Stephen Root's a real character (actor)

The busy actor is the principal in Drillbit Taylor, a sports writer in Leatherheads and a bipolar Vietnam vet in Boston Legal.

BY LUAINE LEE

McClatchy-Tribune News Service

Actor Stephen Root insists he doesn't want to be a movie star. ''Unequivocally, God, no!'' he says over a plate of pasta.

``First of all I know a lot of movie stars, and I'm not a go-out-and-party kind of guy . . . I'm a very Midwest kid and excess makes me uncomfortable. I have no desire for that at all and I've seen the worst of it . . . I'm happy where I am flying underneath the radar.''

That radar seems to be closing in as Root is costarring in almost every venue this spring.

Right now he's the high school principal in Drillbit Taylor, and he plays a drunken sidekick sports writer in Leatherheads with George Clooney. He's a bipolar Vietnam vet on an April 6 episode of ABC's Boston Legal and has recently signed with AT&T for a series of five commercials (he plays a skuzzy guy reading fairy tales to kids).

As a successful character actor, Root also voices Bill, Hank's neighbor in King of the Hill, has made three movies with the Coen Brothers and played the station owner for five years on News Radio.

In spite of all that Root, 56, may be best known as the frenetic geek with a fetish for his stapler from Mike Judge's Office Space.

He chuckles when you bring that up. ''Office Space really changed my career,'' he says. ``For me I feel it was a chance to do theater on film because you got to be very small but very big at the same time.

''I'd been working with Mike on King of the Hill for three or four years by then. He invited a bunch of his friends and we read it for Fox. It was great fun and a little movie that turned into a cult thing because it reached people who worked in that venue. I'm recognized for that more than anything. Though everybody I know does a better imitation of me than me,'' he says with a laugh.

Root's roots didn't bode well for acting. His dad was in construction. ''I had to move every year or two years of my life during my schooling,'' he recalls.

``I don't have any friends from then. I moved all over the Midwest because the steam plant would be built in two years. I think that affected me, having to meet new people all the time. I didn't know I was adapting. I was just following my parents around.

``I got shy. I had to meet new people. I went two years of high school and had to be pulled out and finish high school at another school -- awful. That turned me inward.''

Still, he was able to manipulate that experience into a positive.

'I think that prepared me to go out to 1,000 auditions and hear, `No. No. No. Come back. Come back. Come back,' and not worry about it,'' he says. ``I thought if I just worked hard I could get a job.''

He did. When he auditioned in Florida for a Shakespeare touring company and didn't hear back, he jumped in his '65 Falcon and drove to New York to audition a second time. That won him a position with the troupe, which led to off-Broadway, Broadway and eventually on tour with Julie Harris in Driving Miss Daisy.

''The most difficult time was the mid-'80s when you are waiting tables half the time and doing shows for not much money -- that's when you have to stick it out,'' he says, shaking his head.

``If you were a day manager at a Denny's you'd have a steady job but you wouldn't be doing what you want to do. So that was tough. I was day managing a restaurant in New York and said, `I've got to quit because I haven't had an acting job in four months, this seems easy to me, and if I don't have to go get an acting job, I might quit.'

``I knew I'd gotten too comfortable. I wasn't working hard enough. So I rededicated myself and from then on didn't have to wait tables anymore because I got some acting jobs.'

When Driving Miss Daisy hit Los Angeles, all the casting directors showed up. 'All I said, `Now! Move now. They've seen your work.' And I started working immediately. I rented a house, had a 1-year-old son and auditioned for a lot of TV. I didn't tell anybody that I hadn't done TV.''

It didn't matter because his first job on television was the popular sitcom Roseanne. Root played a lawyer who was afraid to go to court. ``Then I did an L.A. Law and then everything . . . I did Night Court,Roseanne -- you name them, I did them.''

Root is divorced and his son is now a 19-year-old who's studying to be a musician. Root's sweetheart of six years is actress Romy Rosemont. ''We're both character actors,'' he says. ``Our common ground is we know a lot of the same people and she's introduced me to a wider group of people I probably wouldn't have known.''

He might marry again, he confesses. ``I thought I would never do that again but I can't imagine anybody else putting up with me.''

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