O’Hare, There, Everywhere

These days, actor Denis O’Hare has been keeping so busy that he probably should have his own app: O’Hare Everywhere.

Here he is on FX’s American Horror Story: Hotel, as a hotel bar employee named — and inspired by — Elizabeth Taylor, fresh off his Emmy nomination for playing con artist Stanley in last season’s AHS: Freak Show.

There he was on FX’s The Comedians as the fictional counterpart to real-life FX Networks CEO John Landgraf. He also recurs as the quirky judge Charles Abernathy on CBS’s The Good Wife.

And he’s had recent roles in the Emmy-winning HBO telefilm The Normal Heart and the feature The Dallas Buyers Club.

On stage, O’Hare won a Tony Award for the play Take Me Out and was nominated twice for roles in musicals. He cowrote and stars in the solo play An Iliad, has other shows in the works and has written several films.

The peripatetic performer chatted with emmy magazine contributor Libby Slate about his multi-faceted career.

You seemingly do it all: drama, comedy, musicals, TV, stage and screen. How did that happen?

I feel very lucky. I like to do weird things, and I love to travel. I’ve managed to escape a sort of pigeonholing. That’s a real danger, though, because you do remain somewhat anonymous. When I was hired for The Good Wife, they were concerned and asked, “Can you do comedy?”

I have to [credit] the casting directors, directors and my agent — we don’t get hired by ourselves. There’s a casting director in New York, Avy Kaufman, who is brave. She’ll call: “Maybe you can do this?” Because of the risk she’s taken, I don’t want to disappoint her, so I work my ass off.

Speaking of weird, what’s it like working on American Horror Story?

[Co-creator-executive producer] Ryan Murphy emailed me in January about doing Hotel. I laughed out loud, shuddered and said, “It’s definitely a yes.” It’s not a part that I would ever have thought of.

That’s one reason I go back to American Horror Story year after year. Not only do we have a vast amount of artistic license, but we are doing mold-breaking work.

Besides the unusual characters on AHS, you played a vampire, Russell Edgington, on HBO’s True Blood. How do you approach these roles?

Acting is reacting. There is so much to do within a scene — watching, reacting or choosing not to react. For Spaulding [the mute butler in AHS: Coven, who has no tongue], I realized that I needed to be silent on set.

I didn’t speak to anyone. I found myself not miming, not pointing, but communicating in other ways. That transfers to the screen.

For True Blood, I looked a little at vampire literature, and I used my imagination. You think about how old this person is, where he comes from, the idea of him being a Celt — and I’m a Celt — and that Celts were sun-worshippers but vampires are allergic to the sun.

How was it portraying a real-life person — a network head, no less — on The Comedians?

I loved it! But I was also terrified to play John Landgraf — there’s a fine line between homage and satire.

Do you take anything from previous characters to use in your current roles?

You use your past experience as a confidence builder, and you get a work method, a technique. Once you’ve cracked a certain kind of character, you have a template for other kinds of characters.

You were nominated once before for an Emmy, as Larry Harvey in the first season of AHS. What has it been like this time around?

It was a complete surprise. It’s an honor to be nominated. It means that your peers have been thinking about you, and that’s always a good thing.