Playboy Interview: Kevin Kline

It may stand as the most famous kiss in American cinema. Last fall in the comedy "In and Out," Tom Selleck, playing a Geraldoesque reporter for a TV tabloid newsmagazine, locked lips with his co-star, Kevin Kline, who was playing a gay schoolteacher in deep denial. Well, he was in denial--until that smacker.

While the kissing scene (which lingered) made some laugh and others uncomfortable, it was merely another day at work for Kline. America's most chameleon-like actor simply brushed his teeth beforehand and shaved extra close, Kline is impossible to pigeonhole. He divides his career between Hollywood and Broadway, refuses to specialize in either comedy or drama and has won a Tony for Gilbert and Sullivan and an Oscar for playing a guy who gobbles live tropical fish. He won't even specialize when it comes to kissing: Right after smooching Selleck, Kline was kissing Sigourney Weaver (in the role of his neighbor's wife) in the riveting if desolate "The Ice Storm," and Hope Davis as Sasha, his mistress, in a critically praised stage production of "Ivanov," at New York's Lincoln Center.

Kline, 50, does much more than give a good theatrical kiss, of course. The "Los Angeles Times" noted, "A good number of serious moviegoers and theatergoers will argue that Kline is the best American actor of his generation at work right now." His versatility has made fans of those who work with him. "He's the only guy I know who can go from Jerry Lewis to Shakespeare," says "In and Out" director Frank Oz. Critics have compared him with Errol Flynn, and "The Christian Science Monitor" dubbed him "the American Olivier."

Like Olivier, Kline first acted in the theater, but most Americans know him for his movies, which include a number of hits. First came "Sophie's Choice" in 1982, in which he played an unforgettable schizophrenic opposite Meryl Streep's Sophie. The next year, he was a liberal activist turned running-shoe tycoon in "The Big Chill," a movie that defined the baby-boom generation.

"The Big Chill" was Kline's first of five collaborations with screenwriter-director Lawrence Kasdan. Kline also played a gunslinger in the revisionist Western "Silverado," a hilariously conflicted Italian husband in "I Love You to Death," a Parisian hustler in "French Kiss" and then the regular Joe whose life is transformed when his car breaks down in the wrong part of town in "Grand Canyon."

Kasdan isn't the only filmmaker who has called Kline in for an encore. With John Cleese, Kline first played a half-witted, armpit-sniffing thug in "A Fish Called Wanda," a performance that won him an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Then he and Cleese, as well as others from "Wanda," teamed again for "Fierce Creatures." He was also twice directed by Sir Richard Attenborough, first in 1987 in the poignant apartheid-era "Cry Freedom," and again in 1992, when he played Douglas Fairbanks in the biopic "Chaplin."

Kline's stage credits are equally eclectic, including musical theater such as Harold Prince's "On the 20th Century" and Joseph Papp's "Pirates of Penzance," both of which earned him Tony awards. More often he has taken on dramatic roles in numerous productions of Shakespeare, ranging from a particularly cruel Richard III to dozens of riveting Hamlets, including one he directed in 1990 for PBS' "Great Performances" series. "New York Times" drama critic Frank Rich has called Kline "the pride of the American theater."

He received different kinds of notices as a child in St. Louis, where his father owned a toy-and-record store. Kevin attended St. Louis Priory, a boys' Catholic prep school run by Benedictine monks. There, if a student were caught smoking, he would be either expelled or whipped with a cane. Still, Kline smoked every day after lunch from his sophomore to his senior years. Though he was never caught, he was smacked on the hands with a plastic bat for being something of a smartass.

He acted in his first play in high school, but he planned on a career in music, not drama. When he arrived at Indiana University, however, he auditioned for a production of "Macbeth" and inadvertently landed a role. Soon he switched his major to speech and theater. Not long after that, he co-founded an off-campus theater company.

After graduating, he headed to Juilliard in New York to enroll in the newly established drama division, founded by John Houseman. Then came minor roles with the New York Shakespeare Festival.

Kline met the actor Phoebe Cotes during casting for "The Big Chill," but they didn't date until a decade later, when Kline hired Cates' former personal assistant. One of the assistant's first assignments was to arrange a date with her former employer. Kline and Cates were married within a year and now have two children, Owen, 6, and Greta, 4. A dedicated family man, Kline has been known to reschedule meetings in order to attend parent-teacher conferences.

Playboy tapped Contributing EditorDavid Sheffto catch up with one of America's busiest actors. Sheff reports: "I learned how many women of a certain generation adore Kline when my friends heard that I was off to interview him. I had more offers of free assistance--to hold the tape recorder, if nothing else--than when I set out to see Nicolas Cage, Sting or Bruce Willis. Perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised. Back in 1983, 'Rolling Stone' reported on a phenomenon the editors dubbed the 'Kevin Kline crush,' suffered for years by almost every woman in New York.

"We met in that city while he was in previews of 'Ivanov.' The play was to open in a couple of weeks, and Kline was immersed in what he described as a mood of Chekhovian solemnity. In fact, he often apologized for being so grim, though I found him cheery for someone who takes his own life every night and twice on Sundays.

