Christopher McDonald: You know that face
Christopher McDonald admits it: “I love to work,” says the 54-year-old actor, who turns up this week in “Splinterheads,” opening today (11.06.09) in limited release.
Then he shrugs and adds, “Terms like ‘ubiquitous’ are not good. I think I’m one of the only actors who’s had two films opening against each other on the same weekend, like, five different times. But hey, I don’t choose the dates. I just like great parts.”
Or parts he can convince himself might be great: “I don’t say yes to everything,” he argues. “I do turn things down. But I do look for ways to say yes.
“For me, it’s got to be a good story, or I’ve got to like the character. It might be about who’s directing it or who else is involved. It might be the economics of it. Or it might be a great location. I mean, I’m going to Montenegro at the end of the month – I’ve never been there. I get to work with Janet McTeer – and play the secretary of defense of the United States. And the money isn’t terrible either.”
If McDonald’s name isn’t familiar, his face must be – the Internet Movie Database lists almost 150 different credits since he made his film debut in “The Hearse” in 1980 (after an appearance in a 1978 TV movie) – and that figure only counts TV series once, though he did multiple episodes of several shows.
It’s the face – and his imposing, ramrod 6-foot-3 physique – that makes him distinctive. His eyes have a certain twinkle that can imply mischief, mayhem or monomania. His smile can be smirky or sharklike – and his delivery frequently has the tang of sarcasm, which can be particularly funny when he’s playing characters who aren’t as smart as they think they are.
Those characters – bullying, fatuous, petty, egotistical – have become a stock-in-trade for McDonald, most famously as a strutting professional golfer named Shooter McGavin in Adam Sandler’s “Happy Gilmore.” That character still gets him recognized, almost 15 years after the fact.
“Last night, I was in a bar,” he says, sitting in a Chelsea office, “and it was packed with Marines who were off that ship, the U.S.S. New York, that’s docked by the Intrepid. When I walked in with a friend, they gave me a standing ovation and were chanting, ‘Shooter! Shooter!’ One of them said they’d watched it, like, 100 times.”
By contrast, in “Splinterheads,” a quirky comedy set on Long Island, McDonald plays a police officer who was involved with the widowed mother (Lea Thompson) of the film’s hero, Justin (played by newcomer Thomas Middleditch). A threatening authority figure, McDonald’s character still carries a torch for this particular ex- and winds up helping Justin out of a jam. In other words, he plays a good guy who initially gives the impression of being a bad guy.
“I come off as a red herring of sorts,” McDonald says. “They like me doing bad guys, though. When I do something else, it confuses people. I’ve sort of been pigeonholed. But when I was starting, I said, ‘Please – typecast me!’ It was a chance to keep working.”
In a film career now in its 30th year, McDonald has had his share of forgettable titles (“The House Bunny,” “Leave It to Beaver”) and one-shot episodic TV appearances (on everything from “Matlock” to “The Sopranos” to “Empty Nest”), along with a series (“Family Law,” opposite Kathleen Quinlan, which ran 68 episodes) that bought him an apartment in New York (he lives near Lake Arrowhead in California with his family).
But he’s also worked with directors as varied as Ridley Scott, the Coen brothers and Robert Redford in films like “Requiem for a Dream,” “Broken Flowers” and “Thelma and Louise.” And he’s played his share of real-life characters, from sportscaster Mel Allen (in “*61”) to baseball legend Joe DiMaggio (in “The Bronx is Burning”) to quiz-show host Jack Barry.
“I do have fun,” he says. “It’s a chance to live in another skin, to exorcise those demons that we all have inside. In hindsight, I would like to have played more leading-man parts. But I’ve already achieved more than I ever dreamed I would.”
A Long Island native who grew up in upstate Romulus, N.Y., McDonald was the middle of seven children, the son of a would-be actor who became a teacher and high-school principal to support his family. McDonald spent his high-school years pursuing music, playing the trumpet in the band of the school musicals his father directed.
“He didn’t cast me because he needed my horn,” McDonald says. “My brother and sister got all the great parts.”
McDonald eventually followed his impulse on to the stage as a pre-med student at Hobart and William College. He switched majors, then went to Boston to work in theater, before driving himself to Los Angeles to truly launch his career. But he grew frustrated pursuing a theater career in a movie-industry town.
“I had this Timex watch that I set to beep hourly,” he recalls. “And when it would beep, I would think, ‘What are you doing for your career right now?’”
Cast in “Where the Boys Are ‘’84,” McDonald had an epiphany one day when he asked the director a question about a scene and the director replied, “You’re trying to make sense of this shit now?”
“So I applied to RADA (Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts) in London,” he says. “I immersed myself in Shakespeare and came back a new actor. Then I discovered Stella Adler and got to work with her the last eight years of her life and started making better decisions.” He pauses, flashes that smile, then adds sardonically, “Though I’ve had my share of unsuccessful attempts at the fine art of filmmaking.”
The father of four children ranging in age from 8 to 18, McDonald made a decision some years ago to put family first. That meant landing a TV series and finding films that shot in California to keep himself close to home – and turning down roles that would take him away for too long at one stretch.
“What? You want me for something called ‘Band of Brothers’? And it’s going to shoot overseas for six months? Can’t do it,” he recalls himself saying.
Still, the roles keep coming – and McDonald keeps taking them. These days, he’s just as likely to play a cop or a senator as a sleazebag, which suits him fine.
“I’ll do this until the day I drop,” he says. “I get a great sense of satisfaction. I jump out of bed most mornings and think, ‘I get to do something cool today.’ It’s like when I worked with Jack Lemmon (on “Grumpy Old Men”). And before every take, he’d smile and say, ‘Magic time.’”
