The Actor as Everyman

There’s a veritable John Goodman film festival going on in movie theaters and on television these days.

The capacious, 6-foot-3 character actor has been earning raves as Sally Field’s staid insurance salesman husband in “Punchline,” and debuts this week as Roseanne Barr’s often verbally abused husband in ABC’s “Roseanne” series premiering Tuesday at 8:30 p.m. on KABC-TV Channel 7.

“I wasn’t expecting husband roles,” admits the St. Louis native. “If I were a casting director, I’d look at me and say make him a cop or a crook.”

In fact, he played a cop on the take in “The Big Easy” and one of two off-center criminal brothers in “Raising Arizona.” In “Sea of Love,” which premieres in early 1989, he’s cast as Al Pacino’s police partner.

“I like to think of myself as an everyman. When people stop me, they say, ‘Didn’t I go to school with you?’ or, if I’m lucky, ‘I know I’ve seen you someplace.’ ”

A theater graduate at Southwest Missouri State, Goodman headed for New York in 1975 with a $1,000 loan from his brother.

“I couldn’t imagine doing anything other than acting,” says Goodman. “Up until that time, the best job I’d ever had was working in a car wash. So, I wasn’t turning my back on very much.”

The apprenticeship of John Goodman included dinner theater, raunchy Off-Broadway productions and children’s shows. He points to his role as Tom Finn in the 1985 Tony-winning musical “Big River” as the major turning point in his life. Although he’d done small roles in television and film before the stage musical, it was that performance that led to his breakthrough role as an eligible Texas bachelor in David Byrne’s “True Stories.”

“I’m not very objective about my career --I just like to work all the time. I can tell you, based on our audiences, that ‘Roseanne’s’ a very funny show, but if I try to explain why, it sounds deadly. I just figure I’ll work a lot and let others decide whether I’m good at what I do.”