"The first interview session was to be held at his Upper East Side office, near his home. But his secretary called to say that the office was a disaster, under construction, and wondered if we could meet elsewhere. He came to my hotel room. It was a nonsmoking room, but the chain-smoking Kline couldn't refrain. Later in the day, a maid apparently squealed and I got a call from a disturbed hotel manager. Obviously a theater devotee, the manager sighed when he heard that it was Kline who had ignored the signs posted around the room. 'Aaah,' he said. 'What would you expect from a guy who spends all his time skulking around as Hamlet and Richard III?'"

Playboy: Does Hollywood get it when movie actors do plays, or is it viewed as strange or quaint?

Kline: Many people in Hollywood love theater, but some don't get it at all. I was going off to do Shakespeare in New York after my first movies and a reporter for the Los Angeles Times was horrified. He said, "Your career was going so well. Why are you going back to the stage?" I said, "What do you mean? I'm doing Hamlet in New York. It's the pinnacle. It doesn't get better than this!" So sure, there must be some producers and studio people out there who are scratching their heads in puzzlement.

Playboy: On the other hand, are your friends in the theater contemptuous of Hollywood?

Kline: Not really. It's difficult to make a good living in the theater. It's a sad, lamentable state of affairs that this country does not support the arts. The depressing fact is that actors are subsidizing the theater almost as much as anyone else. We're not onstage for the money. Unless you're starring in a hit Broadway show, it's hard to make ends meet. I'm relatively rare and fortunate, able to indulge both passions, because I do love making movies as much as I love the theater.

Playboy: Is acting acting, whether it's in movies or onstage?

Kline: When I started doing movies, I was struck by how different it was. But I've come to realize that acting is acting. It's the same process--both media require similar inner workings--though the forms are very different. Film acting is about nuance. The camera is so close that you can do things you can't do onstage. The things you do for the camera are infinitesimal and wouldn't be perceived in a theater. Theater is much larger, exaggerated.

Playboy: You once said, "I come back to the theater for the words."

Kline: That's right, whereas movies are about the visual. You can obviously have great dialogue in movies, but ultimately the story is told through visual means. Most theater, certainly Shakespeare, is about language.

Playboy: You have commented on how rude people can be in audiences. Is it getting better or worse?

Kline: Worse. It must be the influence of television.

Playboy: How does television affect theater audiences?

Kline: They don't understand there's a difference. They're used to saying, "Honey, will you get me another beer?" while the show is on. I was doing a scene with Glenne Headly in Arms and the Man at Circle in the Square, and two women in front started talking: "She looks like Maggie Smith, doesn't she?" "Oh, do you think?" We heard every word. Glenne and I were looking at each other. What are these people thinking? They don't think about the fact that everyone in the audience can hear them, or that the actors can too--we're only three feet away. They're oblivious. It must be TV. What else? Another time I was onstage and heard someone taking out what had to be a pack of Tic Tacs. He was shaking it. You could look at it, if you were so disposed, as the ultimate tribute--they are so involved in the performance they have no idea they're shaking out their candies. Unfortunately I have to think there's a level of crassness, stupidity and bad breeding.

Playboy: They're almost as bad as people who talk during movies, but at least there the actors can't hear it.

Kline: I used to turn around to look at them and shush them. But now, especially in New York City, they probably have guns. They could be having a bad day and just blow you away. So I don't go to certain movie theaters and I tend not to shush.

Playboy: Why did you decide on Ivanov for your latest onstage role?

Kline: It has a rawness that still has the trappings of melodrama. Each act ends with what Chekhov called a punch in the stomach. Only Chekhov can put together melodrama, tragedy, farce and humor and have it be a good piece. Only he can capture the humor in torment. It's very funny and very sad.

Playboy: One of your two movies last year, The Ice Storm, was also sad. In fact it was downright bleak.

Kline: You think so? Oh, good.

Playboy: So you enjoy making people depressed?

Kline: That movie is a lament and an indictment. But I hope it's more than that. It makes you want to do better. The movie gracefully invites you to identify with the saddest part of the human condition, the inability to make contact. The people in the film, every one of them, desperately need to make contact and have no idea how to do it.

Playboy: Was it a challenge to make your character--a philanderer who barely has time for his children--sympathetic?

Kline: Yeah, and the way we tried to do it was to have people understand him and, in understanding him, forgive him a little. Chekhov said, "I've always tried to avoid heroes and villains, but I haven't always successfully avoided fools." My character is a fool who lives in the gray area where most of us live our lives, not as heroes nor villains.

Playboy: The movie painted a dismal picture of the Seventies.

Kline: It was the time when all our values were thrown out the window, after the Sixties. But it's too easy to blame that condition on the Seventies. We're still in the Seventies, the worst of it.

Playboy: What aspect of the Seventies lives on?

