He’ll up any ante

BACK in Hollywood’s heyday, the movies were peppered with character actors such as Walter Brennan, William Bendix, Brian Donlevy and Walter Abel who would effortlessly steal a movie from under a star’s nose.

Oliver Platt is made in that model. Over the last 17 years -- his film debut was in 1988’s “Working Girl” -- the actor, now 45, has given the stars a run for their money in such films as “Indecent Proposal,” “Funny Bones,” “Bulworth,” “Doctor Dolittle,” “Don’t Say a Word,” “Pieces of April” and “Kinsey.”

Platt, a career diplomat’s son who spent his youth living in Southeast Asia, may be the best reason to see two new fall films, “The Ice Harvest,” which opens Wednesday, and “Casanova,” which arrives just before Christmas. He’ll soon return to the small screen in his Emmy Award-nominated role as the deviant attorney Russell Tupper in Showtime’s comedy series “Huff.”

In “The Ice Harvest,” a dark comedy from director Harold Ramis (“Groundhog Day,” “Analyze This”), Platt plays Pete Van Heuten, a successful Wichita, Kan., businessman with a trophy wife and two stepchildren. But he’s a mess. And on a snowy Christmas Eve, he’s gotten so drunk at a local restaurant that his good friend Charlie (John Cusack) has to take him home. But Charlie has just robbed a mob boss of more than $2 million.

In Lasse Hallstrom’s “Casanova,” Platt plays a wealthy, rotund lard merchant named Papprizzio who is set to marry the beautiful Francesca (Sienna Miller). However, Frances-

ca has also stolen the heart of Casanova (Heath Ledger), so the legendary lover must prevent the marriage at all costs.

Pete is such a bombastic drunk. At first you think he’s the comic relief, but there’s a lot of pain between his wisecracks and outrageous behavior.

That is the beauty of the role. It’s very much in the writing of it. There is no way that that guy drinks like that regularly. I think the forced joyfulness of the holidays, the forced gaiety [made him drink]. He is an American male who has read the handbook and followed all the instructions. He accrued all the things he was lead to believe to accrue -- the trophy wife, the job, the car. But he’s miserable. He is lost. He is terrified.

Was it difficult to keep track of Pete’s different levels of inebriation over the course of shooting?

It was like having a drunk-o-graph. But it is so funny because there are subtle variations [to drunkenness] -- what’s the difference between inebriated and pie-eyed? The way I saw it, he starts out, he goes from plastered to pie-eyed to inebriated.

He gets kicked in the crotch -- there was probably some adrenaline dump there -- and sobers up a little bit there. He also throws up, so the blood-alcohol level goes down and then he sleeps.

I think the most sober he is is at the very end, but I don’t want to give it away.

Watching “Ice Harvest,” it was hard to believe that Harold Ramis directed it because it was so violent.

We had such a blast shooting John and mine’s little story, I forgot how violent the movie was. But in a weird way [the violence] gives it a strange kind of credibility. I think it is a strange, sad love song to the lost American man. I think “Groundhog Day” is the seminal modern existential comedy. This is Harold’s next existential comedy, though it’s a lot darker.

Papprizzio is such a wonderfully broad character -- he struts around like a rooster in his finery. But he’s not the buffoon he first appears to be.

What makes these great parts is that they have a beginning, a middle and end. I could act my butt off, but you need the story. And those parts have a great story.

My favorite scene in the movie is when Papprizzio unveils that romanticized painting of himself and no one recognizes it’s a portrait of him. It’s a funny moment, but you also imbue it with pathos.

I think that is a moment that a lot of people have experienced. Usually it’s not that starkly etched. When you meet Papprizzio, you think, ‘Here is this very self-confident buffoon.’ He thinks he’s the bee’s knees and you learn very quickly he’s deeply unsure of himself.

Your accent sort of sounded British, but I couldn’t exactly place it.

I was the only American actor in the cast surrounded by British actors all playing Italian. I didn’t want to walk in with an Italian accent -- it would have taken you out of the movie. I tried to give it a very specific nouveau British accent. What this guy was was a bounder. He was marrying up. He was a very successful businessman, but what Francesca meant to him was a fancy wife, and parties to go to.