A Curious San Francisco Kid Grows Up to be Alum Jeffrey Tambor

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE -- As a kid growing up across the street from San Francisco State University, curiosity led him to the school’s Little Theatre, where a couple of students were rehearsing for a play in which they would portray old men. “I don’t know why I did,” he says from Los Angeles. “I just happened to take a walk down Holloway (Avenue) and I saw these steps and I walked in.” In the book, which he’ll talk about on May 25 at the Roxie Theater, he recalls sitting in the back of the theater at first and then moving forward each day, as the cast and crew grew used to the presence of the kid in the dark, watching them rehearse. “It was the rehearsing that got me. I said, ‘What is this?’ The way they treated each other. It’s true what they say about ‘ladies and gentlemen of the theater.’ I found it very comforting.” When he graduated from Abraham Lincoln High School, there was no question that he’d study theatre at San Francisco State, where tuition was $48 a semester. “I mean, $48. You can’t go to Starbucks for $48,” he says, with just a slight exaggeration.