Kline: Thank God the clothes don't! Good God! The most hideous conglomeration of clashing, horrific patterns and fabrics. If you wanted to punish someone, you couldn't devise anything more uncomfortable. Thankfully, the clothes are gone, but the insidious legacy of the Seventies is the obsession with hipness. It was important to be hip then. It was hip to be hip, and then you became tragically hip, and then hipper than thou.

Playboy: What were the Seventies like for you?

Kline: Not like in the movie, because the rich, suburban world was not my milieu. I was an aspiring actor in acting school, studying the classics. I partook of the sexual revolution in college, as did we all. But the movie shows that suburban anomaly and a group of privileged people who on the surface have everything. It's the milieu Updike and Cheever wrote about.

Playboy: So you never went to a key party like the one in the movie, at which the husbands toss their car keys into a bowl and the wives go home with the owner of whichever set of keys they choose?

Kline: No. In fact, I've never heard of such parties. But I've met people who, after seeing the movie, have said, "Yeah, there were key parties. I went."

Playboy: There's been talk about an Academy Award nomination for your performance. What do you think?

Kline: Nothing. I've heard that before. The one time I won an Oscar was the time I never suspected it for a moment. A Fish Called Wanda wasn't generally considered Oscar-caliber material. You don't get Oscars for playing a character who says, "Don't touch his dick" five times and then, "Touch his dick and he's dead." You don't get Oscars playing a guy who smells his armpits.

Playboy: Maybe it was for eating the fish.

Kline: Maybe it was.

Playboy: We're dying to know: Did you eat a real fish?

Kline: I hate to give away the craft of acting, but the truth is that I parked these little rubber, acrylic-painted fish in the corner of my mouth the way I used to park brussels sprouts. Then, after the take, I spit them out. They were so disgusting that by the end of the day I was asking for real fish.

Playboy: Nicolas Cage told us he ate a cockroach when he made Vampire's Kiss.

Kline: Well, he's a real actor, isn't he? Me, I will suffer only so much for my art.

Playboy: No cockroach eating?

Kline: No, and I would want to ask how many he ate. Did they shoot it in one take? What happens when you do seven takes? I had to eat quite a few fish. Had they been real, I would have done some damage to the tropical fish population, which is in peril. Saving tropical fish is one of my causes.

Playboy: So you won an Oscar for eating plastic fish.

Kline: Yes. I got a call one morning, very early, and was told the Oscar nominations had come out and that I was nominated. I asked, "For what?" This is not to say I wasn't touched. I know it's a cliché, but the nomination really is everything, because actors nominate actors. It means a lot that your peers think you did exceptional work. And I had not been in a movie in which I was dying of some infirmity, which generally helps. Agents actually tell you: "You know, this is Oscar material," usually because the role has you severely crippled and then you get to die.

Playboy: We've read that you keep your Oscar in a bag.

Kline: I don't like displaying it, that's all. I think that would be in poor taste. So it's concealed.

Playboy: Did your wife really dress it up in a tutu, as we've also read?

Kline: When we moved he came out of his clandestine spot. My wife and her friend were unpacking, and my daughter had just gotten all this Barbie stuff, so, yes, I came home and there was Oscar in a tutu. And some other paraphernalia. It happened that the Barbie things fit perfectly. It's not that I'm not proud of the award. It's that I don't like advertising it. [Laughs] Actually, I keep it hidden because I don't like people touching it, getting their fingerprints on it.

Playboy: Before The Ice Storm you did the comedy In and Out. Do you intentionally do successive movies that are that different in tone?

Kline: Many times I do. I look for a movie that is an antidote to what I've just completed. I did Fierce Creatures and signed on to do In and Out. Before that was French Kiss. So after that light stuff, when my agent called and said, "I've just read the bleakest, most depressing movie," I said, "Hurrah! Send it!" I come from repertory, in which you alternate five or more plays. Three Sisters one night, The Way of the World the next, then Richard III. It's about variety, which keeps you constantly stimulated.

Playboy: In In and Out, you play a gay teacher who is so closeted that he almost gets married. How did you decide which gay stereotypes to use and which to avoid?

Kline: I tend to be flamboyant at times anyway. I use my hands, and my posture is very erect. I thought I would have to butch up to play the part. Needless to say, that's another stereotype; you and I both know gay men who are much more butch and much less butch. It's not that the character is gay and therefore prissy. His prissiness comes from the fact that he's in such denial about who he is. He keeps those bow ties tied so tightly because he is cutting off everything from his neck down. He doesn't want to deal with what's down there, because he's terrified that his family and the townspeople he loves will ostracize him.

Playboy: As far as you're concerned, did he always know he was gay, or was he awakened to his sexuality when he was kissed by Tom Selleck's character?

Kline: I don't think it works that way. I think people know, though they may push it away, deny it. The kiss is fabulous, I think, because it is part of the movie tradition in which we see a couple fighting and then the guy grabs the woman and kisses her and she's, "My God! I've never felt that before. Maybe this is the man of my dreams." It's in the great tradition of screwball comedy kisses--the guy grabs the woman and plants one on her and she's forever changed. In this case, the guy grabs a guy. That's the twist.

