Patinkin expounded on the popular video in a series of tweets, revealing that his father died of cancer when he was 18, and his wife Kathryn Grody's parents died when she was 25. "I'd want to express my gratitude for sharing this with us," he added. "We are devastated by your loss, touched by the fact that this film meant something to you and your father â We hope you find a variety of methods to keep his memory alive and a variety of ways to go ahead & through this grief and loss."
Patinkin claimed that his favorite sentence is one of the last and most memorable lines spoken by one of his characters: âI've been in the vengeance business for so long that I'm at a loss for what to do with the rest of my life now that it's over.â According to the Times, Patinkin was alluding to Cruz's recent statement that he would âcarpet-bomb [ISIS] into oblivion,â and what the actor perceives to be Cruz's exploitation of Americans' concerns of immigration and Muslims.
âWhen I first heard Republican presidential contender Ted Cruz quote The Princess Bride, I thought it entertaining and a little surprising,â says the Tony winner for Time. Patinkin acknowledges that after understanding âthe level to which he was reciting almost every phrase in the film,â he has become worried that Cruz is utilizing the picture as a political weapon. âThe actor recalls that around ten years ago, while re-watching the film on television, one sentence was âsung toâ him as âthe most crucial line written by William Goldman in the whole picture. That phrase, spoken by his own character, Inigo Montoya, after his successful avenging of his father's murder: âI've been in the vengeance business for so long that I'm at a loss for what to do with the rest of my life now that it's over.â
SHOWTIME/Stephen Rabold
However, it was his breakthrough performance as Avigdor, a yeshiva student with whom Streisand's character falls passionately in love in early twentieth-century Poland, in Barbra Streisand's 1983 Academy Award-winning film Yentl, that established Patinkin as a worldwide household name. He became the thinking womanâs sex icon, brimming with booming big-screen charm and a beatific voice Sondheim once described as âa gift from God.â Patinkin will gladly break into song if you prod him just little.
