Freeman Upholds Baddie Image in ‘Wild at Heart,’ ‘Miller’s Crossing’

E. Freeman is getting recognized a lot these days. But people can’t really place his face. “They don’t know from where they saw me,” he says, “but they know it’s bad.”

Real bad.

Over the past five years, Freeman has played the baddest of the baddies. He was the villain in the CBS miniseries, “Fresno,” a psycho in the Bette Midler comedy “Ruthless People,” and a vicious gangster pursuing Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern in David Lynch’s “Wild at Heart.” He currently can be seen committing murders and creating devious mayhem in Joel and Ethan Coen’s gangster melodrama “Miller’s Crossing,” as the Dane, a menacing hit man.

“It was such a joy to read the script,” says Freeman. “It had so many dimensions. I did the first scene at the audition for them (the Coen) and then they asked me to do all of my scenes. I even died on the sofa for them.”

Freeman defends the movie’s brutal violence. “If you want to be true to the period (1929) you can’t not be violent,” he says. “I don’t think there was any gratuitous violence. I did find it a little strange how Tom (the film’s lead played by Gabriel Bryne) kept getting beat up and had no bruises.”

The actor got his part in “Wild at Heart” at the last minute. “They originally cast a musician,” says Freeman, “and just before they were going to shoot, the musician went into the (recording) studio and wouldn’t come out. On the first day, David Lynch just sat down with me and worked with me line by line. I had never done that with a director. They were ready to shoot and he made the crew wait.” Freeman didn’t start acting until 15 years ago at age 30. He signed up for a writing class in college, only to discover he was the only male among 15 women. “I just didn’t want to be the only male in that class,” he says. So Freeman opted for a TV dramatic lab. The class changed his life. “Acting immediately put me in control of my own life. You have the words, you know what the emotions are and besides, I like the attention.”