“Then GC gave them this speech about how you’re your vessel, you’re the thing that the acting flows through,” Garcia recalled in an interview. “It was probably five, ten minutes, off the cuff. When they finished, they were all Brando. Each one of those actors was sure they were going to be next because he just imbued them with it. As a result, they are fantastic in the scene, and it was a great day of filming.”
“That’s just one example,” he added. “But it was things like that that would happen.”
Esposito’s cheerfulness isn’t always so formal. “My favorite thing was between camera settings, when he would come up to you and mumble a joke under his breath, something that would crack you up between scenes,” said Elbay, who plays the heist crew’s chemist Judy. On set one day, Elbay admired one of the miniature animals that Leo carves out to keep his hands busy.
“He put it in my pocket on the last day of shooting,” she said. “He’s just a really, really nice team leader and employee, and he made it a really, really nice experience for me.”
Esposito’s performance in “Kaleidoscope” draws much of his power from his humility, especially when Ray escapes prison and becomes Leo. We see him become more and more vulnerable, confronted with his illness and a life full of regrets.
“He’s got the brain skills, but the body is going,” he said. “In a way, that’s the tragedy of our lives. As we age, we become more vulnerable and vulnerable. I still have the mind and feeling of a younger man, but to think, “I have to be careful getting off that curb,” is a bitch.
“By the time Leo realizes how sick he is, it’s just too late and he knows things are going downhill,” he continued. “So this job is going to be really important to him.”