Alfred Molina has gone viral on social media for sharing an emotional story to Vanity Fair about his father, who never vocally supported his son’s acting career. Molina once had the chance to become the manager of a restaurant for a higher salary than what his early acting jobs were paying. He turned it down to pursue the arts, which baffled his father. This was long before Molina became a Tony and BAFTA-nominated actor, plus an iconic movie villain thanks to Doctor Octopus in Sam Raimi’s “Spider-Man 2.”
“When I was very young, my dad got me a job as a waiter in the restaurant where he was working. If I say so myself, I was a good waiter.. to the point where the management offered me the chance to do a two week management training course,” Molina said. “I turned it down because I got an acting job. My father says, ‘This acting job. How much are they paying you?’ I said, ‘I’m getting union [wage], so 15 pounds a week.'”
Molina revealed that the management job would’ve started out with a salary in the 30 pound range, which had his father asking: “Wait a minute. You’re making 30 or 35 here. Then you go to making 15?”
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“I said, ‘Yeah.’ He looked at me and he had the look on his face that you reserve for the mad and the lost,” Molina recalled. “He stared at me like he didn’t recognize me. The only thing I could say to him was, ‘This is what I love, dad.’ He never quite got it. I did disappoint my dad. Yeah. I think if my dad had lived a little longer he’d hopefully would have realized I hadn’t wasted my time.”
Molina took a long pause while trying to fight back tears while reflecting on his father’s disappointment. It wasn’t until after his father passed that Molina even got an inkling that his dad had paid any attention to his acting career.
“My father and I never really talked about my work,” Molina said. “He wasn’t phoning me up saying, ‘So what are you up to? What’s going on?’ We didn’t have that kind of relationship. When he passed away, I went to Spain for the funeral and I was with his widow and she drags out this suitcase and it’s full of clippings and photos and bits from magazines and letters from people that wrote to him saying they saw me. He kept all this stuff, but he never talked about it.”
“My step mom said, ‘Do you want any of this?’ I couldn’t handle it. I said no,” he added. “I’ve always tried with my kids…all you can do is tell them how brilliant you are. That’s all you need to do.”
Molina is currently back on Broadway in a new production of “Uncle Vanya” opposite Steve Carell. He’ll next be seen on screen in the “Harold and the Purple Crayon” movie, co-starring Zachary Levi. Sony is releasing the family tentpole in theaters on August 2.
Watch Molina’s full Vanity Fair interview in the video below.
