Is This Amazing or What?

Fishing for catfish and working in community theater--that’s what Arliss Howard was up to in 1983, just before he auditioned for the TV movie “The Day After.” ABC Circle Films was shooting in Kansas City, Mo., and meeting with local talent there.

“I walked in and said, ‘How you doin?’ ” Howard remembers, ‘I think they were taken with my manners, ‘cause I’m really polite. . . . They said, ‘Read this.’ And I read it, and I didn’t make any mistakes.”

Next thing you know, Howard was on the set in Los Angeles, hanging out with Jason Robards.

Howard may still seem more Huck Finn than Hollywood, but in the new film “Men Don’t Leave,” he’s paired with Hollywood leading lady Jessica Lange.

Howard plays Charles, a musician-composer whose experimental music group includes such sound-makers as an egg-beater and a typewriter. Charles plays the accordion and, when the widow Beth Macauley (Lange) stumbles into his rehearsal bearing goodies from a chic eatery, he plays on her heart strings as well.

“Jessica’s great,” says Howard about his leading lady. “She rehearses full blast. So when it came time to shoot, it was a breeze. Man, she hooks up. She really hooks up. We had a lot of fun.”

Howard is known for his work in “Tequila Sunrise” and Stanley Kubrick’s “Full Metal Jacket,” in which he played Cowboy. Since he finished “Men Don’t Leave,” he’s appeared at the Los Angeles Theater Center in “The Geography of Luck” and in the TV film “I Know My First Name Is Steven.”

Howard has no particular plans for the future, but he’s not particularly worried either.

“I like to do a job and, when you finish, you go off fishing . . . or you go to Europe. And, while you’re there, you’re like soaking it up. Soaking your life up. Everything’s happening and you’re just like, ‘Wow, is this amazing or what?’ ”