it up. But later on, there were times we would be watching television and she would say, “Oh there’s so and so. I went to school with her.” She always kept me grounded when I started to have a little success as an actor, I am so grateful to her for that.
My father wasn’t an actor but should have been. He was a natural born actor.
My father was originally from Holland and he was in the RAF (Dutch Royal Air Force). He was in Switzerland when Germany invaded France and Belgium and was sent from Switzerland back to Holland to be with his parents. If he had stayed in Switzerland he would have been in the safety zone and things would have been very different. I don’t know quite why he went to Holland but he did. He remained there during the occupation and lived a terrible life during that time. When he was 17, he had a friend who somehow knew the Dutch King and for some reason, they were able to get a boat and get a pass to get a boat into England. Once he got to England, he joined the Royal Air Force Dutch Squadron, and became a Spitfire pilot. My father had all his military stuff in the attic. As a kid, I loved going up there and trying it on. Then when I was older I found a trunk and inside a whole bunch of plays with his part marked on them. I went down to tell my father about the plays and he admitted to me that when he was a young man he actually wanted to be an actor. But at that time, when he was in his late teens, it wasn’t easy for a man to say he wanted to be an actor. That was not considered something that well-balanced people chose as a career. When he told his father, his father sent him off to do an aptitude test to see what career best suited him. The test came back that he should be an engineer. So my father became an engineer and then became a salesman for GKN, an engineering company. He traveled the world selling engineering parts. And because he spoke five languages, he became a very successful international salesman. He would tell amazing stories and engage the clients. But I suspect it was really the actor inside of him that made him such a great salesman.
What convinced you to leave London and make the move to Los Angeles?
I had been doing a lot of television commercials in London and I was in lucky enough to be cast in a play, Being at Home with Claude, a three-character play, starring the French Canadian actor Lothaire Bluteau. It started off in the small Kings Head dinner theatre in London, but it soon was selling out fast as word spread of the extraordinarily brilliant performance by Lothaire. It was the best acting I have ever seen. He was so brilliant, dangerous and mesmerizing. The US producers called a few days before the run was up and told us we were transferring to the Vaudeville Theatre in the West End of London… in three days. It was an incredible experience to go from a tiny theatre to a two thousand-seat venue with our names up in lights and huge dressing rooms. It was a huge hit, sold out every night. It was such an honor to share the stage with such a talent. I was required to cry for my part in the final stages of the show, and I never had to act it. I’d just watch and react. That’s how good he was. After the exposure from that play I started to work even more in England, and soon I decided to try my luck in America.
Is there a fond memory from your early years working in the theater that has stayed with you all these years?
Yes, the realization that on the stage anything can happen. It is different every time, every night of the show. You have to be ready, prepared and it is so damn exciting. It gets in your blood… that rush. It’s like nothing else. Film and television do not give you that. It does every so often, but those moments are rare.
Do you have a celebrity story you would like to share?
In 1952 my mother and father were in Venice, Italy, at a time when Venice was having one of the cities worst floods ever. My parents were staying at the Hotel Danieli near St. Marco’s square right on the Grand Canal. My parent’s room was on the 4th floor. They were trapped inside the hotel as the water had gone up as high as the 3rd floor. The hotel had given my parents a lovely suite on one of the higher floors near the bar. The bar was luckily on the 7th floor. Peter O’Toole and his wife were also staying in the same hotel. For one whole week, my parents were trapped in there with Peter O’Toole and his wife. My parents said they laughed so much they could hardly stand it. It was one of the funniest most entertaining times they ever had.
Now fast forward. I’m living in America and I was at the Savannah Film Festival. I go there every year because I am on The Advisory Board of the festival.
One year I was there when Peter O’Toole was being given a lifetime achievement award. Afterward, there was a VIP area and so I asked a photographer friend I was with to please take a picture of Peter O’Toole and myself so I could send it to my father to show him how history repeats itself. So as I’m standing in this VIP area holding my glass of red wine, I look over at Peter O’Toole and he sees me. He’s holding a glass. And then he raises his glass. And I’m thinking is he raising his glass at me? I turn around and look behind me to see if there is someone there. No one was there.
