Jeff Goldblum: Still Looking for His Niche

Sitting down in a room with Jeff Goldblum is a little bit like stepping into a David Lynch film. Time slows down, and things are not always what they seem. “I like to be at home. We just got this new dog. We only have one television. It’s not in the bedroom. It’s in the living room, and it’s quite big. We got a new couch, and I like that a lot. It’s very, very comfortable.”

As the dark, lanky actor spoke, his words spilled out in a rocky stream that split into divides and tributaries, sometimes intersecting, other times drying up, leading nowhere. His hands moved constantly, rising and falling, tapping his legs, clutching his chest. He seemed to approach the interview like he would a role in a movie, searching for the reality of the scene.

“Jeff is very serious about trying to find a reality, a truth, to his character, and he works very hard at that,” said director Dean Parisot, who directed Goldblum in HBO’s movie “Framed,” which debuts Sunday at 9 p.m. The offbeat crime caper finds Goldblum as a frustrated painter framed for art forgery by his lover, Kristin Scott-Thomas.

“Jeff is continually talking his role through and trying to find the nuances and realities,” Parisot continued. “He works hard at that. He doesn’t stop.”

Goldblum was working when he met his wife and frequent co-star, Geena Davis, on the 1985 comedy “Transylvania 6-5000.” The two were courting the next year on the set of “The Fly” and married when they shot last year’s “Earth Girls Are Easy.”

While Davis is getting involved in larger studio projects--she won an Oscar for best supporting actress in 1988’s “The Accidental Tourist” and stars in the summer film “Quick Change” with Bill Murray--Goldblum’s path remains eclectic.

He has three new films awaiting release. In “The Tall Guy,” Goldblum stars as an actor who finds work in a musical version of “The Elephant Man.” “Mad Monkey” casts Goldblum in a dark story of sexual obsession with a young girl, and in the psychological thriller “Mr. Frost,” Goldblum’s co-star is Alan Bates.

“I think all acting has to be like a sporting event,” said Goldblum, whose new-found passion is boxing. The 38-year-old actor is reading “Reading the Fight,” a series of literary boxing essays.

“There has to be something involved in the process of acting that’s like a real living of life, even though it’s under imaginary circumstances,” Goldblum said, his 6-foot, 4-inch frame draped over a comparatively small chair in his publicist’s Beverly Hills office. “It has to really take you into your own future, your unsolved future. And you allow the struggle of that to be witnessed. Then acting is like a sporting event. If it’s not that, it’s not good. It’s bad.”

He paused. “Do you get what I mean? It’s kind of abstract.”

It’s not easy to classify Goldblum. He’s an actor who hasn’t really found his niche, and doesn’t want to fall into one. “I hope that I’m not thought of in any restrictive way. Because I’m not sure how I’m going to feel tomorrow, or what kind of part I want, or who I’m going to be tomorrow.”

His credits are like a goulash; there’s a little something in there for everyone. There’s the Adult Film (“The Big Chill”); the Romantic Comedy (“Into the Night”); the Mindless Comedy (“Vibes”); the Action Film (“Death Wish”); the Western (“Silverado”); the Cult Film (“Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai”); even a TV series (ABC’s 1980 detective drama, “Tenspeed and Brownshoe”).

Goldblum’s tortured role as a decomposing man trapped in an insect’s molecular structure in “The Fly” earned him his widest audience and talk of an Oscar nomination. In most films, Goldblum’s roles can best be described as quirky. “That’s OK,” he said. “I like unconventional, I think.” When asked if he was unconventional, Goldblum laughed. “In some ways. And in some ways conventional.

“In my work, I think individuality and unconventionality and unpredictability and spontaneity are good qualities. That’s the kind of acting I like to see and like to do.” He drew in a deep breath. “But nothing weird, because I’m not.”

Goldblum has no fear of doing TV movies. He won acclaim for A&E;’s 1987 “The Race for the Double Helix,” about the search for DNA.

He says HBO’s “Framed,” which was shot in Paris, is the kind of theatrical quality independent film that is being passed over today in favor of bigger budget studio movies. HBO probably will distribute “Framed” as a feature film overseas, where audiences are more accepting of artistic fare.

“I’m not snobby about mediums, because I see bad movies--movies that I wouldn’t want to be in,” Goldblum said. “And I see television things that are sometimes interesting and OK. So I’d rather be in the interesting and OK things, no matter what they are.”

Perhaps it’s not surprising that Goldblum and David Lynch are talking about doing a film together. Goldblum says they both share an interest in a flamboyant Yugoslavian-born inventor, Nikola Tesla (a unit of magnetic flux density was named after him). A script is being developed.

Until then, or at least until his next acting assignment, Goldblum will teach acting at Playhouse West in Los Angeles, a passion he enjoys regularly.

“Becoming an actor meant a lot to me growing up,” Goldblum said. “By the time I was in high school, I needed to do it, and I prayed for it daily. I had to become an actor. There was a kind of salvation in it. I had to be saved.”