He has been called “America’s Olivier,” a cross between Errol Flynn and Gene Kelly. Over a three-decade career, multitalented actor Kevin Kline has effortlessly crossed genres and sexual orientations, playing Hamlet or Chief Inspector Dreyfus in the remake of The Pink Panther, now filming with Steve Martin. He has appeared in 30 films and 32 stage productions, earning one Academy Award, two Tony Awards (and one nomination), three Drama Desk Awards (and one nomination), four Golden Globe nominations, and two Obie Awards.
Kevin Delaney Kline, 56, is now starring in the musical biography De-Lovely as American composer Cole Porter. The film explores Porter’s career, 35-year marriage, and “hedonistic appetite” for partying, drinking, smoking, and beautiful men. “Had he not had that energy, he would not have been the artist he was,” said Kline. He perfected the Indiana-born composer’s flat singing voice (toning down the deep baritone that helped win him a 1981 Tony as the Pirate King in The Pirates of Penzance, with Linda Ronstadt). He also polished his piano playing to perform standards such as “Anything Goes,” “Night and Day,” and the title song, “De-Lovely,” without looking at the keys.
This is the second time Kline has played a homosexual from Indiana. In the 1997 movie In & Out, he played a sexually confused teacher (his fourth Golden Globe nomination) and earned an MTV Best Screen Kiss nomination for his famous smooch with Tom Selleck. “Playing gay” was not difficult, he told ign.com in a July interview. “I just think of all the men as women.”
Kline majored in speech and drama at Indiana University in Bloomington, then graduated with The Juilliard School’s first drama class, studying under John Houseman. From 1972-76, Kline brought “the classics to the hinterland” as a founding member of Houseman’s Acting Company.
In 1978, he won his first Tony for the matinee-idol role in On the Twentieth Century. Director Harold Prince needed a sophisticated actor who could play farce. “All I had to do was touch on that, and he ran with the ball,” he said.
Immediately afterward, Kline turned down a ‘40s musical revival to play a ‘70s Peace Corps volunteer in Loose Ends. “That straight play was very important for him,” noted Prince. “He wisely did not allow himself to be pigeonholed.” Kline later turned down the l989 lead in Batman (which then went to Michael Keaton).
“Everything Kevin does, he … ponders over for months,” said Wilford Leach, his direc-tor in The Pirates of Penzance and Henry V, in 1984. “He wouldn’t be as well-trained … if he hadn’t stuck true to his vision.”
“Musicals were something I never set out to do,” Kline told USA Today in 1997. “It wasn’t like I wanted to only do Hamlet, but I wanted to do movies. Only after 10 years, I thought, ‘I guess this isn’t going to happen’. … Then Sophie’s Choice happened.” Kline received a 1982 Golden Globe for New Star of the Year in a Motion Picture as the dynamic schizophrenic Nathan Landau, opposite Meryl Streep’s sensitive Holocaust survivor.
After dating fellow Juilliard student Patti LuPone for seven years, Kline was linked with Linda Ronstadt, JoBeth Williams, and Glenn Close. In 1983, during a script reading for the ensemble film The Big Chill, he met his future wife, Phoebe Cates, 16 years his junior. Three years later, while rehearsing for Henry V, Kline again bumped into Cates, then 21. They married in 1989.
“She was very young,” Kline told Parade in 1994. “I could have adopted her or dated her. … I’m a very lucky man. The most important things to me are my children and my marriage. Only after that comes my work.”
The couple have a son, Joseph, 12, and a daughter, Greta, 10. Kline and Cates appeared together in the 1994 film Princess Caraboo and with the children in the 2001 improvisational film The Anniversary Party.
Over the years, Kline has portrayed a cheating husband, a dying father, a Western hero, swashbuckling Douglas Fairbanks, and a South African newspaper editor. Twice he has played U.S. presidents and their doubles. His role as a dim-witted thief in A Fish Called Wanda earned him a 1988 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. In 1991, a decade after his own run on Search for Tomorrow, Kline earned his second Golden Globe nomination in Soapdish, opposite Sally Field. There were also summer stints with the New York Shakespeare Festival (where he is now associate producer) as Richard III (1983), Henry V (1984), and Hamlet (1990).
“Kevin has all the attributes of … a 19th-century actor, proper bearing, tremendous agility, a sense of style, and a command of language that very few American actors have,” the late Joseph Papp once said. “He is our ’American Olivier.’”
“I feel as an actor, I can influence, in my own modest way, the world by what I choose to do and how I do it,” Kline told Parade in 1994. “So I try to choose something that is life-affirming [and] morally worthwhile.”
In 1999, praise for his portrayal of Bottom in the film A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream masked the fnancial failure of Wild Wild West. And his 2004 Tony nomination for Falstaff in Henry IV has overshadowed current lukewarm reviews for De-Lovely.
“With movies, it’s always take what is offered and taste the wind,” Kline admitted. Viewing his career as “a work in progress,” he has called himself “the Rodney Dangerfield of actors.”
Kline has also brought his distinctive voice to animated characters like Captain Phoebus in Disney’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame films (1996, 2002) and Artie in The Road to El Dorado (2000). He is also on the board of the New York chapter of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.
“I can’t solve the homeless problem or cure a disease,” he continued, “but if I can give people hope, if I can make people laugh for a couple of hours, maybe that’s how I can contribute.” It looks like this humble and dramatic actor with a natural flair for comedy and farce will be entertaining us for many years to come.
