As Leroy Brown, ”the baddest dude in the neighborhood,” Charles Dutton virtually steals all his very funny scenes in ”Crocodile Dundee II” with his exaggerated street shuffle and antiquated street lingo (”You dig?” he keeps demanding).
The joke in the film is that far from being a shady villain, Dutton`s character actually is a pencil salesman who has a heart of gold and a bad reputation to maintain on the streets.
Truth being stranger than fiction, it is only appropriate that this award-winning Shakespearean actor was once a street hoodlum who served time before discovering theater.
”I`m not saying I based the character on anyone in particular, but I knew guys who walked and talked like Leroy back in the `60s,” said the actor, 37, who grew up on the mean streets of Baltimore and began a life of crime at an early age.
”Mine was a tough neighborhood to grow up in, and I saw people murdered and stabbed in street fights and outside bars (beginning) when I was a kid,” recalled Dutton, who ended up in reform school after robbing local stores.
By his late teens Dutton had graduated to state prison and was serving eight years ”for a mixture of charges, mainly assault with a deadly weapon and armed robbery.”
Life inside turned out to be even more violent than life on the streets, and while serving his first sentence, he was slapped with an additional eight years for assaulting a guard.
”The pattern of my life was already set,” Dutton said, ”and I would have spent the rest of it in and out of prison, if I had even survived, except for two events that totally changed it.
”First, I got stabbed in the neck by another inmate using a homemade ice pick, and I was lucky to live.
”Second, while lying in the hospital recovering from the wound, I realized that I was at a crossroads in my life and that if I didn`t extricate myself from that vicious circle of violence, I might as well be dead.”
Dutton never blamed society for his troubles:
”I always knew the consequences of my actions, and though I was part of that whole scene and hung out with guys who had prehistoric mentalities, I knew I was capable of something better.”
Instead of succumbing to self-pity or anger, Dutton began to read voraciously.
”It opened a whole new world to me, and what really touched me deep down inside was Shakespeare, unlikely as it sounds. I struggled through `King Lear` and then `Hamlet,` and although most of it was then still a mystery to me, I couldn`t get it out of my head.”
Inspired by his new horizons, Dutton ”stopped living day to day, a very dangerous thing in prison,” and instead put his energies into forming a drama group with other inmates.
”It was like a real-life `Weeds` situation,” he said, refering to the 1987 film about a convict who produces a play behind bars, ”and once a week we would meet for readings, and then stage productions.”
On his release in 1976, Dutton pursued his newfound dream and in 1980 was accepted at the Yale School of Drama.
”I was the only one of the (prison) group who managed successfully to stay out of trouble,” he said somewhat sadly. ”All the others ended up getting killed or back inside.”
Surprising everyone, including himself, the late-blooming actor completed his studies with honors and landed his first professional job in 1983 in the August Wilson play, ”Ma Rainey`s Black Bottom.”
Dutton went on to originate lead roles in two other Wilson dramas, ”The Piano Lesson” and ”Joe Turner`s Come and Gone,” while his performance in the Broadway production of ”Ma Rainey`s Black Bottom” won him a Tony nomination and a Theater World Award.
”Since then I`ve also done quite a bit of TV work in series such as `The Equalizer` and `Miami Vice,` ” he said, ”but doing `Croc II` was my first major feature, apart from a bit part playing a cop opposite Richard Gere in
`No Mercy.`
”It`s also my first comic role; normally they cast me with a knife or a gun,” he said, grinning. ”But when I auditioned, I played up the humor of this guy who`s trying to present a real tough facade, and Paul (Hogan, aka Crocodile Dundee) told me I was the only man for the job. Given my past, I suppose it`s pretty ironic casting.”
Since his star-turn in ”Croc II”-”it was as much fun to shoot as it looks”-Dutton is much in demand these days. But he is only slowly becoming acclimated to big-screen success.
”The other week I stepped out of this limo and walked up this huge red carpet for the premiere, and all I could think was, `It`s amazing that a mere 12 years ago I was just getting out of jail, and look at me now.`
”Not bad for an ex-con, huh?”
