'Best Man' for the Job
Chris Noth brings some
serious charm to Broadway

By SHERRYL CONNELLY
Daily News Feature Writer

Go to New York Daily News Page to view original article.

Next month, Chris Noth will take the stage of the Victory Theater as a character who's clad in arrogance and ambition, never mind a well-tailored suit. At one point, he'll put this character's mindset into words, saying, "I know how to maneuver, I know how to win."

Yes, "Mr. Big" is going to Broadway, but in a whole new guise.

Sarah Jessica Parker with the elusive 'Mr. Big.'

Noth, who has been experiencing some overdue fame as the elusive Mr. Big on HBO's "Sex and the City," brings a touch of marquee value to Gore Vidal's "The Best Man," a Tony-nominated play when first staged, in 1960. The revival is scheduled to open Sept. 17.

Noth's sleepy sex appeal should serve him well in the role of Sen. Joe Cantwell, a loathsome bigot vying with a seemingly better man for his party's presidential nomination.

"It's good for the part," Vidal said in a phone interview. "After all, Jack Kennedy got in on his looks, specifically how he looked vis a vis Nixon in the debates."

But Vidal denies that Noth was cast because of his popularity in "Sex and the City."

"That is totally irrelevant," he snapped. "The man's got a record of quite serious work. … I think he's going to be extraordinary."

Difficult Part

	Chris Noth owes his newest venture on stage to his late-blooming fame.

Noth said he would not have been offered the role of Cantwell if "I had not gotten some fame."

And he went on to say, "I find the part very difficult, actually."

But it's not so much a technical problem as a political one.

Cantwell, he said, is "the antithesis of what I believe in. It was appalling for me to watch the Bush nomination speech and see a little kid saying something like, 'It's time for them to go,' pursing his lips and trying to act tough. I thought he needed a spanking."

Convinced that he is a true man of the people, Cantwell is out to destroy his patrician opponent, a former secretary of state (played by Spalding Gray). In the play, the era in which the drama unfolds is described as one of "gossip instead of issues, and personalities instead of politics."

True then, truer now. (Vidal chuckled — a scary sound — when I mentioned this to him.)

"The essence of politics never really changes," said Noth. "It's all about power, ambition, greed, deception, manipulation. And, then, maybe a little bit of the democratic process gets thrown in."

Noth was fresh from a rehearsal and still buzzing when I met him at an Italian restaurant in the Theater District. The place in question is an old haunt of his and fellow actors from when they partnered on "Law & Order."

It was that series that first bought Noth attention. He shot the pilot in 1988 and it was picked up by NBC in 1990. It was a new kind of crime show, gritty and procedural, the brainchild of producer Dick Wolf. It was exciting and confrontational. On the set, too, apparently.

"There was a lot of psychological warfare on 'Law & Order,' Noth recalled. "We were all contentious, all outspoken, and everyone was fighting for any shred of character to be had."

'Big' Break

Noth was the designated hunk on 'Law and Order.'

As Detective Mike Lawson, Noth was the show's designated hunk, and, as cast members came and went, seemingly its designated survivor. But in 1995, Wolf fired him, telling the press he wanted a younger man in the role. Benjamin Bratt replaced him.

"It was a murky situation," said Noth. "I had also become an open critic of the show, and Dick knew that in order to keep me he was going to have to pay me an enormous amount of money. He was either going to fire me, or I was going to leave. So the bastard got there first."

Despite the criticisms and tensions, Noth and Wolf revived Lawson for "Exiled," a 1998 television movie that Noth co-scripted and Wolf produced.

Other projects Noth worked on included a TNT movie, "Rough Riders", and the play "Patronage," which opened at the Ensemble Studio Theater in 1997.

His career had not gone cold, but neither was it hot. Noth claims now that he was not worried.

"I'm thickheaded. There's no security in life. I was living my life like a lot of other actors looking for a job."

There was no reason to think that a cable show about women in their 30s whining about men would heat up his career, but "Sex and the City" did exactly that. It recently brought him an Emmy nomination as best supporting actor.

The "Big" role came to him after a meeting with series creator Darren Starr.

"I think I got the part because I wore my Italian sunglasses," he said with a laugh. "I'm a terrible auditioner. I self-destruct. I do much better when I'm handed the part."

The core of "Sex and the City," of course, is the relationship between Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) and Mr. Big, who, in the words of the show's executive producer, Michael Patrick King, is "masculine, beautiful, strong, stylish and cold.

"We know he has been deeply hurt at some point, and I think Chris has been hurt, but he has that wild side that everyone suspects Mr. Big has. Chris has enough Sinatra in him — and enough Shakespeare — to make him complex. Because of that, we can write a completely full character."