Then eventually he is sitting down. I walk over to him, and I say “Mr. O’Toole, you don’t know me but…” He doesn’t let me finish and says, “The Danieli Hotel, 1952.” I actually went down on my knees in front of him. My friend took a picture of the moment. It’s me looking up at him with my glass of wine in my hand. It looks like Pope meets the boy. And then he continued, “I was there with your father, your mother, my wife, and we were trapped inside the Hotel Danieli.” And then proceeds to tell the story exactly as my father had told it to me. And then he said, “You are your father’s son… the way you hold your glass. It’s Harry!”
My father’s name is also Harry. So now I have this lovely photograph with Peter O’Toole. My father has it framed!
Besides acting, are there other creative avenues that you have pursued.
I am a photographer. I love photography because it makes me invisible and I have total control. It’s the ultimate because actors have no control. Only on stage can an actor have total control. In the theatre when you are out there on stage you can change what you are doing. But yes I love to do photography.
Is there a charity or organization that is very dear to you?
Yes. The Macmillan Cancer Support charity in England. It is a wonderful charity that sends trained health professionals to your home to live with you while a member of your family is going through the terminal stages of cancer. I am forever grateful for the nurse who was with us during my mother’s final days.
How do you feel about the environment and climate change? What do you think we should do to improve it?
I am very passionate about the environment. As we all should be. There is an environmental crisis happening right now. What can we do about it? Well, first we must emphasize that it is real. The crisis is real! And that means globally, not just here in America. People need to be educated. And each and every one of us needs to do our part to educate those who don’t know.
Politics and Special Interest Groups need to step back and let those who are informed and knowledgeable lead and advise us. This all has got to be addressed. We need to be informed and more responsible because it’s our world. We need to make changes. We need to teach our children all of these things from a very young age and lead by example.
Do you consider yourself to be spiritual?
I have always felt there is someone or something guiding me somehow. It is the little voice I hear deep within or a gut reaction to take a certain path or make a decision. I have always lived my life day to day… to see where it will take me. It seems to have worked out well so far. I have traveled the world, had wonderful adventures and met amazing people along the way. For example, I was lucky enough a few years ago to be working in China
on, The Karate Kid, and I took a 2-week trip into the magical country of Tibet.
It is a hard country to enter and to travel around due to the Chinese forced occupation. The Tibetan people are without a doubt the most welcoming, friendly, open people I have yet encountered. As a photographer, I was literally in heaven shooting the smiling faces all around me. This is a country whose whole way of life is Buddhism, and it is apparent in everything they do. It hit me most when we were staying at a nomad camp the night before we walked to the base camp of Everest. We all slept in a large communal tent and the local Tibetans made us dinner and breakfast. The following morning we all paid them for their hospitality and were about to head off on our trek. There was some commotion among our hosts. They were trying to sort out the money we had all given them. We thought we had not paid enough, but it transpired that in fact we had paid them a little over the rate and they were trying to work out how much they needed to give us back! That is one of their steadfast life beliefs, do not steal, or take from others. It was an eye-opening moment. These were a people who live and practiced their religion on a day-to-day basis. There was no divide, it was their life, their culture their moral code. I cried when I left Tibet. If you look into what is happening there today and has been happening for decades, you will understand why.
You have two young daughters, how do you feel about what’s happened in the past year with regards to women coming forward and speaking out about inappropriate behavior in the workplace?
I am so proud of my daughters Poppy, 5 and Sophie, 7 because I know they can do anything they want. It’s not like in the past when a woman’s life choices could be limited. Now there are no limitations for women. I am pleased that the #MeToo movement has happened. It has given women a lot of strength to come forward and to make much-needed changes. Women deserve it. They are much more sensitive, intelligent and much more in control of situations. There has been so much progress and it will only continue to get better for women, and as a result, for all of us.
Special Thank you to
Harry Van Gorkum for the interview
Dina Morrone for Writing the Interview
Kate Younger for Photography and accessories
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