WHAT ‘PEGGY SUE’ DID FOR THIS DRAMA SCHOOL GRAD

O’Connor, who appears in the hilarious role of a self-styled beatnik crazed with thoughts of Kerouac, recalls (director Francis) Coppola’s unique (and sometimes forgotten) talent for discovering and developing young actors.

--Paul Attanasio, Washington Post

What a way for a young actor to start a film career, being directed by Francis Coppola in love scenes with Kathleen Turner. But 23-year-old Kevin J. O’Connor, who had that double pleasure playing an aspiring ‘50s Beat poet in “Peggy Sue Got Married,” has already put the experience in perspective.

“It’s given me a start,” O’Connor said, “but I wouldn’t want to take advantage of it by plastering my face all over the place.”

In “Peggy Sue,” O’Connor plays Michael Fitzsimmons, a high school loner who emerges only to spout bad Kerouac-inspired verse and talk about hitting the road.

When Turner’s character goes back 25 years into her past, she decides to seduce the mysterious poet and have the affair she resisted the first time around.

The seduction scene is brief, but it gives O’Connor the chance to prove that the camera finds him as irresistible as Turner finds his character.

O’Connor had just spent four years studying at Chicago’s Goodman School of Drama when he was spotted and signed by an agent on a scouting mission for William Morris. The agent had him perform a monologue that he had written for himself, and sent a tape of the reading to Coppola. The veteran director and the novice actor met and, within a week, he was offered the role.

“I liked the part so much because it was dangerous,” O’Connor said. “He (Fitzsimmons) could have come off as a stereotyped beatnik buffoon, and instead I wanted to make him simply seem romantic. . . . I saw the chance to make him more than just romantic, by being funny in an understandable way. . . . He seems so young to be sounding so passionate.”

O’Connor got to do a lot more with his small role than a lot of actors ever get. For one key scene with Turner, he was allowed to write the poem--”Tenderness”--that his character reads (with a passion that belies the mundane verse) while Turner sits in transfixed admiration.

O’Connor acknowledged that the idea of working with both Coppola and Turner was “frightening” and that during his love scene with Turner, it was hard for him to ignore who he was kissing. But he said a private rehearsal with Turner proved unintimidating, and that the actress was “very helpful.”

“Everyone (on the set) knew I was the new kid on the block and they each must have had their own experiences with new kids, so they handled me very carefully,” he added.

O’Connor, soft-spoken and intellectual, is past his new-kid-on-the-block phase now--perhaps on the threshold of a major film career. And he is wary of the potential traps that an overly developed ego can spring.

“I love films, and I love watching them. But in my experience, I have found that once actors start talking about being in films, they’re usually talking about becoming a star,” he said. “I have certainly started thinking more about being in films, but I like being a supporting character actor. There are a lot of great leading male roles, but I don’t know yet whether anyone will want me for them.”

He recently completed a starring role in “Ain’t No Candy Mountain,” a low-budget independently financed film he described as “a road movie about a down-and-out and confused young musician.”

Whatever offers “Peggy Sue” may bring, O’Connor said he’s going to move ahead cautiously.

“I’m going to be very careful,” he said. “I know what I can’t do, but I’m not sure what I can do.”