Playboy: Was this your first theatrical kiss with a man?

Kline: Years before I did one onstage in Edward II.

Playboy: Was it just another movie kiss, or did you think about it differently before shooting the scene?

Kline: In a way it was normal, in that you brushed your teeth before shooting it. You didn't eat garlic beforehand. And you shaved close. One difference is that this time you hoped he shaved close too, so you wouldn't get too much beard burn after shooting the scene many times. You normally don't have to worry about the other person shaving.

Playboy: After you kissed Tom Selleck in In and Out, you kissed Sigourney Weaver in The Ice Storm. Who's better?

Kline: I can tell you which I preferred, but that has to do with preference, not ability. I'm sure Tom is a great kisser, too.

Playboy: Is it particularly risky to play a gay character these days, when the gay community may take issue with any perceived slight?

Kline: It occurred to me, but I didn't dwell on it. Political correctness has no place in the arts. Anyone, gay activist or not, who sees In and Out without a sense of humor won't get it. This movie presents a lighthearted, comedic view of these issues. You can't bring too much of a political agenda to it. Still, I was heartened to see that the gay press embraced the movie. A good friend of mine pointed out the alarming percentage of gay adolescents who kill themselves and said that movies like this can help turn that around. Wouldn't that be nice? The movie ultimately says, "What's the big deal?" Your sexuality is your sexuality, and it has nothing to do with your character. Further, it's not ultimately a movie about gayness. It's about self-acceptance. It's about being who you really are--life's so much easier that way.

Playboy Was there any reaction from members of the Christian right, who regularly campaign against Ellen and other shows that portray homosexuality positively?

Kline: If so, I haven't heard about it. At one early screening, I heard that a large, macho man stood up during the kiss, which goes on for a while, and yelled, "Stop the madness!" I'm sure it didn't go down well with everyone.

Playboy: If there's a shocked reaction, it must partly be due to the fact that gay sex is rarely shown in movies or on television.

Kline: And let's not forget the puritanical streak that runs deep and wide through our country. Europeans--many, not all--couldn't be more blasé about it. [With a French accent] "What is the big deal about two men kissing? What is your problem?" But cinematic sex of whatever kind is a big part of movies. My best memories of movies are associated with sex. I remember seeing Dr. Strangelove the first time.

Playboy: You may be the only person who found Dr. Strangelove sexy.

Kline: It was the first time I held hands with my then-girlfriend. It was wild and erotic at the time. Earlier, in another movie, I saw a naked woman for the first time. It was in The Horse's Mouth, with Alec Guinness. An artist was working on a nude sculpture and there was a naked model. An assistant was feeding her chili. I remember thinking, Wow--a naked lady. I wondered if my parents, who took me to the movie, had any idea there would be a naked lady for me to look at.

Playboy: Was that your motivation to go into the movie business?

Kline: The truth is that I never thought about going into the movie business. I originally thought I might compose and perform music.

Playboy: Were your parents musicians?

Kline: My father was an opera lover and wanted to be an opera singer in his youth. But his family kind of steered him into the family business.

Playboy: A toy store.

Kline: It started as a record store and became a toy-and-record store and ended up a toy store. We had nice Christmases.

Playboy: You went to a boys' Catholic school that was run by Benedictine monks. Was it a typical Catholic school as far as discipline was concerned--rulers on knuckles?

Kline: You would get a book upside your head if you were really bad. They still had corporeal punishment--for cheating, smoking. The headmaster had a bamboo cane with a metal tip. I never felt it but I did hear the bump, bump, whack! It made our blood run cold. If you were a smart-ass, you were sent to Father Leonard, who would give it to you on your hands with this nasty little plastic thing shaped like the sole of a shoe. That, I got. I remember the ringing in my ears, which was as painful as the sting.

Playboy: You have said that the boys at your school had a terrible reputation with the nearby Sacred Heart girls. Was it deserved?

Kline: Absolutely. We were incorrigible. Well, the truth is that our worst sin was nothing much more exciting than smoking.

Playboy: Did you act in high school?

Kline: My high school had what was called the senior play. I found myself very calm onstage while my friends were basically vomiting in the wings. I thought, Gee, I don't feel like vomiting. I'm rather enjoying this. Still, I planned on studying music and went to Indiana for that. I took one acting class, though. The teacher wanted us to see what auditions were like, so we went to auditions for Macbeth. We watched all these students read, and then the director turned to me. "You haven't read," he said. I explained, "No, no, we're just here observing." He asked for my name and then announced, "And now, ladies and gentlemen, Kevin Kline is going to read Duncan, the king." I had watched other people and thought, Well, use your lowest, phoniest voice. I hadn't a clue what I was saying. I didn't understand a word of Shakespeare. Until then, the only time I had seen Shakespeare was on a date, a college production of King Lear. But we were necking through the first act and left at intermission. I did Duncan, the king, and was cast as the bleeding captain who comes on at the beginning of the play and has about 20 lines and then collapses in a faint. That was the extent of it. But it's how I got into the theater. Only then, hearing the play night after night, did I begin to fall in love with Shakespeare and with acting.

