It’s not just alpacas for Matthew Modine

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Now that ‘80s film star Matthew Modine is an actor of a certain age, he has a little more time in his schedule. And he has been turning that into lemonade, snapping up intriguing opportunities in the theater. In his latest venture, Modine plays guess who in Blair Singer’s Hollywood satire, “Matthew Modine Saves the Alpacas,” which has its world premiere at the Geffen Playhouse in Westwood on Wednesday. In 2004, he worked with Arthur Miller on his last play, “Finishing the Picture,” for its premiere production at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre. The play explored the collapse of Miller’s marriage to Marilyn Monroe during the filming of their 1961 movie, “The Misfits.” Modine’s character was a stand-in for the younger Miller himself.

Then as fate would have it, he also worked with director Robert Altman on his last project, another Miller play – the first British production of “Resurrection Blues,” at London’s Old Vic Theatre (where Kevin Spacey is artistic director) in 2006. Modine played a New York ad exec.

But the stage role that really captured his heart was that of the morally upright Atticus Finch in a new stage adaption of Harper Lee’s classic novel “To Kill a Mockingbird” at Hartford Stage last winter. Modine, who lives in New York, even sold his upstate country home so he could afford to follow his muse rather than limit himself to Hollywood payouts.

“While ‘Transporter 2’ [2005] was a fun and very commercial film, it is called show business, and it wasn’t the direction I’d hoped I’d be taking at this stage of my life,” he said recently. “I always thought that I’d be doing something like what I just finished in Hartford, playing a role like Atticus Finch. So if those opportunities weren’t going to come to me as an actor in film, if I don’t have the financial burden of a house in the country, I can really sit back and comfortably wait for a great opportunity to play the kind of role that will inspire me, that will challenge me, that I’ll have a blast doing, instead of doing something because I have to pay the mortgage.”

Indeed, Finch might be the quintessential role for Modine, who’s still earnest and somewhat idealistic at 50. And he’s hoping to take the American classic to New York. Producers recently courted the reclusive Lee in a visit to her home in Monroeville, Ala., dangling the prospect of a new adaptation based on Horton Foote’s screenplay of the 1962 film starring Lee’s close friend Gregory Peck, with input from Foote himself, Modine, director Michael Wilson and Foote’s actress daughter, Hallie.

“I think there’s a 99.9% chance that ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ will go to Broadway,” he said. “We’re just waiting for Harper Lee to say yes. They went down to talk to her, and they said, ‘We really want you to bring this play to Broadway. It’s a new adaptation. There’s not a good version of the play. This adaptation is really good and really powerful. Broadway deserves this – it’s the 50th anniversary of the book. It’s going to be fantastic. Broadway has become so Disney-fied. Everything is musicals. There’s not really a straight play on Broadway.’

“They made their pitch, and they said she sat there for a little while. And then she said, ‘Why should I be the savior of Broadway?’”

Click here to read more about Modine and his upcoming play in Sunday’s Arts & Books section.

-- Irene Lacher

Photo (top): Director John Rando, from left, French Stewart and Matthew Modine in rehearsal. Credit: Gary Friedman / Los Angeles Times.

Photo (bottom): Matthew Modine in ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ at Hartford Stages. Credit: T. Charles Erickson