BLOOMINGTON, Ill. — There was a little bit of Illinois Wesleyan amid the glitz and glamour of the April 1 premiere of The Visitor. The film’s leading man, Richard Jenkins, appeared on the red carpet at the New York City Museum of Modern Art alongside wife Sharon (Friedrick) Jenkins. Both are theatre arts graduates from Wesleyan’s Class of 1969.
But the Wesleyan connections don’t end there: Jenkins’ co-star Danai Gurira is the daughter of 1967 IWU graduate Josephine (Chiza) Gurira, who now lives in Zimbabwe. The Visitor is Danai Gurira’s first film, although she has guest-starred on “Law and Order: Criminal Intent.”
Early reviews for The Visitor were positive, with Variety’s John Anderson calling the film “a perfect vehicle for Richard Jenkins” and predicting that it “could be this year’s humanistic indie hit,” adding “Jenkins has hooked us early and reels us in like fish.” Paul Brownfield of the Los Angeles Times praised Jenkins’ ability to portray characters whose “dry, even ordinary qualities” strike a “countervailing note in a larger, more hectic world.”
“Oddly for Hollywood, Jenkins seems — just now, at 60 — to be hitting his movie prime,” Brownfield concluded.