Keeping Warm

“People say, ‘You must have played just about every kind of role in your career,’ ” observes Ernest Borgnine. “I figure as long as I can find new areas to explore, I’m safe.”

Working is what counts for the 71-year-old actor. He adds that sometimes there’s the opportunity for more, as with his newest film, Paul Morrissey’s critically well-received “Spike of Bensonhurst,” in which he plays an unusual Mafia borough chief.

“I’d never played a Mafioso on screen but even if I had, this was something genuinely different. He’s a guy who’s powerful in the neighborhood but small change in the larger picture. And, with all he commands, he’s vulnerable. He can be hurt, and there’s very little he can exact in the way of revenge. It has humor; it has pathos.”

Ironically, he notes that the obvious can be disarming. In his personal life he points to the fact that he came to acting after 10 years in the Navy. It was at the end of World War II when he returned home to Hartford, Conn., with the prospect of a new life. Instead, he discovered that the only jobs available to him were in local factories.

“I was very depressed and thought about going back into the Navy,” he says. “Then my mother said to me, ‘Why not be an actor; you always like to make a fool of yourself.’ It was as simple as that.”

The direct approach has served him well, yet there’s always an underlying instinctual intelligence in his characters. He credits this to his Navy experience and yeoman-like work in regional theaters. Later, he earned an Oscar for “Marty” and cemented his popularity as the skipper on TV’s “McHale’s Navy.”

“There’s one memory which goes back to my days as a struggling actor in New York that sums it up for me. I was walking the streets; it was winter; I had a family and needed a job. Then, I was drawn to the smell of chestnuts in the air and it drew me like a magnet. Then I saw it--a sign on a cart that read: ‘I don’t want to set the world on fire, I just want to keep warm.’ That’s the story of my life.”