Chris Cooper is happy to be known as a character actor. He lives in Kingston, Mass., well out of the Hollywood loop, and is regularly called upon to play pretty much every kind of personality imaginable. He gave solid portrayals as a rock-steady sheriff in “Lone Star,” a psychotic killer in “Money Train,” a soft-spoken horse trainer in “Seabiscuit,” and a snaggle-toothed, drug-addled orchid hunter in “Adaptation.”
Somehow it’s hard to picture him as a song-and-dance man. But that’s exactly how the 58-year-old actor got his start.
“The only available work when I was a youngster starting out in Kansas City was in musicals,” he said, with the remnant of a Midwest twang. “There was a summer stage performance out in a park, and I played Riff in ‘West Side Story.’ When I got to University of Missouri, where I did the summer repertory season, I played Tony in ‘The Boyfriend.’ That was a lot of tap dancing. I was pretty bow legged, but we got through it.
“It wasn’t the theater that I prefer,” he added, “but it was great training.”
That training led him right to where he wanted to be – acting in straight plays, including “A View from the Bridge,” “The Birthday Party,” and “When You Comin’ Back, Red Ryder?”
It eventually brought him to New York, where “I got into all the facets of stage work, from running a light board to hanging lights to designing sets to working on costumes. But acting for me was the real magnet. I knew I had to give it a serious try.”
With a best supporting actor Oscar under his belt for “Adaptation,” and the lead role in his fifth John Sayles film, “Baryo,” just wrapped, Cooper’s current role in “Remember Me” showcases what he calls his “flawed everyman” appeal.
He plays Neil Craig, a veteran New York City cop who is still grieving his wife’s murder a decade earlier, and has become extremely overprotective of his now college-age daughter. His approach to playing the part was the same one he’s been using for years.
“I’ve got three things to work with: research, my own life experience that I can apply, and my imagination,” he said. “I lived in New York in the ’70s, and I saw things that nobody should see. I realized that these officers deal with the scum of the earth, every day. I don’t see a bright future for Craig. He’s got a lot to deal with, no happy endings tied up with a pink ribbon.”
