Think of actors and causes and one of the first names that come to mind is Ed Asner.
But his many liberal-leaning interests weren`t the reason Asner took the part of Boston police superintendent Jake Qunn in ”Good Cops, Bad Cops”
(formerly ”Cops and Robbers”), an NBC movie airing at 8 p.m. Sunday on WMAQ-Ch. 5.
”This was simply a great script,” says Asner, 60. ”It takes on the aura of a chess game between two fairly good masters.”
Asner`s police chief sets out solve a huge bank robbery masterminded by a police captain he knows well.
”It`s like every show I`ve done,” Asner says. ”I took it because it was good. I`ve never taken a show primarily for the cause it repesented. I act primarily to enjoy the action and only secondarily to make a point. Some of the finest `Mary Tyler Moore` shows had no outside cause at all but had wonderful interaction between characters.
”But if you wanted a cause, a good one would be eradication of police corruption, and that`s what this is about. I`m a clean cop massing clean forces to fight dirty cops.”
But Asner clearly doesn`t shy away from controversial causes, either, no matter what the consequences for his career. There was a time when he didn`t speak out, he says, but that was long ago.
”All those early years as an actor during the years of (Sen. Joseph)
McCarthy and the blacklist, I kept my mouth shut,” he says ruefully. ”When you do that long enough, you get tired of it. You either begin to speak out or you regard yourself as a coward.
”I thought I`d wait until I was safe, well enough established as an actor that I couldn`t be hurt. But I found out you`re never safe.”
The first consequence of Asner`s activism in causes like medical relief for Salvadoran rebels was the abrupt cancellation of his hit TV series ”Lou Grant” on CBS in the early 1980s.
”The cancellation had to be because of my activism,” he says. ”No one thought the show was in any danger. It only happened after the hullabaloo started when I went to Washington to announce formation of the medical aid group.”
Other acting jobs began to dry up.
”I know of at least three movies and TV shows I didn`t get, strictly because of my activism,” he says. ”Sometimes people don`t even consciously know why they`re doing it. They may say, `He`s too fat or too old or too bald,` but those are often just excuses for what one producer came out and said: `He`d be a political liability.` ”
Yet Asner says he needs to keep acting, not just because acting is his muse but because his residual payments from reruns of ”The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and ”Lou Grant” don`t amount to much.
But no threats of losing work will keep Asner from his causes.
”I was always worried about the effects of activism on my career,” he says. ”And I was told being president of the (actors) union sure as hell didn`t help your career if you weren`t a right-winger like Charlton Heston. But after a while I couldn`t keep quiet anymore.”
Don`t expect Asner to keep quiet even if it harms the careers of his kids-son Matthew, 27, an aspiring actor, and daughter Kate, who is about to graduate in theater arts from Loyola Marymount University.
”I know my name and reputation has hurt Matthew,” Asner says. ”I would have preferred they not go into acting, but they love it. It`s a great profession, but it can take a while to find out if you`re going to make it.” Even then, as Asner has discovered, you`re not entirely safe.
