Jeffrey Donovan Fans

A World Series of a role

Oct 30, 2008 Interview, Movies

Amesbury’s Jeffrey Donovan hits a home run in ‘The Changeling’
By Katie Curley

Amesbury native Jeffrey Donovan may have left town for Los Angeles long ago. But the actor now starring alongside Angelina Jolie in the new Clint Eastwood drama “The Changeling” is still very much a Red Sox fan.

Even in describing his latest role, he couldn’t resist drawing an analogy with the hometown team’s recent trips to the World Series.

“When you’re in a film with Clint and Angelina, you just hope you don’t strike out,” Donovan said in a phone interview from Chicago last week.

“If (slugger David) Ortiz hits a home run in the minor league, it’s no big deal. But if he takes us to the World Series or hits it in the series, then it’s pretty important.”

For Donovan, there’s no denying “The Changeling” is World Series important. The film, which opens nationwide tomorrow, is already generating considerable Oscar buzz for Jolie and Eastwood.

Based on a true story, the film set in the late 1920s opens with Jolie’s character, a single mother named Christine Collins, returning home from work to find her young son, Walter, missing. But the plot takes a sudden twist when the boy police return to Collins is not Walter.

Donovan plays a supporting role as J.J. Jones, captain of the L.A. Police Department Juvenile Investigation Unit, who amid a media circus persuades Collins to take the boy home to try him out and see if perhaps, given her emotional distress, her own memory had failed. Collins, who won’t give up the fight to find her real son, becomes a victim of persecution by corrupt Los Angeles police handling the missing boy’s case.

Donovan said the real life story is one that shocked him.

“It’s a true and horrifying story,” Donovan said. “The fact the L.A. Police Department would go to such lengths to brainwash the public and this woman into believing her fake son is hers is almost unbelievable.”

For Donovan, his own childhood was one spent playing on Powwow Hill behind Amesbury Elementary School and tossing the football with the town’s independent football league.

“I was a nature kid,” said Donovan, a 1986 graduate of Amesbury High School. “But I really liked downtown Newburyport a lot, and we would go to Salisbury Beach in the summer. As tough as it was, it was our beach.”

He still remembers Amesbury fondly and can give a lesson on its history as the Detroit of the carriage industry.

“It was seriously depressed and working its way out,” he said of the Amesbury of his youth. “It was a tough town to grow up in, and we didn’t have a lot so we made due with what we had. I’m proud to be from there.”

Donovan now splits his time between Miami Beach, where he films his USA Network TV series “Burn Notice,” which begins its third season this winter, and a home in Los Angeles.

With past credits that include the Will Smith and Kevin James movie “Hitch” and TV’s “Law and Order” and “Monk,” Donovan said securing the role in “Changeling” was as easy as reading for Eastwood.

“Clint Eastwood asked me to read for him, and I did. And he literally offered me a role,” Donovan said. “The hard part was shooting ‘Burn Notice,’ flying out and working on the script (for ‘Changeling’) and then reading it, (then) flying home and shooting ‘Burn Notice’ the next morning again.”

What did the Amesbury native think of working alongside Jolie?

“It was nerve-wracking,” he said. “She is so good at what she does, but once you meet her, she is so professional and so good, you just forget who she is and try to remember you deserve to be there.”

Donovan tries to make it back to Amesbury at least once a year; his mother lives in Amesbury and his brother lives in Hampton, N.H.

“I kind of lost touch with everyone from high school,” he said. “But one of the most important people in my life is (Amesbury High School English and drama teacher) Patty Hoyt. She encouraged me to become an actor, and I owe her a lot of thanks for that.”

Donovan also credits Northeastern University professor Nancy Kinderland for mentoring him over the years.

“They were important people. They became my parents in a way,” he said. “They guided me and gave me mentoring, and were very motherly and fatherly at a time I needed it.”

These days, you’ll find Donovan on the stage in Chicago, where he’s performing in the farce “Don’t Dress for Dinner.” Once the show closes after the holidays, he’s looking forward to some much-needed time off before he returns to filming his role as a blacklisted spy in “Burn Notice.”

“I just did six months of ‘Burn Notice’ followed by three months of ‘Changeling,’ and now I’m in a play,” he said. “It’s been a busy year, but one of the best so far.”

About Jeffrey Donovan

Age: 40

Education: Amesbury High School, UMass Amherst, Bridgewater State College, and New York University, where he earned a Master of Fine Arts in acting

Local ties: His mother and grandmother still live in Amesbury; his brother is in Hampton

Local influence: Amesbury High School teacher Patty Hoyt, whom he credits with pushing him to pursue acting. He said they stay in touch.

Where to see him: On the big screen as an L.A. police captain with Angelina Jolie in the Clint Eastwood film “The Changeling” opening tomorrow; on the USA TV network in the series “Burn Notice.”

Source: NewburyPostNews.com