HEY NOW, A COUPLE OF REAL CHARACTERS

After Jeffrey Tambor read for the part of announcer-sidekick and all-around butt-kisser Hank Kingsley on “The Larry Sanders Show,” he was giddy with excitement. So convinced was he that it was the role of a lifetime that he bounded out of the audition, hugged a startled secretary and dashed home to call Garry Shandling and, well, basically beg for the job.

After Rip Torn read for the part of Artie, the irascible street-smart producer of “The Larry Sanders Show,” he wasn’t even sure he wanted it. But, what the hell, he let Shandling talk him into it.

Initial enthusiasm levels aside, Torn and Tambor have become equally indispensable components of the show’s bent-reality success, complex counterpoints to Shandling’s mood-shifting Sanders.

Tambor, as Hank, is calm and professional in front of the cameras, a starved-for-attention schemer backstage. When Hank finds out that Larry is going through a difficult divorce, his first reaction is, “I guess that means we’ll be spending more time together.”

“Hank has a very childlike sensibility,” says Tambor, 49, a San Francisco native who spent years as a successful stage actor before his breakout film role as Al Pacino’s deranged law partner in ‘ ... And Justice for All.’ “He leads with his heart, you know? He’s out of the loop in decision-making. If this were ‘Mr. Roberts,’ he’d be Ensign Pulver, the guy who gets lost in the corridors.”

Torn’s Artie, on the other hand, is ruthless in his dealings with meddling network executives, adept in massaging Sanders’ considerable ego, prepared at all times to deal with the worst. In this week’s season premiere, Torn gets the best line of the show.

“When I first met with Garry, I told him I didn’t want to play the part,” says Torn, 62, whose hard-drinking, volatile reputation in the ‘60s made him a legend among New York actors decades before he started scoring big in character parts, such as the one in Albert Brooks’ “Defending Your Life” that brought him to Shandling’s attention. “They originally wanted me to play him as an older man, more sedentary and stately. And I didn’t want to play him that way. The thing about Artie is he’ll kill to win, for a great joke or a laugh. But he’s not a shabby or mean guy at all. That’s kind of his saving grace.’

Tambor, whose long list of film and television credits is built on a string of bad-guy character parts--and one good-guy part in the short-lived TV show “Mr. Sunshine”--says he knew from the moment he auditioned that Hank Kingsley was the part he’d always dreamed about. ‘I’m a character actor and character actors work. But I wasn’t always very recognizable. Now people see me and yell, ‘Hey now,’ (Hank’s on-camera catch phrase) all the time. I remember the first time it happened. Somebody said it behind me and I turned around and realized that, at that moment, my life had changed.”

For Torn, getting a reputation wasn’t as important as losing the one he had from his younger, wilder days. “They’d heard all the legendary stories,” Torn says. “I had to point out that I’m the only actor I know that never missed a performance I was scheduled to play. Most of those stories are 30 years old anyway. But you know how it is, a good reputation can vanish like sugar in a hurricane, but a bad one . . .

“Then they told me there was a story that was going around that I was mellowing. And I hated that too. Mellowing. Makes you sound like a piece of cheese.”