GEARY: FROM THE SOAPS TO THE STAGE

“TV is a great place to earn a living, but a terrible place to live,” announced Anthony Geary, digging into a vegetable omelet last week in West Hollywood. “It’s a medium that doesn’t want you to be your best. It can’t use it. It can’t use me--what’s interesting and unique and off-center about me. So I’m always bringing my work down. But not with Stein.”

Stein is Norwegian director Stein Winge, who cast Geary in a revival of Tennessee Williams’ “The Glass Menagerie,” opening tonight at the Los Angeles Theatre Center.

“I’ve never worked with a director as uncompromising as he is,” Geary continued. “And there’s something that appeals to me about the European attitude of it all. This is not a run-of-the-mill production, not your usual fare. Most plays are usually done very naturalistically--and this is not. It’s a memory play, a dream. But Stein’s vision is perhaps a little darker than American audiences are used to.”

He pointed out references in the play to Guernica and the Spanish revolution. “There’s an allegory between Franco’s forces and the freedom fighters and (mother and son characters) Amanda and Tom.

“In a way, it’s a political play, a microcosm. Because this family situation is just as explosive as the world in 1936: a home steeped in denial and anarchy, and the effort of an artist to survive in a very totalitarian environment.”

Geary’s role of Tom (who also narrates the story) is widely acknowledged to be an early portrait of the playwright himself.

“Stein encouraged us to find the characters for ourselves, and some of the choices have been extremely intense. Yet it’s been organic, nothing laid on. Williams provided us with the information.”

The actor, 39, is clearly enjoying his role in the process: “I’m there to service the director. I’m a color on the palette; the director is the painter. It’s his vision. But I do love to be challenged.” One such challenge was his role in de Ghelderode’s “Barabbas,” a controversial production (also under Winge’s direction) last summer at LATC.

“I just loved it,” Geary said with a big grin. “I relished the fact that we lost 10% to 15% of our audience during every performance. The ones I really liked were those who left during the play--just huffed out. Of course, I was playing Judas, so I didn’t take it personally when they left. But I’ve spent most of my career in mediums that pander to the audience--television and musical theater--so suddenly to be involved in this. . . .

Geary’s love of the stage is nothing new. Although he received national visibility only a few years ago--and a Daytime Emmy for his role as Luke Spencer on “General Hospital”--the Utah native is a veteran of more than 100 regional productions, beginning locally in 1967 in “The Subject Was Roses” (with Jack Albertson and Martha Scott) at the Huntington Hartford.

“I gave up the idea of being anything but a working actor many years ago--long before ‘General Hospital,’ ” he emphasized. “I never expected the kind of attention I got, especially from a soap. There must be some basic strangeness in my character: I want to perform, I love the applause. But when the curtain comes down and I leave the set, I don’t want to be known.” He stayed on the soap for five years, “because I was getting some very good money. I’m not cheap, but I can be bought,” he quipped. “Doing that afforded me the opportunity to then not work for a full year, reassess my life, my personal habits, my diet, drinking--and turn into the gem you now see before you. . . . I have so many mixed feelings about (the fame). It allowed me a chance to make some marks, but it’s a double-edged sword. Being known can open some doors and close others--especially in feature film and stage work. I had to re-establish that I was an actor, not just some media hype.

“To be honest, I fed the fires. I was so miserable, I did a lot of things I regret. Sometimes what I did to survive was click into Luke Spencer. That’s what they wanted anyway. They certainly weren’t interested in me. And I wasn’t interested in giving them me.”

The media commotion over the “Luke and Laura” story line began to overtake Geary’s life. First came the tabloid speculation over his involvement with Elizabeth Taylor (“a matter of the heart,” he says simply, “I was very fond of her for a long time--and she of me”).

Next was a foray into nightclubs, backed by a quartet called The Smut Queens. “We did a lot of blue material,” he nodded. “I was so crazy then, drunk all the time. I shudder to recall it. It was my need to get out in front of an audience who came to see Luke Spencer and say, ‘I’m not Luke Spencer.’ It was biting the hand that feeds you.”

The hostility that he often expressed at that time has since been replaced by a candid, often bemused acceptance of himself and where he’d like his life to go.

“I finally understood it this year: I am an actor. I can do television, I can do stage, I can do film. I choose jobs based on the role, the director and the money--’Do I need a house payment? Then I’d better go out and do some TV.’ ” As for the heartthrob status, “I was always a character actor, never thought I had the looks for a leading man. Apparently, the standard’s come down a lot since Cary Grant.”