NOW that Adam Baldwin has figured out how to make it look easy - this surly,
deadpan, tough-guy thing he does every Monday night on NBC as the
monosyllabic secret-agent sidekick on the action-comedy series "Chuck" - he
doesn't mind admitting how hard it used to be.
He was 18 when he got his first taste of movie-star limelight as the title
character in the 1980 film, "My Bodyguard," then roles in summer comedies
like "D.C. Cab" in 1983 and smaller parts in prestige films like "Ordinary
People" despite not having a clue about what he was doing.
"I was horrible," he said of some of his early performances, particularly
the one in "D.C. Cab" (in which his co-stars included Bill Maher, Gary Busey
and Mr. T). "I didn't know how to work. I didn't know how to process a
character, and, certainly, I wasn't as funny as I should have been.
"But I did learn a lot of technical stuff, how to be on a set, where to
stand, how to do a fight scene, things like that," he said during a recent
interview in a high-end Santa Monica coffee shop, one of those mad-scientist
places where they grind the coffee in front of you and serve it in
vacuum-sealed flasks on a silver tray. "But then I had to learn how to act.
And that just takes some people longer than others. I'm no Leonardo
DiCaprio."
He can say this now that he's 46, aware of his limitations, proud of the
niche he has found. In "Chuck" he plays no-nonsense secret agent John Casey,
protecting loose-limbed amateur Chuck Bartkowski (played by Zachary Levi), a
computer nerd who has accidentally had the contents of a super-secret
government computer downloaded into his brain. But even before "Chuck," Mr.
Baldwin had received sterling reviews and a growing cult following for
playing similarly grumpy characters on "The X-Files" and "Firefly."
"The guy does more with a grunt than most actors could do with a monologue,"
said Josh Schwartz, the executive producer of "Chuck." The extent of Mr.
Baldwin's built-in fan base became apparent to Mr. Schwartz only when the
"Chuck" cast appeared at last summer's Comic-Con International, and "4,000
people went insane whenever Adam said anything."
Mr. Schwartz said it was the creator and co-executive producer Chris Fedak's
idea to cast Mr. Baldwin as Casey, an idea he embraced as soon as Mr.
Baldwin read for the part. "You totally believe him as this N.S.A. agent who's
happy to torture and kill people, but he's also really, really funny," Mr.
Schwartz said. "He gets the comedy without ever breaking character. And his
preparation is astounding. Adam really relishes all these details: How does
Casey sharpen his knife and fork before he eats? He's worked all that stuff
out."
Mr. Baldwin said, "I came up with the idea that Casey has a bonsai tree, and
I brought in the Reagan photo that's in his room." He added, "I try to make
sure the military vernacular is as accurate as possible. For the comedy to
work, you've got to buy that Casey is a serious guy who's somewhat
incredulous about this geek being inserted into his life."
After last year's debut season ended abruptly because of the writers'
strike, "Chuck" struggled to find an audience until just before its holiday
hiatus in mid-December, when critics, particularly online, started noticing
that the show's ratings had improved 12 percent from the season premiere.
NBC is bringing the show back with a hefty marketing push, including a 3-D
commercial during Sunday night's Super Bowl telecast and a 3-D episode on
Monday night.
"I think the network is clearly showing they believe in us," Mr. Baldwin
said. "And I think we've found the base line of an audience that's not going
to go anywhere."
Mr. Baldwin, 6 foot 4 and broad shouldered, was already an imposing presence
as a 17-year-old high school student in the northern Chicago suburb of
Winnetka - big and quietly menacing, exactly what the director Tony Bill
sought for the part of a sullen bully who becomes the protector of a smaller
kid in "My Bodyguard."
"Tony would say to me, 'Just keep your face in repose,' " Mr. Baldwin said.
"And I would go: 'Repose? What's repose?' And he said: 'It just means be
relaxed. Don't move.' It was great advice, and it's what I've been trying to
grasp ever since. Stillness as a technique is still really captivating to
me."
After "My Bodyguard" became a hit, Mr. Baldwin moved to New York, fielded
offers from agents and managers who were promising to make him the next big
thing. He said he took some parts he probably shouldn't have taken. He went
to London in 1985 for a significant role in Stanley Kubrick's "Full Metal
Jacket." But the production went on for months, and the film didn't come out
until 1987. By then Mr. Baldwin's moment seemed to have passed.
"I was given opportunities, I think, that were a little too big when I was a
little too young," he said. "I didn't measure up. The sports analogy would
be if you pulled a guy off the farm team and put him in the big leagues a
little too soon. That's a good way to ruin your arm. Fortunately my injuries
weren't career threatening. They were just emotionally draining."
He worked steadily through the 1980s and '90s, bad-guy parts in B movies
(including the long-forgotten "Digital Man" and "Cold Sweat"), lots of
voice-over work, doing what he had to do to pay the bills. He got married,
had kids, played golf, built himself a decent working actor's career. But it
wasn't glamorous, and it wasn't always fun.
"I think work begets work," he said. "I did some things that were certainly
labors of love and hard-won parts, but there were others that were just
straight-up exploitation movies and terrible to watch and don't hold up at
all. But they do pay the bills."
All along, Mr. Baldwin said, he felt that his career would pick up when he
got older, when he could inhabit more nuanced character roles, to be
something more than just big and scary. He was 39 when he got the "X-Files"
role, Knowle Rohrer. And he was 40 when he became Jayne Cobb on
"Firefly," a role for which TV Guide named him its Sexiest Newcomer of 2002.
"That was hilarious," he said. "It just seemed like a mistake, an obvious
mistake."
Now because of his "Chuck" fame, people no longer assume that he's one of
those other Baldwins (he's not) or that he's as grumpy as his characters. He
envisions a future filled with playing strong, silent types, guys with
enough experience to know how the world works, when to take it seriously and
when to go with the joke.
"I always did think that when I turned 40, I'd start coming into my own," he
said. "Part of that is just growing and living, suffering and failing and
going through the trials of life, having a wife and kids. It humbles you,
and going through that humbling process lets you release that
self-centeredness, and it's a very liberating feeling. It lets you stop
worrying. I'm enjoying that."
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