Bad Luck and Poetry

"Chris has lived a life," said Parker. "He has interests outside of show business. He meets his friends, he likes to drink, he cares about his male friendships, he likes women, he likes poetry, he likes art, he likes sports.

"And he's a big old romantic, an old softie, though he would deny it till the bitter end."

Noth refused to discuss his personal life — a friend said "he's had some terrible luck" — but dismissed his rumored fling with Winona Ryder. "It was a flirtation," he said, grinning. "One night at the MTV Awards. And a good discussion. She likes poetry, too."

Last season, Mr. Big dumped Carrie to marry a younger woman. Last Sunday, he found his way back into her bed. Accordingly, some people disapprove of his behavior. It's this that irks Noth.

"Why is everyone focusing on this? He won't commit, he won't commit, he won't commit," he said, bristling. "What the hell are they talking about? Men and women go through things.… What's she doing with him, frankly? No one asks that."

Has he met the man, Ron Galotti, now publisher of Talk magazine, who inspired the character?

"Yeah," he said. "I like him. We were going to have lunch. But I wasn't going to call him. And he wasn't going to call me."

"How very Mr. Big of them," observed Candace Bushnell, who wrote the original "Sex and the City" column in The New York Observer, when she heard this.

Bushnell contends that if Noth, now in his early 40s, had broken through earlier, he would have become a big Hollywood star. But now?

"There's something untamed about Chris," she said. "I can't see Chris being told what to do."

Noth's father died in a car accident when he was 10, and he was reared by his mother, CBS reporter Jeanne Parr, in Stamford, Conn.

He had "a lot of game time" he said. "Because my mother worked in New York, we [he and his two older brothers] got in lots of trouble and had lots of fun. To say the least."

He discovered acting — and self-discipline — at Marlborough College in Vermont.

"I've always done well in institutions — which makes me think I should commit myself," he said. He studied The Method and then moved to New York to study at the Neighborhood Playhouse with famous acting teacher Sanford Meisner.

He had acted in a few roles Off-Off-Broadway when "again an institution came to my rescue." In 1982, he went to Yale Drama School, where "the system was in place and all you had to do was what you loved to do."

There were still some mean years to slog through. For example, he once played a murderous bandito in an experimental Chilean play in rep in Milwaukee.

At one matinee of the show, he was hauling a wooden cross over the stage with his hands tied when, as he recalled, he looked up to see "five elderly ladies just staring at me with complete hatred. And one turns to another and says: 'Oh, he's so ugly.'

"And I'm thinking: My career is in the toilet, I'm in Milwaukee, I'm ugly, and old people hate me."

Dimensions Wanted

But those dues-paying days are long over. He has clout now, and movies are presumably his next frontier. He is cautious, though, about his chances and critical of what's on offer.

"I don't do well in a lot of leading-man parts, frankly," he said. "I don't feel comfortable in them. Most of them are written in such a one-dimensional, unbearable way."

He is skeptical, too, about being compared with George Clooney, the last TV star to cross over into major-movie stardom.

"Clooney's got a charm that is really palpable," he said. "I'm not sure I have that. No one is coming to me and offering me a $50 million movie. Yet. So, it'a question mark.

"But I don't know how that works. I don't care to know, to tell you the truth. I just plod along."

Now with two independent films — "Double Whammy" and "Searching for Paradise" — that are "circling distribution airport" as he puts it, and a small role in Tom Hanks' upcoming "Cast Away," he's beginning to establish a film presence.

There is a lingering sense that Chris Noth has further to go, but for the moment he is adamant that as long as there is a next job, he'll be content.

"I have enough attention already," he said. "More, I really don't need."

CHRIS NOTH

Born: Nov. 13, 1957, in Madison, Wis.
Reared: Stamford, Conn.
Education: Graduate of Yale School of Drama, MFA, 1985.
Big Breaks: "Law & Order" (1990-95), "Sex and the City" (current)
Films: "Baby Boom" (1987), "Naked in New York" (1994), "Burnzy's Last Call" (1995), "Cold Around New York" (1997), "Getting to Know You" (1999), "A Texas Funeral" (1999), "Pigeonholed" (1999)
On his role as Mr Big: "In the beginning, I did have problems with the character that I talked to Darren [Starr, the show's creator] about. Big had what I called this 'suave bolle' attitude. I said, please stop, or please don't stop at that. At the start, Big was just going to be this guy who always ordered the best bottle of wine in the house."

Original Publication Date: 8/13/00

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