Peter Gallagher always took “The O.C.” seriously. Sandy Cohen was the dad of his dreams, too

Peter Gallagher is reminiscing about a defining moment in his acting career. It was the early aughts, and he had just been cast in a buzzy Fox drama in the role of Sandy Cohen. Some of his friends, however, had concerns. Why was he throwing it all away on what they dismissively wrote off as a teen soap?

At the time, he was a Tony Award-nominated performer who had given acclaimed performances under directors like Steven Soderbergh and Robert Altman. But Gallagher knew he was on to something. "Teen soap?" the father figure to a generation of "The O.C." fans says, still a little flummoxed at the idea. "I thought it was a great American drama with comedy."

It's a late summer morning, a few days after the actor's 69th birthday. Gallagher arrives at Salon's New York studio early, prepared, and as confidently gracious as if I were his guest, instead of the other way around. It feels appropriate for a man who says that the only advice he ever gave his children was "to work harder than anybody else."

He's back in New York City rehearsing for his first Broadway show in almost a decade, a stage adaptation of Delia Ephron's late-in-life love story "Left on Tenth,” which began previews at the James Earl Jones Theatre this month. Gallagher plays a widower who strikes up an unexpected courtship with Julianna Margulies in the midst of mutual grief and illness. He describes the play as "a romantic comedy with harrowing moments," and tells me, “My character says at some point that he learned early that life is a continuous cycle of joy and pain."

It's an arc that describes Gallagher's own career as well. Shortly after graduating from Tufts University in the late 1970s, he made his Broadway debut in “Grease” as Danny Zuko. By 1980, he was starring in his first film, the unprophetically named "The Idolmaker." Yet, larger success eluded him for decades. Maybe it was his unique talent for playing characters Altman once called "handsome, vain, sleazy" types — guys who cheat on their wives, or guys with whom married women cheat. 

Even as he racked up more quietly sympathetic roles in cult favorites like "Dreamchild," Gallagher admits, "I had this face when I was a young person, that frankly, if I saw me walking down the street my first thought would be, 'F**k you.' What was that expression? God doesn't give with two hands."

Back in 1993, he told the New York Times, "I always thought that if you do good work in small roles, then larger ones would follow. But maybe it will take 20 years rather than ten for it to happen that way for me." He wasn't far off the mark. 

Peter Gallagher in Midtown, New York in August (Photo by Peter Cooper for Salon)He was 47 when he landed the role on "The O.C." His character Sandy was a witty, Berkeley-educated public defender and father to Seth, played by Adam Brody. To the younger generation drawn in for the show's cast of mostly unknowns like Brody and Rachel Bilson, Sandy represented something more significant. 

Even as the series and its plot lines varied in quality over its four-season run from 2003 and 2007, Gallagher's character remained television’s most reassuring role model of the era — the dad many fans wished their dads could be. ”I was in an interesting time,” he recalls, “a transition where you didn't do TV at all if you wanted to do movies. Then, that changed.” And when “The O.C.” came along, he says, "I thought it was absolutely the best script I had read in ages.” 

"A story about a Jewish guy from the Bronx living with his shiksa wife" in the waspy world of southern California was, he says, “exactly the right story to be telling post 9/11.” In an anxious American era, the show offered viewers a welcome dose of uncynical heart of hope.

The fact that "The O.C." remains a cultural touchstone 20 years on is a point of deep pride for Gallagher, and he's still fond of "those kids," as he calls his younger co-stars. Fellow "O.C." dad Tate Donovan recalls that behind the scenes, Gallagher was as well-regarded as Sandy was on-screen, including when he proved a calming presence during his first foray into directing in season 3.

"I sat down in the director's chair, and I looked at Peter's face, and I just relaxed. I was just like, 'Thank God,'" Donovan tells me via FaceTime. "This is what it's like to work with a seasoned, great, talented actor."

Donovan describes Gallagher as the kind of actor who "makes everybody's job easier — the director, the producers, the prop people. You don't have to worry about anything," he says, "when Peter is on set." 

Gallagher’s “Left on Tenth” co-star Margulies agrees. "He is simply a dream to work with," she shares in an email to Salon, ticking off "his fearlessness, his honesty, his open heart, his charm and most importantly his talent."

"We all can’t get over how perfect he is in this role and how much he brings to it," she adds. "I can’t imagine it being anyone else.”

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In contrast, Gallagher's own dad — a taciturn, World War II veteran — was not a Sandy Cohen type. "I loved my dad dearly, but he didn't talk to me," he says. 

"We worked together around the house and stuff, but my big failing in life is I could never get him to actually talk to me. I'd say, 'Dad, tell me something,' and he'd say, 'Ah, you'll figure it out.' I didn't think he understood how important he was to me.” 

