NEW YORK — Throughout his career, Ned Beatty has made a name for himself as one of the pre-eminent character actors in Hollywood, embracing secondary roles and making them memorable.
Now at 66, Beatty is center stage on Broadway playing the most dynamic role in one of the greatest American plays — Big Daddy in Tennessee Williams' "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof." And he couldn't be happier to soak up the spotlight and bask in the words of one of theater's most celebrated writers.
"I think he's the greatest American playwright," he said before a recent evening performance. "But I consider myself a Southerner, and for Southerners there is no comparison. It is language that is more florid, more musical and much more entertaining."
Beatty was holding court in the elegant lower lobby of the historic Music Box Theatre.
Brimming with stories and observations, he covered topics ranging from London audiences to the regional beginnings of his theater career when he was touring south of the Mason-Dixon line.
"We used to go out with a farm truck and two automobiles and that was our whole tour," he said. "And we did everything. We got to the place, pulled the stuff off the truck, put the set up, put the lights up."
Born in Louisville, Ky., Beatty's first professional acting came in 1957 with the Barter Theater in Abingdon, Va. The company would hit the road from time to time, playing makeshift venues around the state and surrounding region.
"That was the greatest place in the world to learn what it feels like to fill a theater," he said.
It also was the place where Beatty first became familiar with the role he would return to 45 years later — the Mississippi plantation owner, self-made magnate and family patriarch, Big Daddy.
"I'm not quite sure how I got the role. There were older men in the company." Beatty qualified his humble assessment with a bit of self-affirmation. "But I was pretty good," he said. "I mean I was 21 years old, but I knew what it was about somehow or another. I just knew what was going on."
The actor is also not sure how he came to be cast most recently in the 1955 Pulitzer-Prize winning play. When his agent called and said the producers wanted him for the part, he replied, "Why? Are they all right?"
Beatty's name was thrown into the hat when the show's casting director sent a tape of his appearance on television's "Inside the Actors Studio" to director Anthony Page and producer Bill Kenwright. Page, a Tony-Award winner for "A Doll's House," was intrigued.
"I hadn't realized how much stage work he had done," Page said. "Until 'Deliverance,' he was virtually a stage actor."
After working with the Arena Stage Company in Washington, D.C., from 1963 to 1971, Beatty made his film debut in the 1972 John Boorman thriller about four friends whose weekend canoe trip turns violent as they tangle with locals. After his critically acclaimed performance as a man who is sexually assaulted, Beatty concentrated his career on film.
"Of course, I knew his film work very well," Page said. "I thought he had this wonderful down-to-earth, direct quality. Very unpretentious. Very street-wise."
The current Broadway production began in London with Brendan Fraser as Brick and Frances O'Connor as Maggie. For the transfer to New York, the producers brought in Jason Patric and Ashley Judd. Beatty, who earned an Olivier Award nomination for his London performance, said the nuances of the play's Southern dialect were not lost on British audiences more accustomed to the Queen's English.
"The English are very good about Southern," he said, also complimenting British actors' ability to do foreign accents. "They are very aware of language, and they are very aware of how anyone uses it. They can't help themselves. They tend to judge you on how you sound. But they listen very carefully."
In developing the way he would speak as Big Daddy, Beatty said he didn't limit his treatment to his character's specific geography.
"Southern accents are really complicated," he said, his face tightening, revealing the familiar furrowed brow; only faint hints of his reddish brown hair remain. "There are so many different sounds in the South. But you know I don't think of the dialects as regional. I think of them as being more about economics or association."
To his illustrate his point, Beatty demonstrated one Southern accent he refers to as "church people." Lowering his tone to a hushed whisper, he said, "It's the way people who go to church talk," speaking in a soft, measured cadence that tailed off with each phrase. "And it doesn't make any difference where you go in the South," he continued in the same voice, "you'll hear church people talk.
"Big Daddy is what in the South we would call a redneck or a cracker. He's from the low level of white society. I thought more in terms of where he was from, than the area he was from."
Against the silken upholstery of a stately chair, Beatty is a study in contrasts, wearing loose-fitting blue jeans and suspenders. Like the character he plays, his clothes and demeanor are definitely no-nonsense.
The actor has four children from his first marriage, two from his second and two from his third. He and his fourth wife now share a home nestled within a national forest in California's Sierra Nevada mountains.
"We can own the land because somebody homesteaded it in the 1890s," he said. "It's really kind of wonderful — right out the back of the house the forest begins."
Beatty's lengthy list of film credits include an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actor in the 1976 film "Network," and roles in "All the President's Men," "The Big Easy" and the first two Superman movies. His TV career has been just as prolific, including a recent three-season run on the series "Homicide."
The thought of how regular his work has been over the years makes Beatty nearly incredulous. His thick jowls stretched back into a smile when he explained a system he once employed with Charles Durning (another one-time Big Daddy on Broadway). The men shared an agent who would shuffle projects back and forth between them if one was unavailable. "Ed Asner, too — same agent," he added. "But you know Ed was always tied up with television."
The consummate character actor still likes to keep busy, but he's more selective these days about what work he accepts.
"There's not a whole lot anymore that I get really excited about doing," he said. "A lot of television comes along and I'm really not interested. I always had trouble doing serious television of any kind because you have to remember that you're selling soap. It gets to be about marketing and market research."
Beatty doesn't have any regrets about not doing more stage work. "I never had that feeling that I had left something undone," he said, "I mean I did a lot of theater. There were quite a few years there when I was in 12, 13, 14 plays in one year."
For now, he's just relishing in the chance to play the role of a lifetime.
"I get off on the fact that I get to make some noise," he said, only half joking.
"But it's really about Tennessee Williams and the language," he went on. "It tends to sing — there's music there. And I love it when I do it correctly."