Just going his own way

Dennis Haysbert brought tears to the eyes of writer-director Todd Haynes when the actor auditioned for the role of the gentle, intelligent gardener Raymond in “Far From Heaven.” And his delicate, honest performance in the acclaimed drama has been causing many a tear to well up ever since.

“He ended up being the very first person who ever read a scene from the film to me,” Haynes says. “There was no one who completely fit the role in so many aspects. He understood the character, but he also understood the meter of this kind of [spare] writing and this kind of acting -- without doing anything over big. He is very quiet and contained.”

“Far From Heaven” is Haynes’ homage to the “women’s films” made by director Douglas Sirk in the 1950s -- films such as “All That Heaven Allows” and “Written on the Wind” that present a picture-postcard world on the surface disguising the universe’s ugly underbelly of lies, deceit, gossip and hate.

Haysbert also has attracted attention on the small screen, as President-in-crisis David Palmer in the Fox network’s serialized thriller, “24.”

Relaxing in a hotel lounge on a recent rainy morning, the 6-foot-4 Haysbert, 48, is charming and friendly despite battling a bad cold.

On his right hand he’s wearing a brace: He recently broke his hand doing an intense scene for “24.” This season, Palmer is trying to prevent a nuclear attack on Los Angeles, but Haysbert won’t discuss the particulars of the scene in which he injured himself, “otherwise,” Haysbert adds, smiling, “I’d have to kill you.”

Set in Connecticut in 1957, “Far From Heaven” finds Raymond, a black widower with a young daughter, falling in love with white housewife and mother Cathy (Julianne Moore), who has just discovered that her emotionally distant husband (Dennis Quaid) is gay. As Cathy and Raymond become closer, though, they find their budding relationship the object of gossip and prejudice.

Haysbert had seen only one Sirk film, the 1959 melodrama “Imitation of Life,” which deals with racial prejudice. “It’s one of my favorites,” he says. But he didn’t watch any of Sirk’s other films before production began because “everything I needed was in the script. The film draws you in. You think you are in this kind of ‘Donna Reed,’ ‘Father Knows Best,’ ‘Leave It to Beaver” world, and then you see this terrible underbelly.

“You start to see the world as it truly is rather than the one that people want you to see. All Raymond wants to do is live his life. He doesn’t live it according to what he thinks he should be entitled to, he just entitles himself. He does what he feels.”

Moore says that she felt safe in her scenes with Haysbert. “He has such a beautiful voice, a very mellifluous, relaxing voice,” the actress says. “I used to say to Todd that he makes me so relaxed. He had this very easy kind of masculine quality that is so wonderful in the part. He is charming and warm, and you felt secure and safe with him and cared for.”

In the lounge, Haysbert is interrupted by the appearance of Penny Johnson Gerald, who plays President Palmer’s Lady Macbeth of an ex-wife, Sherry.

“Here is my television wife,” he says smiling

“Oh, the man of my dreams,” coos Johnson Gerald, who had just completed international publicity for “24” that morning at the same hotel. Haysbert gives her a big hug and asks, “How are you, sweetie?”

The two chat briefly about Haysbert’s plan to rip off the wallpaper in his new house. “”It’s the best wallpaper you could possibly buy,” Haysbert says. “But just not for him,” Johnson Gerald says.

“The house was done in this Christmas green and red, and in the kitchen, everything is done in flowers,” Haysbert says. “I like that dry look. I am a paint guy, and then give me artwork to put on the wall.”

Haysbert shot “Far From Heaven” last fall in New Jersey while simultaneously shooting the first season of “24” in Los Angeles.

“The scary thing for a film production is to have an actor in a lead series and shooting a movie at the same time,” Haynes says. “It created so many barriers. It was completely scary up until his first day of shooting, that this may or may not work.”

“I look back now and I don’t know how we worked that out,” Haysbert says. “The real interesting thing about that it was the month after 9/11. It was very interesting looking at people on the airplanes because they would check out everybody and be very tentative, very quiet.”

The flying back and forth was worth it for Haysbert, who when he first read the script for “Far From Heaven” couldn’t get over the beauty of Haynes’ dialogue. The one sequence that captured his heart was when Raymond takes Cathy to an African American bar and grill to illustrate to her what it is like to be the only one among many.

“I have never read a scene that was written like that,” Haysbert says. “I have never seen where it actually turns the tables and said, ‘Oh yeah. I am indeed alone, the only one, but there are places where I am one of many and the situation is reversed.’ I bring her in to kind of teach her that.”

“He takes the lead in a very gentle way” in that scene, Haynes says. “In a way Cathy and Raymond’s biggest flaw is their hope, the wish for a different way the world could be. But the world is much less open than they are as people and they are burned by it.”

Although Cathy and Raymond’s love remains unconsummated, Haysbert believes the characters eventually find happiness. “In my mind, the movie is 20 minutes longer and you can project about six months ahead,” he says. “I would have tried to find a way to call her and we could go to California or Oregon or Washington -- a place where you had the fewest people and where people didn’t care. There could be a place like that.”