Josh Radnor and Elizabeth Reaser in “The Babylon Line” (Photo by Jeremy Daniel)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cIf you told me I had to stop acting for some reason, I could really say I\u2019ve had a nice run,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ve worked on a couple of TV shows, been on Broadway twice, worked with great playwrights. But writing and directing [provides] a sense of newness.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the truth is I love them all but for different reasons. I like that my career has branched out, which means I don\u2019t have to choose.\u201d<\/p>\n
At least for the next month, Radnor we\u2019ll be concentrating on acting. \u201cThe Babylon Line\u201d has received mixed to positive reviews — none of which he has read.<\/p>\n
\u201cI find as an actor it doesn\u2019t help me,\u201d he said. \u201cEven a positive review can get in my head.\u201d<\/p>\n
Radnor plays Aaron Port, a less than successful writer who commutes on the Long Island Rail Road from his Greenwich Village home to teach an evening adult-ed writing class. His six students are a mixed bag; they include three Jewish women who signed up for the course because the ones they wanted were booked. They are joined by a woman none of the locals know, an agoraphobe out of her house for seemingly the first time in years.<\/p>\n
Through their writing, the students make discoveries about themselves.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s about the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves \u2014 and how we can be wrong about those stories,\u201d Radnor said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s about people who think they\u2019re at the end of their story, who think they\u2019re living some kind of tragedy, and it\u2019s just a moment in their lives. It\u2019s sad and not sad, and if you really unpack the structure and what [Greenberg] is doing, there\u2019s a sweetness to it and things work out for these people in spite of their worst fears.\u201d<\/p>\n
In that regard, Radnor finds the play very Jewish, a subject that led to his own Jewish influences.<\/p>\n
\u201cI actually struck up a friendship with a rabbi in New York,\u201d Radnor said. \u201cWe had a very long lunch a couple weeks ago and he told me something fascinating: There\u2019s no Hebrew word for tragedy in drama. There\u2019s a Hebrew word for comedy, but not tragedy.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a filmmaker I like to leave my audiences with a future that\u2019s better. My characters have somewhat Jewish last names, but whether they\u2019re Jewish or not, they are always caught in certain ethical situations, forks in the road.\u201d<\/p>\n
Radnor says his films \u201care about good people getting better at being themselves.”<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not interested in evil or how terrible we can be toward each other,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s an attitude he likely developed attending the Columbus Torah Academy in Ohio, where he grew up.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think [my parents] wanted me to have a strong Jewish upbringing and wanted me to know where I came from and what tradition I was inheriting,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The training stuck. In conversation with this writer a couple of years ago, Radnor said, \u201cI read somewhere that Tony Kushner was asked why so many Jews are attracted to the theater \u2014 he said reading the Talmud and reading a play are very similar. There\u2019s a surface read and then digging underneath the text. I feel having this background, having this love of literature, looking at something on the surface and excavating and finding out what more can be gleaned from it, you get from a Jewish way of learning.\u201d<\/p>\n
Radnor and his sisters attended day school until the eighth grade, then transferred to a public high school in their freshman years \u2014 a move that may have been proved bashert. A friend asked him to accompany her to auditions for that year\u2019s school production, \u201cOklahoma!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI went and I was watching everyone audition and thought, \u2018Man, I think maybe I can do this a little better than these people,\u2019\u201d Radnor recalled. \u201cThey pointed at me and asked if I wanted to audition. I said yes and ended up getting one of the leads.\u201d<\/p>\n
He played Will Parker that year, the emcee in \u201cCabaret\u201d the following season and was hooked. In 2005, following brief appearances on shows like \u201cLaw & Order\u201d and \u201cER,” Radnor was cast as the lead in \u201cHow I Met Your Mother.\u201d<\/p>\n
The series was a hit. But like two other revered long-running shows \u2014 “The Sopranos” and “Seinfeld” \u2014 the series ended with finale that disappointed many fans.<\/p>\n
\u201cI actually don\u2019t talk about it,\u201d Radnor said, clearly tired of the question. \u201cI defended it quite a bit whenever I was asked about it. Either people got enraged by how it ended or loved it. It aroused so much emotion.\u201d<\/p>\n
As with the rest of his career, Radnor has moved on.<\/p>\n
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