Profile : Kevin Kilner : A ‘Perfect’ Part

You could say Kevin Kilner has an almost perfect career.

His first TV series, CBS’ romantic screwball sitcom “Almost Perfect,” has become something of a critic’s darling. Though it has a less than terrific time slot--Sundays at 8:30 p.m. opposite ABC’s ‘Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman” and NBC’s “Hope and Gloria” --the series, which also stars Nancy Travis, has been renewed for the entire season.

And the 37-year-old Kilner, recently named by TV Guide as one of the 10 most interesting new faces of the season, is still buzzed about his Broadway debut last year in the acclaimed revival of Tennessee Williams’ “The Glass Menagerie.”

Hard to believe that less than two years ago, the tall, athletically built actor was thinking about throwing in the towel.

“I was very close to quitting the business,” says the affable Kilner over a lunch of lentil soup and salad at West Hollywood’s Jerry’s Famous Deli. It turns out the eatery is a perfect place to interview Kilner; he is a theater animal and an entire wall is covered with posters from the stage. Before discussing his TV series, Kilner engages in eager conversation about the plays pictured on the wall.

But turning to the topic of his career, in early 1994 Kilner was so depressed about it that he went so far, he says, “as to get the master’s degree packets from Columbia and NYU and the New School to get a masters degree or a teaching degree in English Lit.”

He adds: “I didn’t want to do television. It was very painful to come to that place. Jordan Baker, my girlfriend, we were living in New York. She was doing [Edward Albee’s] ‘Three Tall Women’ and I told her, ‘I just can’t do this. I am not happy doing television that doesn’t challenge me and [not happy] doing regional theater.’ I wanted to do theater in New York City. I wanted to be challenged by my work, getting the shot at the roles that will challenge me.”

Thanks to five-time Tony winner Julie Harris and Tony Award-winning writer and director Frank Galati, Kilner finally got his shot when he was cast as Laura’s gentleman caller in “Glass Menagerie.” Besides receiving rave reviews, Kilner also was honored with an Outer Critics Circle nomination, a Drama Desk nomination and won a Theatre World Award for debut performance.

Of course, Kilner worked “really, really hard” to win the role. In fact, when he went to his audition he had all of his lines memorized. “When I went in there [to the audition] I was very scared. I walked into the room and I met Frank. I knew the casting director and the reader, but then there was this small woman sitting next to Frank. He said, ‘I would like to introduce you to Julie Harris.’ All I am picturing is five Tonys somewhere in her house!”

Kilner knew the producers were looking for a name. “I walked out and Timothy Hutton is sitting in the waiting room. I knew that they had talked to Eric Stoltz and all of these big names. I went off to do a little regional theater. Two months later, the phone rang and it was my agent. He said Julie Harris wouldn’t do this production without you. It’s thanks to Julie that I got the part.”

Kilner was in previews for an off-Broadway play earlier this year when his agent called him about an “Almost Perfect” character--a hard-working L.A. district attorney named Mike Ryan who falls in love with the beautiful, bright and slightly neurotic Kim Cooper (Travis), the producer of a hot TV cop series.

“I had passed on a lot of scripts,” Kilner acknowledges. “To me, the key is writing. You see so many scripts during pilot season. They don’t even relate to life. I didn’t even want to go out on them.”

But “Almost Perfect” was different. “It’s based in reality about this couple,” Kilner says. “I hope it doesn’t sound arrogant, but in my heart I know that [executive producers] Ken Levine, David Isaacs and Robin Schiff are three of the best, if not the best, comedy writers in the business. They write in such a sophisticated way. They write intelligent humor.”

According to Schiff, the producers auditioned about 75 actors for the role of Mike Ryan. Kilner, she says, was the only actor who perfectly embodied the part. “Nobody really had the qualities we needed for the part,” she explains. “Namely, he had to be believable as a D.A., he had to be physically attractive, have chemistry with Nancy Travis and he had to play comedy. ... Kevin nailed it.”

Thanks to “Almost Perfect,” Kilner is becoming a bankable actor. The fact of the matter is, he actually was a banker for four years before turning thespian.

“I got to be honest--I really wasn’t that good of a banker,” says Kilner, who has a degree in economics from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, where he also was a midfielder on three straight NCAA lacrosse championship teams.

“I was really angry and really depressed because I felt like I was living a life of a hypocrite,” he recalls of his banking days. “I didn’t want to be an old man some day in my rocking chair, saying, ‘I should have. What if? ‘ I remember one Christmas Eve I made my mother cry because I was so miserable because I had to work at the bank until 6 at night.”

Kilner knew he had to either “put up or shut up ... or just be happy with what I had and stop making the whole world miserable.”

So he decided to try his luck at acting. The roar of the greasepaint and the smell of the crowd had mesmerized Kilner when he took an acting class after graduating from college.

“It felt like a first love,” he says. “I couldn’t see anything other than doing it full time.”

“Almost Perfect” airs Sundays at 8:30 p.m. on CBS.