Just before the Bears pummeled the Patriots in Super Bowl XX, Mike Ditka neatly divided the National Football League (and, by extension, the cosmos) into two camps: the Smiths, as represented by such efficient corporate entities as the Cowboys and 49ers, and the Grabowskis, teams that wore their blue collars like crowns.
In the movie industry, there are 10,000 Smiths for every one true Grabowski.
Thus it is refreshing to meet someone as unpretentious and hard-working as John C. Reilly. A Grabowski from Marquette Park (on Chicago’s “rough Southwest Side,” according to his publicity profile), the rugged 34-year-old character actor, who is just wrapping up production on “The Perfect Storm,” looks as if he would be a welcome addition to any Ditka team.
And, when it comes to putting on airs . . . forget about it.
“If I ever get caught up out here with the whole sunglasses-and-convertible crowd, I go back to Chicago and quickly am reminded of my roots, ’cause my family doesn’t give a crap about Hollywood . . . they don’t even talk about it,” says Reilly, who plays a doomed fisherman in Wolfgang Petersen’s adaptation of the best-selling story of the last voyage of the Andrea Gail. “They might ask what I’m working on. If I say `Perfect Storm,’ with George Clooney, they’ll say, `Oh, yeah, isn’t he the guy from “ER”?’
“They’re not starstruck. I’m just John-John, their crazy younger brother.”
Reilly plays a lovesick cop in Paul Thomas Anderson’s critically acclaimed ensemble drama, “Magnolia,” and very nearly steals the show from Tom Cruise and Julianne Moore.
Upon being introduced to the tall, muscular Reilly, it would be easy to assume that Reilly might have been a sports star at his alma mater, Brother Rice. Too easy, as it turns out.
“I was too busy doing plays to participate in sports,” he says. “I started when I was 8 at the Marquette Park Playhouse. Later, I would act in plays at several different high schools in the area, especially the all-girl schools that needed male actors.
“Last year at this time, I was producing a play in L.A. and shooting, `For Love of the Game’ at the same time. I said to my wife, `God, I haven’t been this busy since high school.’ “
Reilly’s wife, producer Alison Dickey, considered this statement to be unnecessarily hyperbolic, but, “For me, it was a reality, because I would be doing three plays at a time and going to high school. I would be on the bus, going back and forth . . . and there would be a lot of musicals.”
Reilly attended the Goodman School of Drama and DePaul, and from there began acting professionally at Steppenwolf and the Organic Theater.
In 1988, a videotape of his work found its way to Brian De Palma, who was looking for actors for his Vietnam War drama, “Casualties of War.”
“I sent it out and didn’t hear anything for about a month,” said Reilly. “All of a sudden, I got a call telling me I had to fly to Thailand. I was supposed to play a guy who gets his arm blown off in the first 10 minutes, but Brian liked what I was doing in rehearsal and I ended up getting one of the leads.”
“Casualties of War” not only would be his debut film but also an excuse for his first plane ride and first trip outside the Midwest.
After his arrival in Phuket, he was whisked by limousine to the set of the makeshift combat zone.
“I went straight to hair and makeup, and, then, onto the set,” he said, with an easy laugh. “And, I had never been on film before.”
“State of Grace” and “We’re No Angels” would soon follow, then a stop on Broadway with his old friends from Steppenwolf, who were turning heads with their production of “The Grapes of Wrath.” Between then and now, Reilly would pad his resume with roles in such high-profile projects as “Days of Thunder,” “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?,” “The River Wild,” “Dolores Claiborne,” “Georgia,” “The Thin Red Line” and Anderson’s eyebrow-raising daily double “Hard Eight” and “Boogie Nights.”
Not surprisingly, Reilly generally represents such salt-of-the-earth types as cops, gamblers, mechanics, drummers, catchers, soldiers and cashiers — not to mention the occasional doped-out porn star. Anonymity tends to go with the territory when it comes to being a character actor, but Reilly’s finally getting respect.
