Suddenly, Seymour : Riding critical acclaim for ‘In the Soup,’ Seymour Cassel is on a roll; the actor credits sobriety for his current run of good luck

Meeting with actor Seymour Cassel in a Santa Monica restaurant, it’s easy to see why director Alexandre Rockwell wrote the lead in his film “In the Soup” for him. Cassel’s larger-than-life personality is not unlike that of the fictional Joe, a wildly eccentric small-time hood who distracts the people he’s conning by smothering them with kisses and doing the cha-cha.

A roguish raconteur who smokes large cigars, requests permission to remove his jacket at the table and always opens the door for a lady, Cassel chats up everyone who comes within arm’s length at the restaurant. “You absolutely must go see ‘In the Soup,’ ” he tells them in the deep, scratchy voice of someone who loves to talk and smoke. He concludes his sales pitch with the promise: “I’ll give you your money back if you don’t love this movie,” then turns to the reporter and whispers, “John (Cassavetes) always did that. He talked to everybody about his movies.”

It’s been 33 years since Cassel made his acting debut in “Shadows,” the first film by the late Cassavetes, his friend. Cassel was later nominated for an Oscar for his work in Cassavetes’ 1968 “Faces” and turned in critically acclaimed performances in six other Cassavetes films, which led to parts in movies by such industry greats as Sam Peckinpah, Elia Kazan and Nicolas Roeg. Cassel’s resume is impressive indeed; however, longtime fans of his work--and Cassel himself--agree that it wasn’t until this year that his career finally kicked into gear.

Cassel--winner of the jury prize for artistic excellence at this year’s Sundance Film Festival for his work in “In the Soup,” which took the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance as well--can also be seen in two soon-to-be-released films: “Indecent Proposal” and “Money Men.”

Today he leaves for Germany, where he will co-star with Alfred Molina and Marianne Faithfull in “When Pigs Fly,” a film directed by Sara Driver and produced by Jim Jarmusch. In the spring, he’s off to India, where he will star with Jennifer Beals in “Layover,” the third film by Rockwell. He’s completed his first script, “Clipped Wings,” and has an idea for another one titled “The Palm Terrace” floating around in his head, and chances are good that he will direct his first film sometime next year. Cassel credits his current run of good luck to the simple fact that he’s been sober for seven years.

“I wasted a lot of time involved in stupid things,” says Cassel, who spent time in jail in 1982 for a conviction for conspiracy to sell cocaine. “If you’re an actor and you’re selfish and not strong it’s difficult to maintain a good personal life or a solid career, and I was selfish and had a lot of anger that went way back. I’m a much nicer person now that I’m sober and I don’t lie to people anymore--and I was a terrific liar,” he adds with a rueful laugh.

Cassavetes died in 1988 of cirrhosis of the liver, but his presence continues to loom large in Cassel’s life. It was at a tribute to Cassavetes at the 1989 Avignon Film Festival that Cassel met Rockwell, who’d been corresponding with Cassavetes since he was 19.

“Seymour felt a big void in his life after John died and so did I, so we kind of came together and he wound up living with my wife (actress Beals) and I in New York for a while,” recalls Rockwell, who dedicated “In the Soup” to the late director. “I wanted to make a film about a gangster who was inexplicably irresistible. And I couldn’t think of a better person than Seymour to play this character, because like Joe, Seymour’s a mischief-maker with an insatiable appetite for life.

“In making the film there were times I wanted to murder him--and I only say that because we’re so close,” says Rockwell, who shot the independent film in New York for $750,000 in the spring of 1991. “It’s always a wrestling match with Seymour, and when he wants something he generally gets it because he’s extremely persuasive, relentless and totally unpredictable.”

Cassel’s unpredictability made working with him a constant surprise for actor Steve Buscemi, who plays the straight man to Cassel in most of the film’s key scenes. “Seymour was always throwing in unexpected little things,” Buscemi recalls. “For instance, it’s scripted that he kisses me once or twice in the film, but he just sort of took that and ran with it--I never knew when he was gonna kiss me!”

Cassel’s childlike charm and his need to be center stage are easy to understand when one hears the story of his life; his childhood was at once oddly special and unusually difficult.

“I was born in Detroit, then shortly after I was born I went on the road with my mother, who performed with Minsky’s, a variety show that toured around the U.S. doing five shows a day,” says Cassel, launching into the colorful story of his life with obvious relish.

“I’d seen more breasts by the time I was 6 than most people see in a lifetime! I was an only child and never met my dad, and my mother lived the business so I guess that’s where I got it. I started performing when I was 3; I’d come out in a little checkered suit and pull down the clown’s pants--I loved that! I was a little ham and was a very open kid, probably because I was around adults all the time. That also forced me to grow up fast, and I learned at an early age about how people lie and deceive each other. I learned these things because I was alone in life from the beginning.

“My mother and I traveled around until I was 6 when she met my stepfather, who was a master sergeant in the Air Force,” he continues. “We moved from Manhattan to Birmingham, Alabama, then wound up in Florida, where my stepfather won a nightclub in a crap game. It was called the Palm Terrace and was in Panama City, and when I was 9 we moved there and lived in the bar for three years.” (Cassel hopes to direct a film based on his experiences as a child in Panama.)

“In 1949, my mother and stepfather divorced and sold the club, and my mother sent me to Detroit to live with my godmother. That was a tough time for me because I didn’t understand that my mother had a right to live her life--I just wanted to stay with her because she was the only family I had, but she thought it best that I stay in Detroit. So that’s where I stayed until I was 18.”

