ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, May 4, 1996 TAG: 9605060021
SECTION: SPECTATOR PAGE: S-10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: R.D. HELDENFELS KNIGHT-RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
Kevin Kilner has gone from performing in tiny theaters with no air conditioning to hanging out with Bill Cosby and Kevin Costner in the CBS box at the college basketball championships.
``I'm thinking, what's a farm boy from Maryland doing here?'' Kilner said during a recent visit to Cleveland to promote his CBS series ``Almost Perfect.'' And the amazement doesn't end there. He's gone from not quite right for an endless line of movie and TV parts to co-star in ``Almost Perfect.'' From reading TV scripts he hated to reciting lines that he loves.
Kilner effectively sells the virtues of 69th-ranked ``Almost Perfect,'' a series I've had mixed feelings about. Kilner plays Mike, a district attorney who falls in love with Kim (Nancy Travis), the producer of a TV cop show. The series bounces between their evolving relationship and Kim's work on her series, mainly with the three writers.
Travis' character, to be plain, annoys the daylights out of me. But the more Kilner and I talked, the more I realized how often I had watched a series I thought I didn't like, and how much I recognized personal travails in a couple of people who know how to live alone but now want to fit someone else into their full lives.
I still don't think the series is almost perfect. But it's more interesting, and often funnier, than the likes of ``Friends'' or ``The Single Guy'' or ``Caroline in the City,'' far more popular series but far less adept ones.
``When I read the script, I knew it was the best half-hour script,'' said Kilner, who'd been reading them for 10 years. ``It was very intelligent and sophisticated. Very wry. It's sly humor. Mike Ryan is very dry. He's smart. I hadn't seen a leading man like him in half-hour television in 10, 15, 20 years. I can't even think of one.''
The closest may be Sam Malone, played by Ted Danson, on ``Cheers,'' who at least resembles Mike in being the more stable half of his relationships. But even Sam, Kilner is quick to point out, ``was not nearly as smart as Mike.''
Kilner sees more of an old-time movie leading man in Mike, invoking Spencer Tracy, Gary Cooper, John Wayne.
``He's an old-fashioned stand-up guy,'' he said. ``If he tells you he's going to be there at 6 o'clock in the morning to move furniture, he's there at 5:59. His word is his bond and there's just no two ways about it. He is a throwback, and there are a lot of hurdles for guys like him, a lot of things they have to go through before they do the right thing.''
Kilner is where he is because of a stand-up woman, someone who did the right thing for him even as he was ready to quit acting. It's a story he happily tells, at length, savoring the details as only someone who's waited so long for success can.
After auditioning for a Broadway production of Tennessee Williams' ``The Glass Menagerie'' two years ago, he decided that if he did not get the part, he would quit acting and go to graduate school. He wasn't afraid of change, after all; in 1985, when he was 27, he'd given up a banking career to take up acting.
Then everything took a remarkable turn into a period he sees as ``like falling through the looking glass. It's huge.''
It goes back to ``The Glass Menagerie,'' which starred Julie Harris, a five-time Tony Award winner and one of the grandest dames of the American stage.
Kilner had worked his way up from studying theater to stage acting to a few roles in TV and movies, followed by enough disenchantment with the West Coast that he went back to New York in 1993. He returned to Los Angeles occasionally, but ``nothing came of any of that stuff. So I got the master's degree packets. I was going to go to Columbia or NYU or the New School. I got the packets from all three, and it was then I got the audition for `Glass Menagerie.' ...
``I worked my butt off for like five days and nights. I didn't know I was going to meet Julie Harris. I was excited because I was meeting [director-playwright] Frank Galati, who won the Tony for `Grapes of Wrath.' Then he turns to this little woman and says, `I'd like you to meet Miss Julie Harris,' and I'm going, `Oh, my God.' I felt so honored just to be in the same room with her.''
After the audition, he waited and worked, ``in the Berkshires in western Massachusetts, a 150-seat theater, with no air conditioning, IN THE SUMMER. I am losing weight doing this play, we are sweating so much onstage.'' Two months went by, until a call came in August: ``My agent says, `Julie Harris said she wouldn't do this without you, and she made the producers make you an offer.'
``I grew up in a family where the truth is always exaggerated, so I've gone completely the other way. I can't stand exaggeration. So on the first day of rehearsal, I asked her, `Please tell me if this is a true story. I don't want to lie.' She leaned into me and said, `Oh no, dear. You know, I saw the original [production of `Menagerie'] in 1944. I was 17 years old, and it changed my life. In 50 years, I've seen many renditions, but I'd never seen the Gentleman Caller until I saw you as the Gentleman Caller. I had to work with you.'
``You had to work with me? Are you kidding?''
Kilner's Gentleman Caller - a softer approach than usual, emphasizing ``someone bruised by the world'' - was well-reviewed, was nominated for awards and ``just sort of changed everything.
``All of a sudden everyone in New York theater wanted to know who I was. Even people in L.A. asked me to consider doing a TV series,'' Kilner said of how the play led to ``Almost Perfect.'' ``I just sort of laughed, because in ways the [stage] role changed me, but I was the same old guy. I was just someone who'd stuck to his craft long enough. ...
``When I was ready to walk away from it, Julie Harris stepped in and the dice came up seven instead of snake eyes. I'll forever adore her for doing that. I hope that someday, when I'm later along in years, that I have the guts and the fortitude and the ability to do the same for some young actor.''
LENGTH: Long : 105 linesby CNB