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Before Broadway or George Costanza, Jason Alexander was just a kid from New Jersey who wanted to be a magician.
But, as he recalled at this weekend’s Lighthouse International Film Festival on Long Beach Island, a pair of small hands kept him from living out his original dream.
“I studied with this fantastic close-up magician, and he looked at me after two weeks, mostly because, to this day, I have small hands,” said the Seinfeld star, who decided at age 12 to attend magic camp in New York City after his family moved from Maplewood to Livingston. “I cannot palm a standard deck of playing cards. … And when you eliminate cards from the world of close-up magic, you’re probably not gonna play the big four shows anyway.”
So, Alexander started to perform in local theater in Livingston. At first, it was to impress a girl he’d met at the community pool who’d asked if he could sing. But, quickly, a true passion formed. He took many weekend trips to New York City to see shows with his theater pals. One pivotal play for Alexander was an early preview of Stephen Schwartz’s Pippin, which showed him the similarities between magic and acting.
“If you’ve seen the original company of Pippin, the curtains go up and there’s all these disembodied hands, clouds of smoke just going oooooh,” he said during the film fest, speaking in conversation with former CBS Entertainment chairwoman Nina Tassler.
That, combined with Ben Vereen’s iconic performance, made Alexander realize that theater was “the combination of magic being used to tell a story. So I’m sitting there, and as I’m sitting here, [I’m thinking], it’s an illusion. I can do that illusion. I can have tiny hands and do that.”
Jason Alexander sits down for an interview with Nina Tassler at the Lighthouse International Film Festival. Photo: Courtesy of Ed Shin
Early theater performances in New Jersey—as well as his time studying at Boston University—taught Alexander how to quickly learn new skills. This ranged from singing and dancing to even rollerblading, but it eventually helped him become more adept at comedic performances. That particular talent led to his iconic performance as George on Seinfeld, which ran for nine seasons and is widely considered one of the best sitcoms—if not one of the best television shows—ever made.
Alexander, 65, graduated from Livingston High School in 1977 (Fellow LHS alum include comedian Chelsea Handler, class of 1993; former governor Chris Christie, class of 1980; and author Harlan Coben, class of 1980).
He was inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame in 2019. Accepting the award at the time, he joked: “This is great for me. I don’t know what it does for Jersey.”