“I was a tough guy and was into gangs when I was a teen-ager,” recalls Cassel, who began drinking at the age of 13. “I got into a lot of trouble and had a deep distrust of women and was a real angry kid. When I was 17, I was told I had the choice of enlisting in the Navy or going to jail, so I spent the next three years in the Navy.”

After his release from the Navy, Cassel enrolled at the University of Miami, planning to go into business administration, but quickly realized that wasn’t for him, so he quit school. A few months later he drifted back to Detroit, where he saw an ad for apprentices at a local theater company; he began building props for the company and quickly worked his way up to playing small parts.

“From the minute I started acting I knew that was what I was meant for,” he says of his acting career, which began in 1957. “So I wrote to the Actor’s Studio requesting an audition. They agreed to see me so I put on my Navy uniform--men in uniform could travel cheap then--and took a bus to New York, where I checked into the YMCA. I decided to do a scene from Eugene O’Neill’s ‘Mourning Becomes Electric.’ Ha! I knew nothing! O’Neill stirred up strong feelings in me, but I had neither the understanding nor the preparation to do his work then--I had no idea how deep that play was. The audition went terrible and I didn’t get in, so I got a job as a waiter and enrolled in a theater school on the GI Bill.

“At this point my life was about to be saved by John Cassavetes. At the time John was the hottest young actor on TV, so when I saw an ad in the paper that said, ‘John Cassavetes Actor’s Workshop--free scholarships,’ I went down to check it out. John was there and we talked for a while and I immediately loved him because there was no bull about him. After we talked, he said he had to go because he was shooting a film and I asked if I could watch, so we went over to the set he’d built for ‘Shadows.’ The crew for the film was just four guys so I started helping out and wound up staying all night, and after that I just kept coming back. John put me in the picture, I became associate producer, and I learned about filmmaking from the ground up. In 1959, John moved to L.A. (with his wife, actress Gena Rowlands), and I came out here with him and lived in his guest house.

“John was a huge influence on both my creative and my personal life. He gave me the confidence to be more in touch with myself, and he brought out the best in me--and in everyone--because he cared about his actors and he loved people. John said hello to everyone . I know he’d love ‘In the Soup,’ ” Cassel adds wistfully. “Several of his friends have said that to me, and Gena said it as well.”

It was opposite Rowlands that Cassel turned in two of his most critically acclaimed performances, in Cassavetes’ “Minnie and Moskowitz” (1971) and “Love Streams” (1984).

“I’ve known Seymour for about 100 years and there’s always been something completely unique about his performing style--he doesn’t remind you of anyone else,” Rowlands says. “John loved his work and put him in everything, and he always came through splendidly--he could play any part you gave him.

“For a few years he got a little sidetracked with problems not uncommon in Hollywood, but for the past few years he’s been working very hard and getting better and better,” she adds. “He gives a great comic performance in ‘In the Soup’--he absolutely sparkles in this film--but over the next few years I hope to see him take on parts of great dramatic content. He has the depth for those kinds of parts because he’s been through a lot, he’s learned a lot, and he has the courage to express those experiences in his work.”

The experiences Rowlands refers to are Cassel’s party years, which lasted a long time and were notoriously rough. Though Cassel married in 1964 and had two children (he also has a daughter from a previous liaison), he could never quite settle down into the role of conventional family man.

“You make a lot of new friends when you’re in a film like ‘Faces,’ and I met Dylan and the Stones and the guys in the Band,” recalls Cassel, who has been separated from his wife since 1983. “It wasn’t easy keeping a marriage together with the life I was living, and eventually my wife began to do what I was doing. By the late ‘70s, I got much too heavy into the wrong things and was hanging out too much with the Beatles and the Stones. I didn’t see much of (Cassavetes) during those years, and the only reason I survived that period of stupidity was because I really love life. I finally got into recovery in 1985, and the week I got sober my career started to pick up.”

Small parts in big films--”Dick Tracy,” “Tin Men”--began to come Cassel’s way as he set out to prove he could be relied on to show up on time and deliver the goods. Toward that end “I had to humble myself and say, ‘Hey, maybe I don’t know everything,’ ” says Cassel, and as he pieced his career back together he worked with some directors who were several cuts below Cassavetes in terms of artistic vision.

Cassel’s stories of his encounters with the great and small of Hollywood are wonderfully entertaining because unlike most people in the industry, he doesn’t mind naming names, he’s an excellent mimic, and he doesn’t suffer fools gladly. The film business of the early ‘90s is markedly different from the one Cassel cut his teeth on in the late ‘50s, and it’s not surprising to hear that he prefers foreign and independent films to the ones turned out by Hollywood. As one of Cassavetes’ family of actors, Cassel knows what it is to work in an environment of extraordinary creative freedom; however, he’s learned he can’t mourn the passing of that any more than he can mourn his transgressions of the early ‘80s.

“Sometimes I’ll hear a piece of music that makes me feel nostalgic for the past and I’ll remember how simple times were and how sweet life used to be,” he says. “It’s unlikely I’ll ever meet another man like John Cassavetes, and it’s also true that the world was a much more gentle place 25 years ago and there was a lot less anger. But I can’t live in the past, because I’m fortunate enough to be able to say that this is the best period of my life. I’ve discovered there aren’t any scars that don’t heal and that you’ve gotta give up the scars, because if you don’t you waste your life.

“There’s nothing I can do about my past, and to regret it is indulgent,” Cassel says. “As an adult you have to know when you’re beating a dead horse, and you have to ask yourself: ‘Am I not worth more than this?’ You have to find the things in life that make you feel good. You owe it to yourself and to the people you love to feel good, because it affects other people how you feel.”