JEFF DANIELS LOOKS TO THE BLIND FOR THE LOOK-OUT

Broadway star Kristen Chenoweth goes from Wicked to wickedly funny in the film R.V. Kristen plays the wife of eccentric Jeff Daniels who takes their family o…

Jeff Daniels stars in The Look-Out as the blind room-mate of Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s brain injured character. He may not have use of his sight but his language skills serve to keep Levitt’s memory alive. Jeff Daniels stars in The Look-Out as the blind room-mate of Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s brain injured character. He may not have use of his sight but his language skills serve to keep Levitt’s memory alive.

Jeff didn’t take the Ray route that Jamie Foxx chose by covering his eyes with contacs so he couldn’t see. Instead he looked to the blind to learn what it was like to live without sight.

“I remember thinking about that, ‘let me blindfold myself and walk around my house,’ but I kind of went to a place. I live in Michigan and I went to a place called The Michigan Commission for the Blind and same thing as Joe, met with the people, stole behavior. Stole how they thought about what had happened to them and then just started doing it. You can kind of not see things without having to do a blindfold thing and it came pretty quickly.”

Jeff discovered that his other senses became more aware of the world around him.

“There were a lot of choices whether to just stare off, whether to have an eye movement thing and Scott movement so basically I just started doing it. And it’s more about what it does and what you learn is it’s more about the listening. You end up listening to everything and you don’t necessarily look people in the eye. And that meant I didn’t have to do contacs or blindfolds or anything.”

Jeff also learned the basics of reading Braille and using a cane but most importantly he saw that despite losing their sight, blind people look at life with greater joy. The Look-Out opens today in theaters.