Peter Gallagher has one of those faces: instantly recognisable, hard to place. As we sit drinking coffee at an upmarket hotel near Manhattan’s Times Square, a woman in her sixties juts a pointed finger out in his direction. “I know you! Well, I don’t know you,” she admits, “but I know you!” The actor smiles, says hello, and turns to me: “That’s the title of my memoir.”
We’re meeting to talk about his latest role on Broadway opposite Julianna Margulies in Left on Tenth. The new play, written by Delia Ephron (the lesser-known but equally prolific screenwriting sister of romcom queen Nora), is inspired by the You’ve Got Mail co-writer’s real-life meet-cute. She met Peter – a Jungian psychotherapist living in the Bay Area – via email following the death of her husband Jerome Kass in 2015 and amid her battle with leukemia. In a rare turn for Gallagher, he plays Peter – whom Ephron married in hospital in 2017 – a man who is warm, intelligent, tender.
