Crossing Delancey

Press, 16 August 1989, Page 24

Crossing Delancey

JEFF HAYWARD

meets an unassuming actor:

There used to be a tradition in Hollywood that real men didn’t like to talk much and carried themselves with inner dignity, epitomised by Gary Cooper. It’s a style that has been lost in the hectic action of modern films with a few notable exceptions, such as Peter Riegert. A native New Yorker, Riegert stars in the hit American-Jewish romantic comedy, "Crossing Delancey.” His role as the proverbial nice Jewish boy in the film was almost made to measure.

An experienced Broadway and off-Broadway actor, Riegert had another such cameo role opposite Burt Lancaster in Bill Forsyth’s highlyacclaimed film “Local

Hero” a few years ago. In "Crossing Delancey,” he stars opposite Amy Irving as a New York pickle salesman in a tale about a modern woman who strives to be independent and successful yet can’t escape the tug of her Lower East Side Jewish roots. Critics in America have heaped high praise on the film, directed by Joan Micklin Silver, and have been especially warm towards the performance of Riegert, whose role in the film disproves the ’Bos motto that nice guys finish last.

Playing Sam, the pickle man, was tailor-made for Riegert, who had to turn down the Chance to do the role when it was in a theatrical play by Susan

Sandler. Miklin Silver was determined to get him for the film version.

Riegert plays a restrained character who tries to woo Amy Irving in competition with celebrity writers and the environment of the trendy bookstore where she works and socialises.

“What I responded to about the character of Sam was he . seemed perfectly content with his strengths and weakenessess as a human being,” says Riegert. “You don’t see that very often because it is a very neurotic time we live in, this postanalytical time when everyone goes to a shrink to solve their problems. Not that this guy didn’t have his problems, but he wasn’t wearing his neu-

roses on his sleeve.” Riegert plays a low-key romantic guy who dresses conservatively and spouts yiddishisms from neighbourhood folklore, someone who stays close to his native roots yet can appreciate the openness of the upwardly-mobile American society.

He likes to think that his typical role of the male playing in the “lower register of emotions” actually challenges the audience to react to him rather than telling them how they should feel.

It was what he loved about his role in “Local Hero” as the low-key American in a small Scottish seaside village. He was a well-educated oil company executive having

to come to terms with the quieter, more docile existence of traditional Scottish society.

In “Crossing Delancey,” the role is somewhat reversed. He is the more traditional character in conflict with the pretences of a celebrity literary world that Amy Irving’s character Izzy inhabits.

The concept of being at ease with yourself, no matter what the situation, genuinely fascinates Riegert.

< From playing in off-off-Broadway plays to two acclaimed film roles, it has been a classic Manhattan life for Peter Riegert. He came from relatively humble beginnings in the Bronx, son of a poultry wholesaler and

a piano teacher. He studied literature at university and thought he would give acting a try. His introduction was with a loft theatre group called War Babies, but it was a tough start. They played out of a coffee house and he held down three odd jobs to survive. He appeared in Broadway in the early ’7os, in musicals “Dance with Me” and “Minnie's Boys,” and he says that since then it has been a steady rise. His film debut was in 1978, in John Landis’ landmark comedy “National Lampoon’s Animal House.”

He loves acting but doesn’t treat it as a subject fit for adulation. “I just look at it practically. You do research, study

the character, everybody does. But to read most actors, they make it this unique phenomena, which it isn’t. I don’t like to discuss acting much because it seems frivolous to me. I don’t like to read about it. “It’s hard to describe what it is to be actor, because it’s really quite obvious. People take on roles and the roles change. You’re a father, you’re a husband, you are a worker, these are various roles in life that you play. But we don’t think of them as acting but we take on certain characteristics. That’s what acting is.

“Different parts draw out different parts of your nature. The other things are really quite simple.”