Kevin Kline has established himself as one of the finest actors of his generation, with a much-respected career in both theater and film. He has won two Tony awards, for On the Twentieth Century and The Pirates of Penzance, as well as an Oscar, for A Fish Called Wanda. The latter role illustrates his ability to move between comedy and drama with ease, and, indeed, his performance remains one of the few comedic turns ever to win an Academy Award. In his latest film, The Extra Man, he plays a fallen New York aristocrat who scrapes by providing "companionship" to wealthy older women. He spoke at length about the film during a recent interview with the press.

Q: Would this film be any different if it weren't set in New York?

A: It's very New York, with all it has to offer culturally. My character is literally feeding on that, on art openings and galleries and museums. All these social events that are very specific to New York. I don't know if he cold exist in L.A., for example, though there are extra men in L.A. and Florida. When we played the Sarasota Film Festival, so many people came up and said, "You're in an extra-man city!" There are so many wealthy widows and retirees in Florida, and they all need a male friend.

Q: So what was the attraction of the role for you?


A: I knew on page two that I wanted to play this character. The word "delight" kept coming up. It just delighted me, and tickled me, and made me laugh out loud. I found his voice so original, even though you can compare him to other eccentric characters in literature and film. He was just so outrageous, and flamboyant, and extravagant, and contradictory, and complicated, and funny.

Q: Do you know anyone like him?

A: I'm sure I've met them, but didn't necessarily know what they did. Working in the theater in New York, one can meet flamboyant men-about-town. Bons vivants. But I didn't base him on anyone in particular. I just took him from the novel and from the screenplay.

Q: Do you miss the camaraderie of the theater when you do a film? That familial bond of a small group of performers trying to make it work?

A: Actually, there can be familial bonding on a film as well, and that phenomenon can get trying in the long run in theater, especially if you're in a theater company, which I was, for four years. The family can get dysfunctional as time goes on. People say that an ensemble takes years to develop, but you can have an instant ensemble if everyone is -- and I hate the expression -- on the same page, in terms of the project you're working on. You're all in the trenches together, and it can be very intimate.

Q: How about the dancing you did in the film? How did you develop that?

A: In the book, he dances in a much more -- sort of a fox-trot movement. He says, "I try to move whatever I think is rotting." We kind of took that to the next step, where everything is rotting. I'm moving pretty much everything. A brilliant choreographer and an old friend named Patricia Birch was brought in, and we tried different things with her. Finally she said, "Why don't you try that goofy modern dance, that Martha Graham-meets-Frankenstein dance, and just do your own thing?" It was pretty free-form and much longer. It was about a five-minute dance, and they just took a little piece of it.

Q: Even at the end, we don't fully understand this character. Do you have to understand him in order to play him?

A: That's a very good question, and the answer is no. He is a mysterious character; he's full of contradictions. There's a side of him that's very theatrical, as if he's playing a role. Part of that is wanting a mystique and being mysterious, and part of it is that there's things he doesn't want to talk about. That's part of his charm. If you understand the pathology of a character, it's not necessarily dramatic or funny or interesting. Also, you've explained it all away.

Q: How do you create that feeling of an age gone by -- this notion of living in an older time, while the rest of the world has moved on?

A: With the character. I think the character is quite aware that it's moved on and finds it vulgar. Shameful and common and without style. His response to that is to live in the past, to create his own past. He's a guy who lives in his own world. He's Don Quixote, in a way. They're just windmills, but, to him, they're giants who need to be conquered. That ability to delude yourself into making the world a more beautiful place than it is -- and to scorn those parts which aren't up to your standards -- is very critical.

Q: Are there any unique challenges to approaching comedy that you wouldn't find in a more serious role?

A: I remember Richard Attenborough said something once. I did a film with him and I went off afterward to do A Fish Called Wanda. He said, "Comedy is so difficult because it's so binary." It's either funny or it isn't. With comedy, sort of funny doesn't work. You've got to thread the needle and get it right.

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