FAST-TALKING MANDY PATINKIN HAS A LOT MORE TO SAY THAN THE SPY HE PLAYS ON TV --
THE "60 MINUTES" INTERVIEW THAT COULD HAVE GONE ON AND ON... SUNDAY
Star Wishes He Could be More Like Super-Cool Spy Saul Berensen He Plays on "Homeland"
Mandy Patinkin wouldn't mind being more like the cool, deliberate spy he plays on the hit television drama "Homeland." The former CIA chief Saul Berenson knows when to stop talking. The famously energetic Patinkin does not, and tells Bob Simon he was horrified watching an old interview of himself on television. Viewers find out everything about Patinkin - and then some - when Simon profiles the accomplished singer, stage, film and television actor on the next edition of 60 MINUTES, Sunday, Nov. 16 (7:00-8:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.
Simon, who is more accustomed to getting subjects to talk rather than to stop, asked if Patinkin had always spoken so fast. "Yes. And I was horrified. I saw an interview that I did with someone, and I was horrified by it. And I said to my wife, 'This is unbearable how I talk.'"
The 60 MINUTES correspondent, not exactly a shy type, had a hard time fitting questions in. Patinkin says one reason for his verbosity - he spoke for two minutes straight sometimes - has to do with death, a carpe diem attitude that makes him so restless, he often takes long hikes and bicycle rides to eat up his energy. "I guess the reason is there's various things that have popped up that I really want to say before I check out," he tells Simon. Watch an excerpt.
His father's death when Patinkin was 18 also weighs on him. "I remember he dreamed of things, 'I'm going to go do this, I'm going to go do that when the kids are older,' and then he died from pancreatic cancer and he didn't do it," he recalls. "And I remember that 18-year-old kid said, 'I'm not going to wait.'... I became impatient for anything I dreamed of, I wanted it done by sundown."
He wishes he could be more like the wise, studied Berenson of "Homeland." "I love playing someone calm. I wish I'd had that role earlier on in life," says Patinkin. "There's a lot of Saul I like to take with me in my life."
Simon and 60 MINUTES cameras visited Patinkin on the set of "Homeland" in South Africa and were permitted into his home in upstate New York. There the actor showed off one of his most prized possessions: an elaborate electric train set he has been faithfully working on for decades. It contains replicas of buildings and scenes from his life. The first trains he received from his father more than 50 years ago still work like new.
"In many ways, [the trains] saved my childhood, I lived under that train table and it was, it was like a little tree house. Like a refuge to me," he tells Simon.
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