The Virginian-Pilot
                             THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT 
              Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: Sunday, September 22, 1996            TAG: 9609200078
SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E1   EDITION: FINAL 
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, ENTERTAINMENT WRITER 
                                            LENGTH:  103 lines

BELOVED FILM CREEP BRUCE DERN DOESN'T SEE HIS CHARACTERS AS BAD

WHEN BRUCE DERN smiles at you, there's a tendency to check to see if you still have your wallet.

He's bad.

An entire generation of moviegoers has seen him play lowlifes of the most extreme varieties - desert scumbags, maniacs with murder on the mind and obsessive freaks.

Dern, after all, is the only screen villain who successfully shot John Wayne dead. It was in ``The Cowboys'' (1972).

He threatened to blow up the entire Super Bowl crowd in ``Black Sunday.'' In ``The Incredible Two-Headed Transplant,'' he ate a baby.

Keeping up his tradition as America's most beloved wacko, Dern currently plays a nogoodnik sheriff in Walter Hill's ``Last Man Standing.'' It's a patented Dern role. The sheriff has conveniently given up law and order altogether as rival bootleg gangs fight over his sleepy Texas town. He takes kickbacks from both sides, and keeps out of the way.

In method-actor style, Dern doesn't see the man as bad.

``I look at this man as someone who just looks at the facts,'' the actor said as he sat in a New York hotel. ``He was the sheriff before the suits came to town. He doesn't want innocent people killed. For that, he will take something on the side - and try to keep both sides satisfied. This is a man who thinks he's still in the Old West.''

The interpretation is typical for an actor who takes his craft seriously. If he played Hitler, he'd figure out the character's motivation, rather than focus on the historical atrocities.

``None of these characters really know they're evil,'' he observed. ``An evil man usually doesn't realize he's evil. He's doing what he has to do.''

Dern is not without a little bitterness about the way Hollywood has refused to give him starring roles. He's had a few - the brash used-car salesman in ``Smile'' or Ann-Margret's leading man in ``Middle Age Crazy.''

But even he admits, ``I wasn't very good at being the main guy in a movie. I'm not a Kevin Costner or a Bob Redford. I always imagined those guys had very little trouble getting girls. I did. I fought through 30 years of being a psychotic and being everything else - but, mostly, they were good parts.''

His real life is nothing like the characters he played. He grew up in Illinois with butlers, chauffeurs and servants around the house. His father was Adlai Stevenson's law partner. His grandfather was the governor of Utah and the secretary of war under Franklin D. Roosevelt. He's the nephew of Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Archibald MacLeish.

``I was sent away to prep school at Choate when I was caught gambling,'' he remembered.

It seems that he usually paid off his youthful gambling debts with a bottle of liquor taken from the family cabinet.

At the University of Pennsylvania, he ran track. He hoped to make the Olympics, but quit the track team rather than shave off his Elvis-style sideburns.

In New York, he studied with Lee Strasberg at the Actor's Studio and worked briefly on Broadway with Elia Kazan. It was Kazan who gave him his first movie role, a brief bit in ``Wild River'' with Montgomery Clift.

Today, at 60, Dern's hair is all gray, but he's still runner-thin.

``I've rarely missed a day running in the last 40 years,'' he said. ``It's like an obsession. It hurts. I really need to stop it. Today, whenever I can take a nap, I do.''

He has high praise for Bruce Willis, the star of ``Last Man Standing.''

``With the exception of Bob (Redford) and possibly Warren (Beatty), Bruce is one of the few stars who have taken advantage of their power to take chances. He came to my trailer the first day of shooting and we talked about the characters. There wasn't a trace of ego - not a trace. He wanted to get at the script. He's as honest an actor as I've met, and that includes Jack.'' (That's Jack Nicholson, with whom Dern has made some 10 movies).

After a brief first marriage, he married actress Diane Ladd. They lost their first daughter in a swimming pool accident when she was 18 months old. Five years later, Laura was born. Now grown, Laura Dern starred in ``Jurassic Park'' and won an Oscar nomination for ``Rambling Rose.''

``I knew when she was age 11 that Laura had it - that certain something. She wanted very much to be an actress and she studied with Strasberg and in London. But she has something natural. When she gets up on the screen, it's like a magical light bulb is turned on. I remember her first scene in `Rambling Rose.' She's this cheap little girl in high heels on a dirt road. You don't know where she's going. What a set-up for a movie!''

The Ladd-Dern marriage ended in divorce. He has been married for more than 20 years to Andrea Beckett, a former acting student. He's remained friends, though, with Ladd and remembers when his screen roles prompted familial concern.

``Laura, at age 2, saw `Hush . . . Hush, Sweet Charlotte' on TV and she saw my head bouncing down the stairs. Her mother called and said that I had to talk to her. She was worried about whether I was all right. And, hey, I was playing a good guy in that one.''

He beams when he points out that ``we are the only family in the history of show business in which mother, father and daughter have been nominated for acting Oscars.''

Dern was nominated for an Oscar for playing a traumatized Vietnam veteran in ``Coming Home.'' Diane Ladd has been nominated in the supporting actress category for ``Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore'' and for ``Rambling Rose.'' Laura Dern was nominated in the best actress category for ``Rambling Rose'' and could be a candidate this year for her role in the upcoming ``Citizen Ruth.''

``Just think,'' Dern said, looking much less evil, ``it wasn't the Barrymores or the Oliviers,'' he said. ``The Derns are the only ones with that record.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

New Line Cinema

Bruce Dern plays a nogoodnik sheriff in ``Last Man Standing.''

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