The Mild One

If this were a game of hidden pictures, something purposely misplaced on a page, one might zero in on the lean, circumstance-worn man striding across the Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel’s marble floors in sturdy brown round-toed boots. “It gets a little wound up at night,” says Chris Cooper, his dark gray pants and soft black turtleneck redolent of smoke and the sharpness of California cold.

He’s just slipped out--then in--for a quick breath of air and a cigarette. Outside, a slip of sun skids in and out of clouds, just as fast as limos--black, white, silver--skim across the cobblestones. Out of doors flung open by out-of-breath valets strut high-gloss attitude and buffed finery. He watches it as if it were as remote as a movie. “This here,” he tips another cigarette out of the pack, waving it generally toward the scene that unfurls before us. “It can go on all night.”

The juxtaposition feels strange, not because Cooper doesn’t belong; in fact the actor most noted for his work as part of director John Sayles’ ambitious, kinetic rotating ensemble pieces can just about blend in anywhere. It’s just that flamboyant display and hustle aren’t qualities with which one might immediately associate the man who has made his mark as more an enveloping presence than an exploding nova.

Rather, says the actor who makes his home in Kingston, Mass., things proceed at a far different pace. “God, it’s a very simple life.”

But maybe that’s changing. It’s been a busy time for him, the last several months, with two films on screen, one on HBO and a couple of others in the works. Some might recall him as Uncle Joe Coleman, young Finn’s big-hearted, financially scrambling ward-through-consequence in Alfonso Cuaron’s “Great Expectations.” Others might place him more easily as the emotionally buttoned-down sheriff in John Sayles’ Chinese puzzle of a film, “Lone Star.” Or maybe it’s in Robert Redford’s film of Nicholas Evans’ “The Horse Whisperer,” which opened Friday.

No matter the role, Cooper finds himself perpetually linked to American archetypes: frayed-at-the edges, silent types, whose Achilles tender spot is not a heel but their fenced heart. One would be foolish to dismiss him as simply part of the terrain.

His performances oftentimes seem as if he simply sprouted out of script-prescribed environs: In other words, he’s worked a lifetime of swing shifts, has herded cattle until his skin was rubbed to calluses, has made magic with loose ends and wits.

There is a resonant moment early in “Lone Star” in which his sheriff Sam Deeds catches a glimpse of his long-estranged love, played by Elizabeth Pena. They converse distractedly for but a moment and then she is away. The conversation is spare, innocuous. It is what occurs in the moment afterward, in the noisy silence of the sheriff’s station: Cooper’s freighted, disconsolate stare after her, his arm awkwardly extended. Reaching up, but not quite out--helpless.

Cooper inhabits space in a manner many leading actors might not be brave enough to risk. “I got this call out of the blue from someone,” says Cooper. “And what they said was special . . . ‘I’ve seen some of your work and what stands out is that you don’t draw attention to yourself.’ ”

Albeit a curious defining edge to strive for, Cooper, 46, is indeed a master of soft-sell. But not drawing attention to himself has been a help and a hindrance to his career, he knows. Although in the past, he has chosen carefully and sparingly--seeking roles with texture and depth. “I could have probably verbalized exactly what that was about 10 years ago,” says Cooper, traces of his Kansas City, Mo., childhood most evident in the shape of the vowels. “And now it’s sorta become second nature, really. I think people want to be taken on a trip. And really, it’s intuitive.”

His selectivity coupled with his tendency to avoid the clamor of the press corps, however, have as well served to mute his accomplishments. Case in point: Even his acclaimed role in “Lone Star” was eclipsed once the promotional campaign hit stride. Cooper had but a prayer of a chance sandwiched between Kris Kristofferson’s bared-teeth performance and Matthew McConaughey’s freshly minted matinee-idol status.

Yet many critics who remember him as the glue. “Cooper brings grit and dignity to the film’s pivotal role,” wrote New York Times critic Janet Maslin, “perfectly in keeping with the film’s tacit style.”

