Andre Braugher steals the show on ‘Thief’

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Acting is ‘an emotional release’
In person, Braugher comes across not unlike he does on-screen. Though his manner is down-to-earth, he has that same commanding voice, the multipurpose smile (it can signal many moods, not just amusement), and a frost of gray hair (the sort of shaved-clean head he sported some years ago has become a cliche for a black man, Braugher says).

And during this recent interview in Manhattan, he dwells on his two passions: his family and his work.

What fuels that love for acting?

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“It’s an emotional release,” he explains — an outlet that might otherwise lie beyond his reach. “Men are not usually forthcoming in the expression of their emotions.”

Growing up in a rough Chicago neighborhood, he was blessed with loving and demanding parents. “But I was socialized in a certain way. Even as a kid there’s no real suitable outlet for emotions that don’t fall within a certain small range: anger, lust, ridicule — Army emotions, I call them.”

Then, at Stanford University as an engineering major, he helped out a friend by filling a vacant role in a campus play. He liked it — a lot. He had found a new major, and an unexpected calling.

“As an actor, I’m allowed — encouraged! — to explore emotions that have been basically unacceptable in my life. I have a huge well of emotional stuff, and once I give myself permission as an actor, it all comes to the surface. But I’ll be damned if I can give myself permission to bring it out as a man.

“As a father,” Braugher goes on, looping back to one passion from the other, “I’ve tried to encourage my children to have a broader and deeper emotional life than I’ve had. I want my sons to be able to express their feelings about things,” he says with feeling he seems fully able to express.

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