“I play this way, way, way over-the-top gay hairdresser with flowing garments and scarves and headbands and bleached blonde hair,” the 38-year-old California native told The Irish Echo in a recent phone interview.
“They say that (my performance) gets a great response, that people get a kick out of it. But I’m terrified. I’m, like, hiding under the desk,” Astin, who hadn’t seen the finished product at the time of the interview, said with a laugh. “It’s a really good cast and everybody, except Hilary Duff, I think, has a pretty good toe-hold in the 1980s . . . So I expect it to be a good film.”
Co-starring Mark Polish, Chevy Chase, Winona Ryder, Jon Cryer and Josh Holloway, the movie is about an author who returns to his high school 20 years after graduation and re-connects with old friends who stayed local. Polish wrote the comedy and produced it with his brother Michael, who also directed the film.
“The Polish brothers are incredible,” Astin said of the fraternal filmmaking team who also gave us “Twin Falls Idaho.”
The nice-guy film icon went on to say he and Holloway, best known as Sawyer on TV’s “Lost,” had a blast providing much of “Stay Cool’s” comic relief.
“My character’s name is Big Girl and (Holloway) plays Wino. He’s got all these tattoos all over him and I’m walking around [being effeminate] and . . . he’s just got this fun look on his face,” Astin explained. “Mark Polish’s character comes back to give a speech, but it brings up all the things he kind of left unresolved in high school and two of the things that are there as his support group are Big Girl and Wino. We pick him up from the airport and we take care of him . . . and give him counsel and encouragement. And [Polish’s character] never went out with Winona Ryder’s character, but he always wanted to and that never happened. There’s just a gaggle of fun little things. I don’t know who’s going to distribute it, but I’m sure they’re being very careful with who they let distribute it.”
The “Meerkat Manor” narrator was also recently seen playing an eternally upbeat tourist visiting a mystical land in “Colour of Magic,” a miniseries based on Terry Pratchett’s popular Discworld novel. Co-starring Jeremy Irons, Tim Curry, David Jason and Christopher Lee, it aired on British and American television and returned Astin to the fantasy film genre that he was so entrenched in while working on “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy, the final installment of which, “The Return of the King,” won the best picture Oscar in 2003.
Comparing the experiences of making “Magic” to “Rings,” Astin said that tone of it is a little different.
“It’s a very satirical and tongue-in-cheek nonsense comedy. [But] there are some great, compelling, intellectual ideas being bandied about,” he observed. “One of the things I said throughout the whole publicity thing for ‘Lord of the Rings’ is that, if I could go back, I’d try not to take it so seriously. It was so intense all the time and it was amazing. It was a life-changing, life-affirming, brilliant, once-in-a-lifetime thing to be a part of — ‘Lord of the Rings’ — but this was just fun. Obviously, it wasn’t as long, so it wasn’t as much of a thing, but, yeah, dragons and wizards and assassins and all that kind of stuff, I loved it.”
Adding to Astin’s good memories of filming “Magic” was the fact that he didn’t have to spend hours in the makeup department before stepping in front of the cameras.
I’ll always remember that time as happy,” he said. “I didn’t have to have Hobbit feet or wigs or Hobbit ears. I could show up two minutes before we were filming, pop on the shorts and the funny, flowered shirt, which did most of the work. If you can’t (get into character) with that shirt on, you don’t deserve to be put on camera.”
Asked how he manages to keep choosing quality projects that audiences embrace, the actor quipped, “I always feel like it happens in spite of me.”
“I look sometimes and go, ‘How did I get here?'” he confided. “It’s also kind of funny, because I have my three daughters [with wife Christine, to whom he’s been married since 1992] and they have very little awareness f what I do for a living. So, it’s almost like this secret life that I lead where I can go someplace and people will freak out because of ‘Goonies’ or ‘Encino Man’ or one of the Adam Sandler movies.”
So, just how Irish is Astin, the son of famous actress Patty Duke and Michael Tell, a writer and music promoter?
The actor is proud of his Irish maternal heritage.
“Well, my middle name is Patrick, my mom is Duke and she’s from a big, strong Irish family,” he said. “I’m third-generation Irish-American. I never really used that hyphenate to describe myself, but certainly when you play Rudy . . . I went to Catholic school for three years.”
“And I love Guinness,” he declared with a laugh.
“Stay Cool” was screened last week as part of New York’s Tribeca Film Festival.