I ended up switching my major. I was dating a girl who was in a small group doing a kind of political, satirical revue, and I was asked to play the piano. I started getting little roles and became a full-fledged member, doing plays at the university theater and in a local coffeehouse. Then we started doing improvisational theater and finally took over the coffeehouse and made it into our own coffeehouse theater. That's where I really got hooked. I went from there to Juilliard. There I worked with John Houseman and went on to work with him for an acting company. We got on a bus and got off four years later, having toured the country, in every shape and size of theater, doing modern and Shakespeare and everything else.

Playboy: So do you think it was inevitable that you gravitated toward Shakespeare and have done more Shakespeare than anything else?

Kline: I suppose it was, though it was a roundabout route. I loved Shakespeare. The irony, of course, is that after four years in the company, I had never played a major Shakespearean role. It wasn't until later, after I was in Pirates of Penzance, working for Joe Papp, that I had a major role in a Shakespeare play. Papp asked if I had ever thought about Shakespeare. "Thought about it? That's what I want to do." Pirates was supposed to have been a four-week romp in the park, but it had turned into a Broadway show and a movie. So it began. We first did Richard III. Later, Papp asked what I wanted to do next. I said, "I want to do the guy." That's how David Mamet always referred to Hamlet. But Papp said he didn't want to direct Hamlet then. I finally did the guy a couple of years later.

Playboy: What is it about Hamlet that drew you to him?

Kline: What is it about the guy that draws every actor who aspires to do the best there is in theater? I remember talking about it to Donald Madden, who had played Richard III in Central Park, a production in which I did nothing but carry a spear. He had done the longest-running Hamlet on Broadway. He told me how he'd prepared for 15 years for the role. He said, "If you want to play Hamlet, start now. Get a pocket-size edition of the play. Carry it with you everywhere." That's more or less what I did. When the opportunity came 15 years later, I was ready. The character fascinated me, and I wanted to say those words. I wanted to understand them in the deepest way possible by getting inside them, by being him.

Playboy: Do you relate to Hamlet? It has been said that you're Hamlet-like in your indecision.

Kline: John Cleese says I make Hamlet look decisive, but I'm not indecisive. Like Hamlet, I am reflective. I think before making decisions. But that isn't the same as indecision.

Playboy: Which is not to say you brood.

Kline: Sometimes I agonize over certain things. But other times, no. I may brood a bit now, but that's because I'm immersed in Chekhov. Other times I'm a cheerful guy.

Playboy: Recently a number of Shakespeare's plays have been made into movies. Do you have any favorites?

Kline: I haven't seen all of them, but Kenneth Branagh's Much Ado About Nothing was fantastic. Branagh asked my wife to play Hero. When she was off to meet him, I said, "Ask him why I'm not playing fucking Benedick." I had never met him or anything, but the most fun I've ever had onstage was playing Benedick. I love that character. So Phoebe gave him the message and returned with his message to me: "Because I'm playing fucking Benedick." He captured the comedy and the darkness. I was terribly moved and laughed uproariously. I am thrilled it reached as wide an audience as it did.

Playboy: Even while you acted in Shakespeare and other plays, you were in a soap opera. Did you fear you might get trapped there?

Kline: Not until later. When the soap opera was offered to me, I had been out of the acting company for about a year. I vowed never to do a commercial or a soap opera. But one of an artist's duties is to feed himself. It's hard to be creative on an empty stomach. So I rationalized it. I did a commercial or two and a soap opera.

Playboy: Commercials for what?

Kline: [Groans] For Thom McAn shoes. And one of those horrific Folgers coffee ads: the husband who can't bear his wife's coffee. He's just about to collapse until Mrs. Olsen shows up in their kitchen to tell them about mountain-grown coffee. But the commercials and soap opera were great gigs, because I was able to work in the theater at night. That's how I supported myself until On the Twentieth Century came along.

Playboy: Which brought your first Tony and also led to Pirates of Penzance, which apparently led to Sophie's Choice. How?

Kline: Alan Pakula had seen me in a play called Loose Ends the year before, but according to him, Pirates of Penzance is what made him ask me to be in Sophie's Choice. I asked him why, since the musical and movie seem to have nothing in common. He explained that the key to Nathan in Sophie's Choice is not that he was enigmatic and morose; it's his capacity for joy. He saw some sense of that joy in Pirates. I said, "OK, I'm not going to talk you out of it."

Playboy: Was it intimidating to have your first movie experience working with Meryl Streep in such a heavy drama?

Kline: Terrifying. I was told by friends in the theater, "What you do onstage is not going to work in the movies." They didn't know that, because they'd never done a film, but they said it, and I thought, Wait a minute! All the experience I've accrued over the years is meaningless? What am I going to do? Pakula said, "I'm your net. I'm going to catch you if you fall." At first, working with Meryl--who had already made French Lieutenant's Woman and won an Oscar for Kramer vs. Kramer--terrified me, too, but then I thought, How exciting. So it was terrifying and exciting, and I couldn't have wished for better people to hold my hand than Meryl Streep and Alan Pakula. And it led to The Big Chill.