In recent months, Esquire has dubbed him a “Hollywood chameleon (who) will be whomever you want him to be if the script looks good and the numbers add up.” The L.A. Weekly calls him “one of the great secrets of American film,” while Variety suggests he’s “emerging as the perfect guy to play a male buddy.”
“If there’s any through-line when it comes to the characters I play, it’s that they’re really committed to their dreams,” Reilly says. “They’re unshakable in their belief in whatever it is that is guiding their lives–whether it’s an aspiration to become a fast-food clerk, like in `Gilbert Grape,’ or devotion to a friend, as in `Boogie Nights’–whatever it is, there’s kind of a guileless devotion to their dreams.”
In “Magnolia,” Anderson gives his pal a chance to break through one of the most formidable barriers facing a character actor: a love scene that doesn’t end in total despair or humiliation. His compassionate LAPD officer, Jim Kurring, is allowed to fall in love with and offer the possibility of redemption to a lovely blond cocaine addict he meets on a call.
The subplot that involves Kurring and the emotionally scarred Claudia Wilson Gator (Melora Walters) evolved from a game Reilly and Anderson devised to kill time between the release of “Hard Eight” and start of production on “Boogie Nights.”
“We were just going stir crazy,” Reilly recalls. “Paul would turn on a video camera and encourage me to start going off and improvising on one crazy character or another. We were obsessed with `Cops,’ and, one day, he called me and told me to come over and do a version of the show.
“He said, `I got a LAPD costume and everything, just come over.’ So, we started driving around, and I started ruminating a la `Cops,’ where the officers do these monologues while looking in a mirror and they’re all full of themselves.”
The actor says he likes working with Anderson because he “knows my strengths — almost better than I do — and let’s me go crazy.”
Moreover, Reilly adds, “Paul’s very disciplined about getting the right performances and nuances from his actors. There’s no hiding from Paul, no slacking off.
“He’s such a great member of the audience, sitting right there by the camera, constantly watching what you’re doing. He’s not distracted by the technical aspects . . . he focuses on the acting.”
After making another run through the makeup trailer, Reilly dons his wetsuit for a long afternoon of work inside the ill-fated fishing vessel in “The Perfect Storm.” He and several other Gloucester fishermen will drown for the cameras in a 1.4-million-gallon tank dug out of the floor in Warner Bros.’ cavernous Stage 16.
“I have a brother-in-law who’s a commercial fisherman in Key Largo, and my dad was a dedicated fisherman,” said Reilly. “So, once again, I’m just invoking the spirit of these people, and, in this case, telling a true story. These guys literally gave their lives to this lifestyle.”
This spring, Reilly will join Hoffman on Broadway for a production of Sam Shepard’s “True West” at Circle in the Square Theater. He also will be seen on screen in “The Settlement,” in which he plays an insurance agent caught up in a scheme that involves making early payoffs to terminally ill clients.
Even though his star clearly is on the rise, Reilly isn’t likely to steal any leading-man parts from Pitt or Cruise. And, after 10 years of making movies, he still finds it hard to call Hollywood home.
“This is a confusing place to live,” he says. “It’s consumed with the cult of celebrity, which tends to shake your moral foundations. I try to live in a neighborhood that’s not too caught up in the business, and I don’t really hang out with entertainment industry people.”
If Reilly is destined to remain a Grabowski in a colony of Smiths, at least audiences can appreciate the fact that he isn’t faking it.
“For a lot of people who go see movies, that’s the truth for them . . . and I respect that and cherish it,” he says. “I try to mix it up as much as I can. I think that almost everyone has a good core in them somewhere, even the people you find difficult to get along with.
“If you spend enough time with them, you’ll find a side of them you can feel for. I always end up finding that side of the characters I play — even, as in `River Wild,’ they’re a kidnapper, or coke-addict porn actor in `Boogie Nights.’ Every one has dreams.”