It’s acting approach that requires patience, a reader’s eye. “A technician who ran the video assist on one of John’s [Sayles’] films came up to me and said: ‘I got so frustrated because I watched you throughout this whole shoot and I kept saying to myself: When is he going to do something?’ ”

Though oftentimes his roles venture just a shade out of the realm of the cameo, they tend toward the pivotal. One of “Great Expectations’ ” most evocative moments occurs when Cooper shows up late to Finn’s (Ethan Hawke’s) cotillion of a gallery opening, in ruffled tuxedo shirt, hair slicked back, achingly out of place.

“There’s not a false note in anything he’s done,” says Mitch Glazer, who wrote the part of Uncle Joe with Cooper in mind.

“The character of Joe had to be kind of strong and real, and vulnerable at the same time. He gets left by his wife. He’s working as a gardener. There’s a lot of hurt in his eyes. I felt something in Chris’ way and in his eyes that was all of those things. . . . He’s a writer’s dream.”

Possibly, figures producer Maggie Renzi, because Cooper brings a great deal of subtext to a role. “A lot of times, Chris doesn’t have a whole lot of screen time, like in ‘City of Hope’ . . . but if an actor really knows who the character is . . . he can do things shorthand.”

Cooper’s careful choices and studied methodology are something that he would ascribe to a tricky combination of perfectionism, caution and shyness.

“When I look back on it, early on I took the business so seriously that . . . when I went into auditions I think I frightened people,” he recalls without a flicker of a laugh. “I think it was in this Puritan work ethic: Business is business. And that when I go into these auditions, [you] will be accepted by [your] talent alone. And that’s just not true. You’ve got to get along with these people, and that’s why I almost didn’t get ‘Matewan.’ ”

The audition, he recalls, went well, but something else made him anxious. “Maggie [Renzi], the producer and John’s partner, said--’You’re doing great work, but after you auditioned and were talking to us, and you wouldn’t crack a smile! And we said: Well, we’ve got to live with this guy for two months while we shoot this film!’ But thank God they had me on tape. For some reason, something happened, after the audition. On tape they saw this big smile on my face and then they said, ‘Yeah.’ ”

Renzi’s recollection doesn’t cast the situation as quite as dire. “By the time we got to know him better on ‘Lone Star’ I told him: ‘Sweetheart, you’re going to have to smile, ‘cause in this one you get the girl.’ And he did.”

Of late Cooper has had the luxury of being a bit more exploratory, trying on different skins, loosening the persona.

Most notably in December’s “Breast Men”--a fictionalized history of the development of the silicone implant--on HBO, Cooper tapped into a seldom-glimpsed comedic side, playing a skeptical though ambitious surgeon who partners with an aspiring doctor (David Schwimmer), credited with developing the first implant.

“The Horse Whisperer,” however, finds him on more familiar footing. As Frank Booker, he plays rancher brother to the healer, Tom (Robert Redford). Frank is an at-ease man whose world is comfortably contained beneath dwarfing skies. “When Robert and I talked about the project, he was very specific in what he wanted. He didn’t want ranch people to be portrayed with any kind of ignorance, which is often the case.”

An ex-rancher himself, Cooper wanted to authenticate the experience: “To bring the brother relationship more closely together, I wanted to pick up on Redford’s cadences. . . . The family, Dianne [Weist] and I, were virtually window dressing, but I hope that we lent some grounding to it.”

It was texture that Redford was looking for. He had observed Cooper immerse himself in a range of experiences on screen. “I wondered if he was going to be too young to play my brother,” says Redford, 60. “But he has such a maturity. He has a very economical style, but completely inhabits the film as the man who has never left Montana. Many actors who have been around have to jettison that other life experience out of them to take on that kind of role. He did it quietly. And that’s Chris’ real achievement as an actor. . . . He has such control of a character.”

For all his intricacies, it’s a wonder that Cooper ever wandered onto a stage, let alone screen: “Anyone who knew me in high school . . . knew there was something going on there. It wasn’t chronic, my shyness, I just didn’t feel too comfortable,” he says, lighting another cigarette, swirling his room-service coffee cup. “But I wanted to express myself, and I so envied people who felt free enough to put it out there.”

