Lovable lunatic Burt

Press, 13 May 1987, Page 19

Lovable lunatic Burt

By

ROY LAKEMAN

The lovable lunatic, Burt, in “Soap,” is such an indelible character that the actor Richard Mulligan cannot escape him, even in real life.

"I don’t feel Burt is taking me over exactly, but from time to time we overlap. It’s like the way you pick up habits fom hanging around with your best friend. Eventually you pick up your best friend’s worst habits.

“People will walk up to me and say, ‘Boy, it’s nice to see you, Burt.’ It’s pleasant, but very disconcerting.” Mulligan is in fact a very different person from his screen alter ego. Erudite, deep thinking, he has a soft spot for the Burts of this world.

“Burt isn’t stupid. People have experienced things like being in a space ship like Burt. There are records of it.

What does it matter if I believe them? Burt does.” Like so many other TV series stars, Richard served a long apprenticeship in the theatre before getting the coveted Emmy for his role in "Soap.” It has brought him money, a large and lovely house in Hancock Park, Los Angeles, where, he says, “the old-moneyed aristocrat bankers and stuff live.” He delights in his success and lives quietly with his third wife, Lenore, an interior designer. And, of course, it has brought bigger and better roles, like the leading role in “SOB” with Julie Andrews and a part in a new Pink Panther film. Funnyman Mulligan resists any attempt to compare his style with that of Peter Sellers in the Pink Panther series. “Let’s get something

straight 1 can't afford to compare myself with Peter Sellers. That man was a very special genius, loved by a lot of people. But it is “Soap" that is still the dominating feature in Mulligan’s life and the dividing line between role and reality is becoming thinner. When Burt thought he could make himself disappear by snapping his fingers, Mulligan worked out a disappearing trick of his own.

"I was going through a period of depression because I had been working hard and didn’t want to do ‘Soap’ any more. So I made myself disappear. If I was sitting around the set, not wanting to talk to anyone, I would just imagine I had disappeared. "As far as I was con-

cerned I was invisible. I just wasn’t there." , Richard admits he hasn’t done badly for the son of a New York Irish cop from the Bronx. “It was tough telling my father I wanted to be an actor. He just stared at me for a long time, then he said: ‘ls that going to put meat and potatoes on the table?’

“I said, ‘l’m told, sometimes.’

“He said, ‘You are going to eat sometimes.’

"On occasions since then I’ve thought it was the most tragic choice I made in all my life. It’s a very difficult life. I have twice been absolutely busted with poverty. On one occasion I was just going around with a suitcase. I’d rather not do that again.” DUO copyright