Playboy: You've made five movies with director Lawrence Kasdan. Why has the collaboration been so successful?

Kline: We think we push each other to be creative in interesting ways. We know each other very well. He's a remarkable writer who cares enormously about what he does.

Playboy: In French Kiss and I Love You to Death he had you doing accents. Recently Brad Pitt was given a rough time by critics for his erratic accent.

Kline: Yeah. Larry persuaded me to play an Italian in I Love You to Death, which turned out to be the most fun ever. I loved being that guy. When he next said a Frenchman, I just laughed. French was my best subject in high school, but I couldn't speak it at all. The traps are immense. The tendency is to do Inspector Clouseau, which is one of my favorite characters Peter Sellers ever created. But I thought it was a splendid opportunity to learn to speak French. The idea of doing several scenes in French with French actors whom I admired tremendously was also exciting.

Playboy: You taught your co-star, Meg Ryan, some French.

Kline: I told her how to thank the French-speaking crew. She thought she was saying, "Thank you very much"--"Merci beaucoup." But she was actually saying, "Merci, beau cul"--"Thank you, nice ass"! Pronunciation is everything.

Playboy: Of the movies you made with Kasdan, the first, The Big Chill, is the best known. That movie has come to represent the best and worst of an entire generation. Was there a sense that you were making a movie that would get such attention?

Kline: There was something that resonated and drew us all to the project. But I assumed that the movie was too thoughtful, too talky, to ever find an audience.

Playboy: Did you relate to your character, the former radical who had sold out and become a suburban husband and father and successful businessman?

Kline: I related more to the characters played by Jeff Goldblum [the gossip magazine reporter] and Tom Berenger [the Magnum-like action-TV star]. They were both very funny and touched something in me. Larry, though, saw something in me and said I would be more challenged playing this straight, mainstream guy, especially after playing Nathan in Sophie's Choice, a character who is way out there. But Glenn Close, who played my wife in The Big Chill, and I complained that we were the happy, well-adjusted, complacent couple surrounded by these wonderful, neurotic, funny nutcases. We felt we were boring and kept asking Larry, "Can't you make us a little neurotic, too?"

Playboy: The couple was so solid that she was willing to let her husband have sex with her good friend, who wanted to get pregnant.

Kline: I remember Glenn and I asking Larry if he thought we could pull that off. I mean, how many wives are really going to tell their husbands to do them a favor by sleeping with another woman? But apparently some women do. I subsequently met a number of people who told me that it happened in their marriage just like it did in the movie. Kasdan is always prophetic. When Grand Canyon came out critics said, "What a bleak and overstated view of the problems between the races in Los Angeles. There's no such division." And then the riots happened, and they were all banging on Larry's door, saying, "Your movie was prophetic. Would you comment?" As it turned out, it wasn't an overstatement at all.

Playboy: Did it surprise you that baby boomers became known as the Big Chill generation?

Kline: I just think Larry and Barbara Benedek, who wrote it with him, tapped into something essential and timely and captured the imagination of that particular generation.

Playboy: Have many of your movies surprised you--art films that became hits, or movies that you thought would be huge but fizzled?

Kline: I loved the idea of doing A Fish Called Wanda, because it would be fun and because it was Monty Python, my idol. But who knew it would be a hit? It shocked us all when it became so popular. On the other hand, I thought Cry Freedom was going to be hugely popular, because I stupidly thought Americans would be eager to know about apartheid. For that one, gratification came years later when I heard from the journalist I played, Donald Woods, that Nelson Mandela loved the movie and said it was very important in spreading the word about apartheid. I think it helped people understand the conditions in South Africa. But it was never the hit I imagined.

Playboy: Can movies such as Cry Freedom help with social and political problems?

Kline: Absolutely. Especially for the adolescent forging an identity for himself, movies can have an enormous influence. I remember latching on to things in movies and deciding either, "That's what I don't want to be" or "That's what I want to be." They changed me. They affect the collective unconscious. At the end of Marat/Sade, the Marquis de Sade says something like, "Our little story has planted seeds in your mind." I don't think we always know which seeds we plant, but movies and plays do plant seeds. Something takes root in our confused, bewildered, unconscious selves that may make us better people.

Playboy: Does that inform the choices you make about which movies and plays you'll do?

Kline: Absolutely. I read a script and can tell by page five if it's a story not worth telling, if it's life negating or spiritually bereft. Or something more.

Playboy: So we won't be seeing you in a slasher movie anytime soon.

Kline: I don't want every movie I make or play I do to be uplifting, necessarily. But I do want to keep my standards as high as I possibly can and still make a decent living.

Playboy: So movies for you aren't just movies.

Kline: Some movies are just movies. But I think music or films or any art that merely celebrates the violent, destructive side of human nature is generally worthless. Why celebrate it?

Playboy: Would you go so far as to censor violent art?

