THE ACTOR IN THE BEAST

'For all his success on television, Ron Perlman has quite a history on stage.

By Patricia O'Haire
New York Daily News, Thursday, June 28, 1990

Ron Perlman wasn't really bitching, just trying to make a point. "You know, It's kind of funny," he said, "but so many people think because we've had a success on a television series or a movie, that we just dropped out of nowhere, out of the woodwork.

"That's not so at all. At least, not for me. I've done a lot of theater. And movies. As well as TV."

He's right. But at the moment, the tall, rugged-looking actor, formerly Vincent (for three years the gentle Beast of the recently departed TV series, "Beauty and the Beast," for which he won two Emmy nominations, two Best Actor Awards from Viewers for Quality Television and one Golden Globe Award), is on Broadway, live and in person, as the gung-ho Marine martinet on whom the play revolves, in "A Few Good Men." A hit at the Music Box Theatre, "Men" also stars another TV veteran, Timothy Busfield of "thirty something." And naturally, people are curious.

Perlman's role in this is a demanding one, but he doesn't mind. He learned it quickly. He'd been a working actor on stage, screen and TV for 18 years before that series came along, but this is his first role since. He was so heavily made up for that, he looked like a lion with a close shave.

As a matter of fact, he's spent much of his film career in heavy disguise - in "Quest for Fire" as a caveman; in "The Name of the Rose" as a 6-foot hunchback in a monk's cowl - it's surprising anyone recognizes him when he walks down the street (but they do - in droves).

It's especially surprising now. He has had his hair cut short, Marine-style, for this role, and shaved off the mustache he had for the first week. ("One of the producers thought I'd look like I had a harder edge without it. I didn't. Then I saw myself on 'Entertainment Tonight' and agreed with him. The mustache came off.")

But if anyone has paid his dues on stage, it is he. Okay, so it has been six years since he last appeared in person here (In the Peter Brook adaptation of "Carmen"), but he has been involved one way or another with theatre since he was a student at George Washington High School right here in Washington Heights, where he grew up.

Acting was always something he wanted to do, he says. But he "ran away from doing it professionally till I completed college." Then, with his diploma in speech and theatre under his arm, he decided, "I wasn't ready to take up a life of squalor and the hand-to-mouth existence I was sure every actor went through.

"So Instead of forgoing creature comforts and self-esteem, I took off for graduate school. I chose Minnesota because it was near the Guthrie Theater, and I soon attached myself to that."

That was the early '70s, when Perlman "found I was acting in one play in the afternoon and another at night. It was like an omen. When I left - and that was the first time I'd ever been out of New York for any length of time - I returned (In 1973) hoping, I guess, for some divine intervention.

"Fortunately, I didn't have to live that hand-to-mouth existence I was afraid of. But I couldn't live without money, and I never could learn how to balance a tray, so waiting tables was out. Fortunately, my best friend had a shop in the Village, and he let me work there when I didn't have a job in the theatre."

That was a pleasant enough interlude, but he soon enough had a role at the CSC Repertory, an Off-Broadway house on E. 13th St.

Then he moved just a few blocks downtown to work with Tom O'Horgan, later the director of such controversial hits as "Jesus Christ Superstar," "Hair" and "Lenny." At, the time, O'Horgan was working at LaMama, and Perlman was in his critically acclaimed "The Architect and the Emperor of Assyria," then later, in the title role in "The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui."

He didn't make it to Broadway until the short-lived "Teibele and Her Demon," in which he worked with F. Murray Abraham, who went on to win an Oscar for his work in "Amadeus."

Now Perlman's back, and with a really juicy role. He, his wife (Opal Stone, a fashion designer) and their 6-year-old daughter, (they now also have a 3-month-old son),were visiting family here last Christmas, and Perlman and his wife went to see "A Few Good Men" while Tom Hulce and Stephen Lang were still in it. They loved it.

The family went back to California, where they'd been living for about six years, and then, two months or so ago, "out of the blue," he says, came a phone call, asking if he'd be interested in taking over the role of the Marine when Lang left.

He was. "How could I resist? I've done a lot of work, but never in a part as good as this. I figure this colonel is a character who's not only explosive, he's flamboyant. I've been learning about him in very conservative, very small little leaps."

* * *