James Minchin /Sundance TV
July 25, 2017
Features

Echo Chamber

A landmark role on Rectify resounds for Aden Young.

Libby Slate

Daniel Holden still haunts Aden Young.

For four seasons on SundanceTV’s Rectify, Young portrayed Daniel, a fragile man rebuilding his life after spending nearly two decades on death row for a crime he didn’t commit. The series received a Peabody Award in 2014.

“After the first season, I was quite traumatized by having inhabited him,” Young says. “So, after the second season, I built a guest house metaphorically in my mind and I put him there during the break between seasons. After the fourth season it was like, ‘No, no, you’ve really got to go back to the guest house — and this time you’ve got to pack your stuff.’”

The series finale, which aired last December, left Daniel in a hopeful place, with the promise that one day he may have the life he deserves. Still, Young says, letting go was difficult. “I spent 10 percent of my adult life inhabiting him. He was a character I dearly loved. You are in a position of vulnerability when you play a character like Daniel. It requires you to be very raw, almost like a burn victim. You have to be available to the universe.”

Though he’s tried to permanently relocate Daniel, he’s often reminded of his on-screen alter ego. “It’s difficult some days when I see people who perhaps haven’t been afforded the opportunity that others have and some who have been slandered by life itself — I think of Daniel. Occasionally a song will come on that will remind me of him. But you’ve got to move on to the next gig and hope his haunting will not be of you but of the audience.”

The role has been a career-defining one for Young, who was close to putting his acting career on hold when Rectify came along. “It pulled me back into acting. It had a profound impact on how people appreciated my work. The phone started ringing a bit more often.”

The Canada native grew up in Australia and was close to graduating from high school when he decided to pursue acting. “I told my mother she should probably come see the school counselor and she said, ‘What for?’ I said, ‘Well, I’m leaving today. I know what I need to do, and a high school diploma is not going to help me.’”

He attended the Australian Theatre for Young People, where he got to work with the likes of Rose Byrne. “It’s a very esteemed drama school. But I didn’t know that. I thought it was just a bunch of people who wanted to get into each other’s pants,” he says with a laugh.

His first big break came with the 1991 movie Black Robe. He’s also worked as a writer, editor and director and hopes to soon begin shooting a feature-length film in Paris. Working on both sides of the camera gives him a wider perspective. “The biggest link between an actor and a director is trust — you’re both wanting to achieve the same thing.”

Next, Young will be seen in the Australian feature Don’t Tell (which debuted at the Newport Beach Film Festival in April) and the upcoming NBCUniversal series The Disappearance, about a 10-year-old boy who has gone missing. His character this time? “A soulful Canadian musician who suddenly gets thrown into the worst tragedy of his life,” Young relates.

“It is a character light-years away from Daniel — I could use my own voice and my own body language. How does a normal man behave, as opposed to a man who spent 20 years on death row? That was intriguing.”


This article originally appeared in emmy magazine, issue No. 5, 2017

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