READY TO CLIMB ANY MOUNTAIN

For nearly 50 years, Hal Holbrook has been entertaining theater audiences with his Tony Award-winning one-man show, “Mark Twain Tonight!” And even at 82, he’s about to take his show out on the road yet again. For TV fans, he’s the Emmy Award-winning actor of such landmark movies as “A Clear and Present Danger,” “That Certain Summer” and “Pueblo.” And for moviegoers, he’ll forever be the shadowy figure of Deep Throat in “All the President’s Men.”

Now the lanky, blue-eyed Holbrook is back on the big screen in one of the most talked about performances of the award season with his illuminating turn in “Into the Wild” as Ron, an elderly man who spends his days in his garage in Arizona making leather goods. Ron becomes a surrogate grandfather of sorts to Christopher McCandless (Emile Hirsch), a young man who has renounced civilization and is traveling the states with just a backpack.

Holbrook, who spoke by phone from Houston where wife Dixie Carter is performing in “Arsenic and Old Lace,” talked recently about the experience of making that film.

You met Sean Penn when he was a young actor back on the set of the 1981 TV movie “The Killing of Randy Webster.”

Well, Dixie and I met on that film and there was this young man who was 20 years old, who had this little tiny part . . . . He didn’t have much to say; he was very nonverbal. But we would watch him and you could see he had talent, something really unusual. You know when you are young, no one tells you you’re good. When you need encouragement nobody tells you. So I told him. I talked to him -- so did Dixie -- a little bit here and there that he really had something special.

About a week or so after the end of the movie, we get a letter from this young man thanking us for encouraging him, which is by itself an unusual thing. What never left my mind, though, was the literary quality of the letter. Because this young man was very quiet, you wouldn’t think of him being able to write such a fine, beautifully composed letter.

When I read “Into the Wild” years later, I thought of that because that same wonderful quality of a literary understanding was in this beautiful script [which Penn adapted from the Jon Krakauer book of the same name]. It’s just such a wonderful role he’s given you.

I got a call 26 or 27 years later. He wanted to meet me in the bar and talk . . . . I realized he was coming to offer me a part and it is the best part I’ve had in the movies. You have such a strong connection on screen with Hirsch.

Emile is so open and fresh and true. It is just like talking to somebody. It is very easy with someone like that because acting is really listening. It’s not you so much but what the other person is giving you and you just respond and that’s all I had to do. I think the best moment between the two of you is when you’re sitting in the car, he’s about to depart for his journey to Alaska, and you ask if you can adopt him and be his grandfather.

At this point, I think my character is grieving over the potential loss of this young man who represents something special to him. I know he knows quite clearly that he is going to get turned down and he knows he shouldn’t even say this because he knows he’s placing himself in a very vulnerable position and he’s going to get turned down, but he does it anyway. Sean is such a wonderful director . . . . Because he is an actor?

He understands actors, not just understands actors but he trusts you. When we did that scene, I’ll never forget, we were in the Jeep on that little access road to I-40, whatever it is, and Emile and I just sat in the Jeep for 20 minutes. We didn’t talk while they were setting up the lights. We knew we had this scene to do, so by the time the scene came around, we were both in our world and we just shot it in one take. All Sean did was raise his thumb. And that was it. Did you really climb that rocky hill? Did you go all the way up to the summit?

Oh, yeah, I did. Three times. They said we’ll get a double. I said I don’t want no double. I can climb this damn mountain, so I did. I fell once but I didn’t hurt myself. I tried to climb a mountain by myself once -- Mt. Shasta -- 14,000 feet. I didn’t make it to the top. I passed out on the glacier but I was all alone up there for four days. It was in 1954. There wasn’t anything up there on Shasta then. They probably have a McDonald’s up there now.

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susan.king@latimes.com