Carroll O’Connor, when playing the role of Archie Bunker, said it was the hardest job of his life as an actor.

Carroll O’Connor, when playing the role of Archie Bunker, said it was the hardest job of his life as an actor.

Carroll O’Connor on playing Archie Bunker: ”It’s the hardest work I’ve ever done as an actor.”

Playing a lovable bigot is no easy feat, but Carroll O’Connor managed to do it brilliantly for nine seasons on “All In the Family,” and then some. While O’Connor often emphasized in interviews that he was nothing like Archie Bunker, he admitted to The Columbia Record that portraying Archie was “the hardest work I’ve ever done as an actor.”

“Working in movies first has helped, but most of it’s been developed in the last year or so. This is like being on stage, but there’s more pressure to it,” O’Connor explained.

One significant challenge in O’Connor’s creative process was his minimal preparation for embodying the Bunker patriarch. When it came to Archie’s facial expressions, he remarked, “I can’t work on ’em. It’s an acting problem. I have to feel the reaction very strongly. I have to be in character constantly.”

“I can’t ever lose ‘Archie.’ I have to make myself be ‘Bunker’ when I react, and the reaction must be natural. The expressions can either set up the next line or just be a pure reaction. Occasionally they aren’t real because my concentration is off, and if it happens often, I’m in trouble. It’s quite a problem,” he explained.

Despite these challenges, the character’s reception made all the hard work worthwhile. O’Connor noted that viewers saw reflections of their own lives in the Bunker family. “The people, for the most part, like the reality of the family relationships. Of course, I don’t know what that says about American family life,” he said.

“They relate us to people they know because they do know ‘Edith,’ ‘Gloria,’ and ‘Mike’ somewhere. Of course, ‘Archie’ is a member of some family everywhere. They know him, unlike the other so-called ‘heroes’ on TV.”