Kline: Censor art? I wish we could censor ourselves! Businessmen making business decisions don't censor themselves. But we're teaching kids to deal with problems in the most base way: "Hey, that's my toy!" You smack 'em. It's much harder to develop a sense of mercy or tolerance or love, joy or beauty. And it's not that I'm against violence per se. Dr. Strangelove is maybe my all-time favorite movie and it ends with Armageddon. You can't get more violent than that. But it leaves a mark. While they're singing that ending song--[Singing] "We'll meet again. Don't know where; don't know when"--there is mushroom cloud after mushroom cloud and a vision is planted: It's so terrifying that the audience will hopefully never again give themselves over to the idea of that violence. It will help ingrain an abhorrence of war and violence. So there is certainly a place for violence and ugliness in all kinds of art. But a steady diet can be bad for us. And here I am sounding priggish and conservative, or maybe I'm too sensitive. One thing I know is that I don't want to see gratuitous violence. At the same time, as I rail against violence in movies, let's not forget that in Silverado I kill a guy over my hat. I'm not Joe Pristine. I've contributed to the violent ethos in our collective unconscious. Yeah, I've done my share.

Playboy: And, as we've discussed, you've eaten a fish.

Kline: That's right! I tortured this poor fellow and ate his fish. I've done my share of disreputable and reprehensible acts.

Playboy: Including portraying a politician in Dave. Playing the president, did you come to feel presidential?

Kline: I started to appreciate what a bad job it is. "Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown." It was one of those, but it goes so much deeper than that.

Playboy: Bush was in office when you made the film. Was your dour, meanspirited president a takeoff on him?

Kline: No. We tried to make my character very different. We wanted him to be sort of an amalgam. He was a miserable guy, sort of dead inside.

Playboy: But comparisons to George Bush were made, and your youthful, idealistic Dave was also compared to Bill Clinton, who was in office when the movie came out.

Kline: That was all pure projection by the audience. But people liked Dave's humanity, and I think they liked Bill Clinton's, too.

Playboy: Has Clinton retained that?

Kline: I think his humanity has prevailed in many ways.

Playboy: Is it true that Warner Bros., the studio behind the movie, wouldn't approve you and wanted director Ivan Reitman to get Kevin Costner, Michael Douglas or Arnold Schwarzenegger to play Dave?

Kline: That sounds true, yeah. Warren Beatty was in there too at one time. Anyone but me, for God's sake. I remember Ivan telling me that he had to explain, respectfully, that Arnold couldn't be president. You have to be a native-born American citizen to be president of the United States. I don't blame them for wanting him, though. They wanted people to come to the movie. And those actors could have been wonderful, though we've all seen what can happen when people are cast because of their star power or box office drawing power and aren't exactly right for the part.

Playboy: After the movie came out, how did you feel when you were asked so much about your politics?

Kline: I didn't like it. I think it's implicit where my sentiments lie. I prefer to leave it at that. It makes me uncomfortable when actors spout politics. I want to listen to experts. I would feel uncomfortable being a spokesperson or poster boy. I want to act. The more one steps out--even gives interviews--the more difficult it is to be seen as the character in the movie or play. I've read reviews in which the writer says, "And then Kevin Kline kisses Tom Selleck." But no, it's not me, it's the character. The public does this, too. "I loved it that Tom Hanks was always talking about chocolates." It's this weird thing we have about movie stars. We see their movies, read about them, see them on talk shows, see the paparazzi shots of them going to the bathroom on a tree in Central Park. At what point do we no longer see Arnold Schwarzenegger as the character he is playing, but as Arnold Schwarzenegger?

Playboy: Do you understand the obsession with celebrities?

Kline: I think it's that everyone feels more and more anonymous. People seem to need to see celebrities become real: "Oh, look, they're alcoholics," or "They're in drug rehab." Or "Oh, look, they're unfaithful to their wives; they're like me." There seems to be a need to feel heroic and grandiose and also to get in touch with our anonymous commonness. Am I right? I don't know. I'm making this up as I go along.

Playboy: One recent survey revealed that people want fame more than anything else.

Kline: And what is fame? Feeling special. Feeling that you, in some way, have done something that has made people notice you. Maybe people aren't feeling noticed enough.

Playboy: Do fans frequently bother you?

Kline: The fact is, I've never had the type of attention that's a problem, not like Sylvester Stallone has, or John Travolta or any of those guys. Where I live in New York City, you're always on the streets: You walk everywhere and encounter people all the time. New York City is anonymous. People just go about their business. God forbid you lock eyes with someone who turns out to have a gun and will shoot you because you looked at him funny. That happened the other day: Some kid shot another kid in school because he looked at him. It's like being in prison. But I'm generally not hassled. Occasionally people come up to me. I was walking through the park and some guy rode by on his bike and yelled, "Hey, Kev!"--very familiar, very American. That's not a bad thing. You feel a little self-conscious, but that familiarity among Americans, which so puts off Europeans, is sweet. Still, I would always want to protect my family from it.

Playboy: You have two young children. Do they understand what you do for a living?

