‘Casper’ Helps Actor Make Real-Life Gains
Playing second fiddle to a baby-faced digital effect isn’t exactly every actor’s dream assignment. But for Bill Pullman, portraying Dr. James Harvey in “Casper” was one more opportunity to extend the distance between himself and the runners-up who until recently dominated his resume.
Viewers may remember him as the character who lost Jodie Foster to Richard Gere in “Sommersby,” Meg Ryan to Tom Hanks in “Sleepless in Seattle” and Nicole Kidman to Alec Baldwin in “Malice.” Other recent movies include “League of Their Own” (he got left behind by Geena Davis) and “Wyatt Earp” (he got shot).
Pullman, of course, broke the mold earlier this spring when he finally got the girl, Sandra Bullock, in this spring’s sleeper romantic comedy hit “While You Were Sleeping.”
Under Pullman’s guidance, the filmmakers changed his character from the sort of resentful homebody he had so often portrayed in the past to a witty guy dedicated to his family.
As handsome single father Harvey in “Casper,” Pullman, 41, shows off several new facets of his leading man potential as he provides “therapy” to a mansionful of wayward poltergeists while caring for teenage daughter Kat (Christina Ricci from “The Addams Family”) and attempting to please his evil employer Carrigan Crittenden (Cathy Moriarty).
“It was a great opportunity to do something that meant something to my kids,” says Pullman, the father of three. “It was the first experience they got to know what I did. I brought them to the set and told them what I did every day.”
Since much of what was required of Pullman consisted of “acting to thin air,” which would later be filled in by the special effects gurus of Industrial Light & Magic, his children may have a somewhat stilted notion of what their daddy does for a living.
“Performing in front of a blue screen technically was like doing scales on a piano,” he says. “But it was great to do physical comedy, sword fighting on a grand staircase, dancing, singing.”
A resident of Los Angeles, Pullman, who drives a Chevy pickup truck and favors jeans, denim shirts and cowboy boots, lives his life far out of the Hollywood mainstream.
After receiving his master’s degree in theater directing, Pullman, the son of a doctor and a nurse, headed west from upstate New York to accept a $13,000-a-year teaching job at the University of Montana. At the time, “it seemed like a fortune” says the actor, who now makes in excess of $1 million a movie.
At the age of 29, he quit his post to pursue an acting career in New York, and first won acclaim starring with Kathy Bates in an off-Broadway revival of Sam Shepard’s “The Curse of the Starving Class.” In 1985 he moved to Los Angeles to pursue a film career.
His first movie role was playing the lover of Danny Devito’s mistress in the comedy “Ruthless People.”
Among his university students was a young Montana native named John Dahl. Dahl, now a director, kept track of Pullman’s career and cast him against type as the cocainestealing medical intern in last year’s film noir thriller “The Last Seduction,” a role which would become a major turning point for Pullman.
“When I read a script I can never think of who to cast,” says Dahl. “In the case of ‘The Last Seduction,’ I knew Bill could bring across an edginess, a grittiness, and be hilarious. I knew he had the ability to ooze smarminess and the audience would laugh with him.”
Indeed, Pullman says he’s put behind him all those thankless roles where he was dumped or abandoned. In his next film, in the romantic comedy “Mr. Wrong” opposite television comedienne Ellen Degeneres, Pullman plays a guy who everybody thinks is Mr. Right only to discover something quite different.
“It’s sort of the revenge of all those Mr. Wrong characters I had to play,” he smiles mischievously. “This time I really get to triumph.”