ABSTRACT

In 2015, the legendary actor John Astin – star of stage and screen – granted me an interview in Baltimore, USA. The principal focus of the interview concerned Astin’s seminal performance as Gomez Addams in the hit 1960s TV comedy The Addams Family. Gomez Alonzo Addams was the charming, slightly crazed, clan patriarch of the spooky though sweet Addams Family. Ostensibly a lawyer, Gomez has great wealth, which eliminates any need to work, and instead he spends the days with beloved wife Morticia, and his two young children. He smokes cigars, sports a Groucho Marx-styled moustache, and likes to do crazy things like blow up toy trains. The performance made him a household name worldwide, and cast him firmly in the field of celebrity in the USA throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Astin is now a Professor of Drama at Johns Hopkins University, USA.