Kramer Gets Serious : Michael Richards Reveals Another Side in ‘Heroes’

Next to tabloid photographers, lousy caterers and dry cleaners who lose the red ribbons worn to awards shows, the thing actors hate most is typecasting. And when you’re the most flamboyant character on the No. 1 sitcom on TV, typecasting is about as easy to avoid as autograph hounds, which should probably also be in the above list.

But darned if Michael Richards isn’t going to try to surmount the typecasting jinx. Richards, known to millions of TV viewers as the eccentric, excitable Kramer of NBC’s “Seinfeld,” tones down the wackiness and even reveals a serious side in Diane Keaton’s acclaimed “Unstrung Heroes.”

In the film, adapted by screenwriter Richard LaGravenese from Franz Lidz’s autobiographical novel, Richards co-stars as Danny, one of 12-year-old Steven Lidz’s (Nathan Watt) unpredictable uncles. When Steven’s mother (Andie MacDowell) falls ill and his father (John Turturro) begins neglecting him, the youngster moves in with his uncles and, much to his parents’ dismay, quickly adapts to their oddball lifestyle--Danny’s obsession with conspiracies and Arthur’s (Maury Chaykin) pack-rat tendencies.

“Naturally, I was drawn to the character because of that eccentricity, but I couldn’t have played it as Kramer, that wouldn’t have worked,” Richards says. “I think audiences would be disappointed if it was like Kramer.”

Still, Danny’s introduction in the film is loony enough to easily conjure up images of Richards’ TV persona.

“I didn’t mean to do that,” Richards says. “Everyone says, ‘That was a great idea, to come in through the window.’ I said, ‘No, no no, that was in the script.’ . . . But [even with] Paul Newman, you can say, a particular look was very much like something he did in ‘Cool Hand Luke.’ An actor’s an actor, there’s always going to be a little of him that comes through in the next part.”

“Unstrung Heroes” came at a perfect time in Richards’ career, he says.

“I was in the midst of adjusting to my hiatus [from ‘Seinfeld’], and I didn’t want to do anything goofy,” says Richards, whose other film appearances include such failed comedies as “Airheads,” “So I Married an Axe Murderer” and “UHF.” “I was immediately struck by how sensitive this picture could be, and I wanted to do some acting. This thing still had some comedy in it, and at the same time, it demanded some [serious] work.”

There was one potential glitch: Just before coming upon “Unstrung Heroes,” Richards had pulled out of a film that Keaton was slated to direct, which eventually resulted in her abandoning the project as well.

When “Unstrung Heroes” came calling, Richards recalls, “I asked, ‘Who’s directing?’ They said, ‘Diane Keaton.’ I said, ‘Oh my goodness, it really is a small world.’ I was concerned about how Diane would feel about working with me after pulling out of another project, which affected her situation there. We had no problem. She and I saw eye to eye on everything.”

And so, Richards went about the work of becoming Danny. Which meant becoming acquainted with nearly every aspect of the production.

“After you do 130 TV episodes, how do you step into a motion picture where none of you have worked together before? Where you haven’t even seen the set? I got there early to spend some time on the set, especially my home. I got very comfortable there, I started having my meals there, spent most of my time in the room, to become at home in the place.”

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This may have been trickier than it sounds, since Danny and Arthur’s home is a maze of junk--stacks of newspapers line the walls, closets are filled with balls and, everywhere, there are shelves and shelves of tchotchkes and stuff for which “tchotchke” would be a compliment.

“I invested all of those objects with value,” Richards says. “They were part of me, they were there, there was nothing unusual about it. When the boy comes in and opens the closet and all the balls fall out, he comes into the kitchen and I’m just sitting there, everything’s very normal. I’m looking in the paper, underlining information that confirms some paranoia I have about something. Even though it doesn’t come out in the story, I’m constantly looking through those papers, highlighting different stories with different colors, each measuring the degree of the danger to our lives.”

Although some “Seinfeld” fans may find it hard to believe, Richards was a serious actor before Kramer defined him. He studied theater at the California Institute of the Arts, and appeared in, among other things, the 1984 West Coast premiere of Arthur Miller’s “American Clock” at the Mark Taper Forum.

He took up stand-up comedy almost as a last resort, he says: “There wasn’t much theater going on in Los Angeles, so it was the only way I could get onstage and stand in front of people and make them laugh.”

A stint on the “Saturday Night Live” knockoff “Fridays” cemented Richards’ reputation as a comic, even though he paid the bills playing villains on dramas like “Hill Street Blues” and “Miami Vice.”

“No one would believe it,” Richards says. “I used to like driving the cars fast, and jumping out of the car and firing at the police. It was always rather fun to me.”

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Richards can’t say whether “Unstrung Heroes” will lead to more dramatic roles, but says he has turned down a lot of “big comedies” (“Most of ‘em didn’t turn out that well,” he notes with a shrug). He’s currently developing “My Blockbuster,” a comedy about a toll-booth attendant that goes before the cameras during “Seinfeld’s” next hiatus, for Castle Rock, and is tinkering with an idea for a TV series that might co-star his “Unstrung Heroes” colleague, Maury Chaykin. “He’s a great sidekick, we’re funny together,” Richards says.

That is, if “Seinfeld” ever leaves the air. Richards hints that despite the official pronouncement that this will be the program’s final year, he thinks everyone could be coerced, by the right amount of money, into extending the run.

Which is fine by him. “I’m still struggling to make Kramer work. When it’s all over, I’ll be going, ‘Oh, I could’ve done this and I could’ve done that! Man, I wish we had a couple of more shows to do!’ It’s never really gonna be over for me.”