In keeping, Cooper found his way in through the backdoor: “I had a carpentry background. I worked on the Kansas City Chiefs and the Royals stadiums . . . so I offered my time at what they call a resident theater. I would stand on the wings of the theater--10, 13 feet from these actors--watching them and once again the envy that you could do this in front of people.”

Cooper crossed the threshold into bohemian New York, basement theaters, and a steady diet of emotionally strenuous acting classes led by icons like Stella Adler and Wynn Handman. “I don’t think my dad had any idea how strongly I wanted to pursue this, but I think my mom had a sense. My parents’ concern I’m sure was, here’s this kid from the Midwest going to New York City. . . . How many times have you heard that one? They didn’t want me to get hurt.”

They didn’t rest easy until Cooper appeared in the TV miniseries “Lonesome Dove” as July Johnson, in 1989. “Matter of fact, my mom told me when my dad went on rounds at the hospital and ‘Lonesome Dove’ was coming on, he told his patients: ‘Watch that TV up there.’ ”

But for Cooper, landing the role in “Matewan” two years earlier was the more grounding career coup. “It sounds like little stories that you would make up, but I would go on these auditions and people ask, ‘What kind of director would you like to work with?’ And I would tell them, for a person just starting out, I would most like to work with John Sayles. What can you say more than it’s your dream come true?”

It was far more than Cooper ever could have expected for his first film--the writing, the history, the substance. “And of course I was stupid enough to think that this is going to get me going. I didn’t work for two years.”

That long pause Cooper would attribute to his reticent nature: “This is where that stupid shyness can be a killer. Thank goodness my wife kept up the relationship with Maggie [Renzi], otherwise I would have . . . “ His voice trails. “It’s just that I have so much respect for John . . . that I almost didn’t feel worthy and I gotta really hand it to Marianne, she kept up the friendship.”

Marianne Leone, an actress and writer, has been more than a partner: She’s been cheering squad and the savviest of sounding boards. When the two met more than a decade ago, Leone was a part of Handman’s acting class. Since getting together, their lives have been at once chaotic and rich in Kingston, raising their 10-year-old son, Jesse, who, born prematurely, suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage at 3 days old.

Watching Jesse, who has cerebral palsy, bloom has helped Cooper wear things a little lighter: “In the scheme of things, how important is it . . . when you’ve gone through the experience of having a child who was clinging to life from the time he was born?”

So right now Cooper and Leone find themselves participants in an ensemble of a different sort: “Jesse’s a little pioneer for that town and we’re still fighting to meet his needs,” says Cooper, who after a draining fight with the school district over mainstreaming their son are now helping set up the Jesse Cooper Give Back to Society Scholarship.

“It takes so long to gather together a proper team of people who can work with Jesse. To find a physical therapist, a speech therapist, a teacher’s aide, a neurologist. It’s taken years.”

So Cooper tries to choose carefully--nowadays for different reasons, not wanting to take parts that take him too far away from weekends of settling in with Jesse for an episode of “Bob Vila’s Home Again.” “I think you have to trust what comes at the moment. I already realize that you can’t set a route for your career.”

Most recently he worked on “Rocket Boys,” directed by Joe Johnson (“Jumanji”) for Universal, which wrapped last Sunday. The next project, both Cooper and Leone hope, will have him back in his own backyard. “Elvis Heals,” a screenplay by Leone, is about a woman who sets out to educate herself about the medical system after her infant son is diagnosed with cerebral palsy. With Cooper playing--well, how’s this for broadening one’s range?--an Elvis impersonator.

“I’ll see him with the headphones on and hear this low rumble,” laughs Leone. And along with the stack of karaoke tapes, Cooper’s prep work will include some time shadowing an Elvis impersonator as well as, he thinks, a dress rehearsal or two, at a nearby hotel lounge in Plymouth.

“But it’s serious,” Cooper insists, not a space for a smile in his voice. “[The character] takes his work very seriously.”

Well, considering the source, but of course.