Peter Gallagher at Salon's New York studio (Photo by Peter Cooper for Salon)

Growing up in the suburbs of New York City, Gallagher’s aspirational idol wasn't his stoic father but movie star, crooner, and Rat Pack legend Dean Martin. By his early twenties, Gallagher had landed on Broadway in musicals like "Grease" and "Hair."

Over the years, his aptitude for bending his Irish charm into characters both affable and appalling kept him working steadily, racking up roles in genre-defining classics including "Sex, Lies, and Videotape," "The Player" and "While You Were Sleeping." He took detours back to Broadway, including a Tony-nominated performance in the 1986 revival of Eugene O'Neill's "Long Day's Journey Into Night" and an acclaimed turn as Sky Masterson in the 1992 revival of "Guys and Dolls," an experience he describes as "the hardest run I'd ever had." 

The run was rough, in part, because of how dramatically the landscape had changed in the six years he'd been away from Broadway. "I don't think we can underestimate the impact," he says. "AIDS pretty much wiped out my entire generation. The kids in the chorus you'd see on Tuesday, and they'd be gone on Thursday." 

When he returned to the stage, he says, "All of these people were gone, and these new kids looked at me as somebody who had never done theater. I saw an interview with [director] Jerry Zaks and [costar] Nathan Lane, and he said that 'Peter had never really done anything before he worked with us.'"

The slight still stings. "It was my seventh Broadway show," he says. "I'd been nominated before."

Although he says he was proud of his work in that show, "I didn't recognize it as the theater that I had known and loved and felt a part of. I thought, to not make any money and work eight shows a week and be treated like that… life's too short." 

Gallagher, an accomplished vocalist who has released an unabashedly romantic album of bluesy covers, staged a one-man show and delivered an extraordinary version of "True Colors" for "Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist," avoided doing musicals for 25 years.

Instead, he continued to turn in scene-stealing film performances, often with a touch of that signature "handsome, vain, sleazy" panache. He played that smarmy charm memorably in Sam Mendes's Oscar-winning "American Beauty.” When he read the screenplay, he knew exactly how to get into the character of Buddy Kane, a self-professed "king of real estate."

"I thought, well, who do I know that is a legend in his own mind?" he says. "I thought, I'm going to base this character on Donald Trump, because he was a New York real estate guy, and I could imagine him saying all those things. The Donald was my spirit guide in that performance." When I ask him if he thinks Buddy Kane could make America great again, he shakes his head. "I don't think he'd have any more luck than the Donald has."

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Despite his success in morally dubious roles like Buddy Kane, Gallagher's own kids confirm that he really is instead the sweet, supportive guy that fans of "The O.C." know. Daughter Kathryn Gallagher, a Tony-nominated actor and singer, says simply that her father "taught me how to be loved." 

"I won the lottery in the dad department, because the version of my dad the world fell in love with is the version I had at home,” she tells me during a phone call. “If I can share Sandy Cohen with the world, so be it."

Her filmmaker/photographer brother James adds, "It's a little surreal to have a father who is considered one of the great American dads for a fictional role he's playing, but in many ways, although different from Sandy Cohen, there's more shared DNA there than not." 

"He has a deep love for people. He listens. He looks people in the eye. Sandy's humanness is my dad's humanness. I feel immensely lucky to be his son," he says. "I think Sandy Cohen is one of the finest fathers to ever grace the small screen, but forced to choose between the two, I'd rather be raised by Peter Gallagher."

 Peter Gallagher in conversation with Salon's Mary Elizabeth Williams (Photo by Peter Cooper for Salon)

The feeling is clearly mutual. Throughout our conversation, Gallagher — who's been married for over 40 years to his college sweetheart, Paula Harwood — beams when talking about his children's professional accomplishments. 

"When I grew up, I took care of my mom, I took care of my dad. I felt like a little adjunct parent because my brother and sister were so much older. I was a mistake in the family," he says without a hint of self-pity, "busy trying to live this double life of going to school and figuring out how things work on my own and not letting anybody know how chaotic or sad it was. I wanted our kids to have the freedom to dream unfettered and see where it led them."

Gallagher has continued to pursue his own dreams over the past several years, too, studying and practicing his singing and flexing his formidable comedic chops in series like "New Girl" and "Grace and Frankie." It's a skill he underplays, even when he earnestly lobs a corny dad joke at me — "You know what zero said to eight? Nice belt." I can’t help groaning in appreciation. 

And while he insists he never tried to be "the funny one,” comedy is a part of his return to the stage in "Left on Tenth." And he's having a good time, even with well over 2,000 performances on Broadway under his own belt.

"I still love it," he says, leaning back comfortably on Salon’s office couch. "I feel like I'm so much happier than I ever imagined a person could be."