Kline: In a way, though they don't understand certain aspects of it. My son was at camp, where they showed a movie. He came home and told us about it and said it was about Steve in the Army. It was Sgt. Bilko. Steve is Steve Martin, a family friend. He said it sweetly and innocently. I thought, Oh God, when is he going to realize that his fellow campers don't know Steve in quite the same way that he does? God forbid he should think it makes him special in some way. That's the part I worry about.

Playboy: Is it tough to protect the kids when both parents are actors?

Kline: Not the way we live. We have a normal life, if you can call life in New York normal.

Playboy: You worked with your wife in Princess Caraboo. Do you enjoy working together?

Kline: It was wonderful. We also did Much Ado About Nothing onstage, as well as a thing on Sesame Street.

Playboy: How did you meet?

Kline: The first time was reading The Big Chill. Larry got a bunch of New York actors together to read through the script. Phoebe read the part Meg Tilly ended up playing.

Playboy: Did you ask her out?

Kline: Not until years later. Phoebe was rehearsing a Russian play, Nest of the Woodground, that Joe Papp was directing at the Public Theater. I was rehearsing Henry V upstairs. Our paths crossed several times. I finally asked her out.

Playboy: Relationships in your business are notoriously tough. Is it easier because you aren't in Hollywood?

Kline: I don't think it's geographic. I think we're both sensible and we don't separate for long periods of time. We take care of the marriage. I guess it's a sense of prioritizing. The family is not secondary. Career decisions are made with the family's best interest in mind. The last two movies I made were shot around the city. I came home every night.

Playboy: How do you divide your job as parents?

Kline: At the moment Phoebe is very happy being a mom and letting me do the play. We have agreed to alternate so that we're never working at the same time. As it has turned out, whenever it's been her slot to work, Phoebe has chosen to stay with the children. She feels it's the right thing to do, and I love her dearly for it. She says, "Our children are only going to be young once." Anyway, Phoebe is going to look 20 for another 30 years. She made some kind of pact with the devil or something. She could still play Nina in The Seagull ten years from now, though she has put acting on hold. If something absolutely irresistible came along and it was shooting in the summer and the kids weren't in school, she might consider it. Short of that, she's doing the hard work.

Playboy: Have you ever been tempted by the Hollywood lifestyle?

Kline: We would never leave New York. The theater is here and so is Phoebe's (concluded on page 159)Kevin Kline(continued from page 66) family. I've been told there are certain advantages to being in Hollywood, but they are far outweighed by the advantages of staying here. The theater is enough of a reason.

Playboy: Are you worried about the future of serious theater at a time when public funding is threatened?

Kline: The one time I've taken a political stand is when the NEA was being threatened. I went with Joseph Papp to Washington and met with congressmen and senators to talk about about it. The fact is, the amount of money in that budget is a drop in a bucket. I find it appalling that the men who govern the country think the arts are superfluous. They are a crucial part of our existence. No, we don't need the arts to survive, at least on a superficial level. They're extraneous. But on a spiritual level, you had better have art to counterbalance the madness of our technological, industrial, urban lives. You'd better have a concomitant agenda of art as psychic, spiritual medicine, as preventive medicine, for healing.

Playboy: How do you respond when people say that the arts should pay for themselves?

Kline: Fine, if you want a steady diet of lowest common denominator, easily accessible, stereotypical television and film. That's what you'll get. There's certainly a hunger for it. Everybody wants their viscera jump-started, and to be entertained in some way, so they can feel something, anything, because so much of our society mitigates feeling. Life is often a numbing process. We become numb to protect ourselves. We have learned to shut down to survive. We're bombarded with indiscriminate information and end up shutting off, emotionally and spiritually. We're just closing doors to keep sane. But those doors should remain open. Pretty soon the only thing that will be defined as art is that which makes you feel something.

It's not that all art has to be sophisticated and cerebral. I have contributed in my own small way to mindless entertainment. But there are subtler, more refined planes of feeling and thought that are not addressed by most of the mainstream. Art doesn't have to have profound intellectual content. It can contain an idea that challenges you, provokes you, subverts you--somehow makes you face the human condition. It keeps us in contact with our humanity. You need art to bring you face-to-face with what's beautiful, enduring, profound, even confusing.

I know I'm sounding awfully serious, but I can again blame Chekhov. I'm playing a character who is cursed with taking himself too seriously, who is ultimately driven to madness because of it. This would be a different interview if I were in the middle of In and Out, say. But it's important to remember that there is another side to the bleakness in Chekhov, or any other great art. There's hopefulness. Nabokov, in one of his lectures, said that even though Chekhov wrote about sad, tormented people, he was not a negative or gloomy person. In the people he created, there's always a sense of what they could be. There's tremendous yearning for a lost idealism, lost youth, a lost sense of beauty and love. He always has people caught in terrible situations, but there is something life affirming. And in the end, great art reminds us of what life really is--and what it can be.

I hate to give away the craft, but I parked those little rubber fish in the corner of my mouth.

Everybody wants their viscera jump-started so they can feel something. Life is often a numbing process.