Q. and A.: Timothy Olyphant

By KATHRYN SHATTUCK / Source: nytimes.com

Countless words have been spilled on the subject of Timothy Olyphant and the Stare: that faint narrowing of those fathomless eyes, shorthand that one of his gunslinging lawmen — say, Raylan Givens of “Justified” or Seth Bullock of “Deadwood” — is about to blow a bad guy to smithereens.

Or, in real life, that an interview is headed south.

On a recent evening, Mr. Olyphant, 47, slid into a chair after a long day of rehearsing Kenneth Lonergan’s new play, “Hold on to Me Darling,” now in previews at the Atlantic Theater Company. Mr. Olyphant, a California boy without a western bone in his body, has played a lot of cowboy types. Here he’s Strings McCrane, a country-music and movie star on a downward spiral in what he called “a beast of a play, at first glance absurdly funny but operating on a very deep, very insightful level about human behavior.”

But soon, this exhausted actor was all out of words. That’s when he stared.

For safety’s sake, the interview ended. But the next day, a reinvigorated Mr. Olyphant picked up the phone, raring for another go. Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.

Q. So, we meet again. What’s that noise in the background?

A. This couldn’t sound more shallow and show business, but I’m getting my hair cut and colored as we speak. Strings McCrane is a big-time movie star, and a big-time movie star doesn’t have gray.

You’ve left Hollywood to do a play in New York. Why?

For the money, of course. You know what Kenny said to me when I told him that I had to figure out whether I could afford to do it? He said, “Tim, you can’t put a price on your credibility.” But it’s been a blast being back in a rehearsal space without cameras and crew and just, you know, putting on a little show.

Tell us about Strings.

His mama has passed, and the dude’s a wreck. Everything is overblown in his mind, and he’s ridiculously narcissistic. He feels like he was a huge disappointment to his mama, and he wants to change his entire life to somehow make it up to her. And he manages to wreak havoc on everybody around him in the process.

Why all the cowboy roles?

Well, I don’t know. You have some success in one kind of role, folks tend offer you a similar type of role. And when the character’s been created by David Milch, or Elmore Leonard and Graham Yost, honestly, you can just about put any knucklehead in there. It’s pretty tough to screw them jobs up.

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