Just What the Doctor Ordered

Dan Gunther, M.D., is too much of a ham to be a doctor, too much of a grab-the-limelight kind of guy who relishes expounding about the unifying nature of art and animatedly “becoming” one character after another, from meddling mother to nerdy academic.

Actually, Gunther prefers being--as he facetiously describes himself--”terminally hip.” In short, he’s an actor living in Los Angeles.

But to do that, he first had to quit medicine. Indeed, after earning a medical degree from UC San Francisco, an internal medicine internship from Children’s Hospital there and an offer for a preventive-medicine fellowship at UC Berkeley, the Phi Beta Kappa Stanford University graduate opted instead for dramatic training.

Deferring his medical fellowship nearly five years ago, Gunther turned to community theater. Then he went to England to participate in the Royal National Theatre’s Summer Acting Program. Next came a two-year master’s fellowship at San Diego’s Old Globe Theater.

Shunning a medical career in favor of one that’s outright iffy was not a decision he came to easily.

“I knew you had to be crazy to pursue any sort of artistic lifestyle in America,” says the fast-talking 37-year-old.

But Gunther felt compelled to follow his muse.

“Look, everyone has to find their own path in life,” says Gunther, a Beverly Hills native who moved back to L.A. two years ago. “All the decisions I’ve made in my life, including leaving medicine, are about not living with regret, which, to me is the world’s most useless emotion.”

In his film debut, Gunther is one of the key members of an ensemble cast in “Denise Calls Up,” a comedic sendup of our technological, computer-driven, call-waiting-inundated society. It opens Friday in Los Angeles after its release March 29 in New York.

Gunther portrays Martin, a work-at-home workaholic whose life becomes complicated when a quirky, pregnant stranger, Denise (Alanna Ubach), calls him out of the blue to thank him for impregnating her by making a donation to a sperm bank.

Produced by Gunther’s former Stanford University classmate/drama colleague J. Todd Harris, “Denise Calls Up” was written and directed by Hal Salwen and also stars Tim Daly, Dana Wheeler-Nicholson, Aida Turturro and Liev Schrieber.

The film, the first from John Davis’ nascent Davis Entertainment Classics production label, won the Grand Prize at the 1995 Deauville Film Festival (shared with “The Brothers McMullen”) and a Special Mention for the Camera d’Or at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival.

In addition, Gunther recently finished his second movie, “Lewis & Clark & George,” also from Davis Entertainment Classics, in which he stars as an amiable outlaw. Gunther produced it along with Harris.

Gunther and Harris describe “Lewis,” which they hope will be selected for the Cannes Film Festival, as “a ‘Raising Arizona’ meets ‘Pulp Fiction’ on the road.”

Practicing doctor or not, Gunther still sometimes thinks about his decision to leave medicine.

“Of course. What? Like I don’t wake up in the middle of the night, look at the ceiling and go, ‘What have I done here?’

“But I would say I do it far less frequently than I did when I was a physician and . . . I was already awake in the middle of the night, working in the hospital, looking at the ceiling, going, ‘What have I done?’

“I love having work that doesn’t feel like work--work that feels like play,” Gunther adds later. “Meaningful work is the greatest mental-health tonic in the world, but it’s very hard to find, and it sometimes requires courage, because the things that really float your boat are things that sometimes people think are strange or inappropriate or that society will not pay you for in money or prestige.”

For the most part, Gunther’s parents have been supportive of his career switch. “Their general reaction was, ‘Oh, what took you so long?’ ” the actor says.

Except for the “funny moment” when he proudly showed his folks that he’d learned to juggle while studying commedia dell’arte at San Diego’s Old Globe Theater.

“I came into the room and said, ‘Hey, guys . . . , look what I can do,’ and I started juggling. And my mom sort of looked up [thinking], ‘Great, my son with two graduate degrees . . . ‘ “

Mimicking an upset, disappointed Jewish mother, Gunther quickly intones, “ ‘For this you went to medical school? . . . Gevalt, my son’s a what?’ ”

Incidentally, Gunther--who is single--finds that women aren’t as impressed as they once were when he was a doctor. “Out there on the single circuit, [being an actor] is not considered a major asset.”

Credit Gunther for attempting to rid himself of the acting bug. For nine years, while studying medicine, he didn’t do drama at all.

Nonetheless, in the midst of his medical training, he found a way to--as he puts it--”get my performing ya-yas out.” He became involved in health education, where he “could stand up in front of a group of people and make them laugh and make them listen.”

Ironically, Gunther claims that his best premed training was his acting background. “It was all about cogent verbal communication and being emotionally open to people and all these sorts of things.

“And in some ways, having been a doctor was great pre-acting training because of all the people I met,” Gunther adds. “They’re very complementary.”

All said and done, Gunther’s glad he had a chance to “become aware of the miracle of human physiology.”

Meanwhile, Gunther’s acting is drawing kudos, including the Independent Theater Award two years ago for his starring role in the West Coast premiere of Terrence McNally’s “A Perfect Ganesh” at Santa Barbara’s Ensemble Theater Company.

“In a way, he’s everyman,” says producer Davis (“Waterworld,” “The Firm”), praising Gunther’s “interesting combination of qualities. . . . He’s got a little bit of that neuroses thing going. He’s a little uppity. But in another way, he’s very likable . . . very adorable. I think that’s what makes him unique.”