John Mahoney, best known for his 11-year stint on “Frasier,” returns to where his acting career began: the stage.

By Michael J. Bandler

John Mahoney and Moose

Somewhere out in TV land, night after night, dyspeptic Martin Crane sermonizes from his comfortable chair in a neatly appointed Seattle apartment, griping about the latest antics of his psychiatrist sons, Frasier and Niles.

But these days, John Mahoney, the actor who played Martin Crane, is far from the Hollywood sound stages on which the trio of cutups frolicked for 11 seasons on “Frasier.” He’s halfway across the country, onstage in Chicago.

What about Hollywood?

Will he take another sitcom role? Don’t wait around for it.

Cast of “Frasier”

Mahoney’s character on “Frasier” has become familiar, but if you think you know the actor, you might be wrong. Midwesterner with an accent as flat as the prairies, tailor-made for the small screen?

Well, not exactly.

Mahoney was born in Blackpool, England, in 1940. Living in Manchester, he discovered acting at a youth theater. He fi rst came to this country on a family trip when he was 11 to visit his sister, Vera, a war bride. He fell in love with America and begged his sister to sponsor him for a visa. She said she would if he fi nished school and saved up money to pay his fare. At 19, he moved to America and a few months later joined the U.S. Army for a three-year stint. Afterward, he went to college and then graduate school before teaching college English (“hated it—I was a terrible teacher”). He was then hired by a commission on hospital accreditation as associate editor of its journal. It wasn’t until he was in his late 30s that he found his true calling.

You got a pretty late start in the acting arena. Why the change of direction? “I was at that point where I thought I had to do something in my life before it was too late. I remembered how happy I was acting.”

So you recalibrated. “Fate steps in and shows me the way. I had gone back to England to visit my family, and in London I saw a great show, Jumpers, by Tom Stoppard. Back in Chicago, I saw an ad in a free local weekly for an acting class at the theater David Mamet started [St. Nicholas Theatre Company]. They were doing Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge at the time. I went to see it and thought it was wonderful. I applied for an acting class and got in."

Joining the theater was a big chance to take at that stage in your life. “I was 37. I thought we’d have scripts, learn little scenes and get critiqued. Of course, it wasn’t that—it was all kinds of theater games, give and take, stuff I was totally unfamiliar with. But then, fi nally, I started to get it and got cast in one of David’s plays. Knock on wood—I haven’t been out of work since.”

Were there resonances from acting in England when you were a kid? “I always knew I could act. But I didn’t know how far behind I was. Imagine, for example, the third show I did at Steppenwolf, a revival with John Malkovich … I was terrifi ed! ‘When are they going to fi nd out I don’t belong here?

I’m not capable of doing this!’ But I guess they thought I was, because they stuck with me and invited me to join the company. And they always treated me as a peer.”

In the early ’90s, “Frasier” came along. How similar are John Mahoney and Martin Crane? “There’s so much of me in Marty Crane. We’re both huge sports fans, gregarious people. I love to go out and drink with all my buddies. In real life, I’m a bit of a culture vulture. But for the most important parts, I was defi nitely Marty Crane.”

Was it tough to decompress when the show was over? “No. The tough part was leaving my friends—David [Hyde Pierce] and Kelsey [Grammer] and Jane [Leeves] and Peri [Gilpin]. We’d taken the show as far as we could. I thought it had run its course, so I wasn’t brokenhearted. I didn’t want us repeating ourselves and limping out. You know, when I emigrated from England at 19, I thought leaving my family was the toughest thing I could ever do. But it was just as tough leaving those guys from ‘Frasier.’ It really was. It was murder.”

As “Frasier” became popular, were there times when you had qualms about being typecast as Martin Crane? “When the show was starting out and I found myself in everybody’s living room, I thought, ‘I’m going to be playing this cranky old man for the rest of my life.’ But I was very fortunate. While I was doing it, I did The American President and Primal Fear, playing totally different [characters]. And it’s always nice when somebody recognizes me from the theater.”

About your fi lm work: most people know you from Moonstruck or Say Anything, but you mentioned Primal Fear. You certainly played an evil character very well. “Villains are fun to play. I don’t look at them so much as a challenge as I do as a chance to go into your attic, look at the old mirror up there and see the things that, in life, you hide. It’s a chance to be nasty, to be horrible—which I shy away from very much in real life.”

Do you think you’ll do another sitcom? “I’ve been offered several pilots. If they shot one in Chicago, I might consider it, but I’m more than happy not to do any more. I don’t think I can have a better legacy than ‘Frasier.’”

Many people would have trouble letting go of a show after 11 years. “I suppose, as far as that’s concerned, I’m very lucky in that I don’t hold onto things. It’s not in my nature. If I’m up for a part that I really want, and don’t get it, I’m disappointed for about 30 seconds, and then I go on to something else. I don’t carry it around with me.”

You’ve done voice-overs, too. Didn’t you reunite with Kelsey and David on “The Simpsons”? “I did—except that we didn’t actually get together physically. I think it was David who recommended they get ahold of me, and I had a good time doing it. I used to do a lot of voice-over work, but I don’t anymore.”

JOHNNIE CLUNEY

You also do voice-overs for Midwest Airlines ads. “I signed with them years and years ago, and I’ll do it for long as they want me. The scripts are really good. The guys know how to write.”

So writing is the make-or-break element for you? “There are certain people who, if they call, I’ll do it without reading. But for the most part, I’ve got to read a script before I decide to take a part.”

What is it about the stage that’s so appealing to you? “The immediacy of it—having that audience out there. When you’re doing a fi lm, you’re acting your guts out before steel and glass, with a bunch of guys standing behind it, eating pizza. You can correct mistakes very easily on fi lm. But there’s something very exciting about being out there, on a high wire, whether it’s 50 people or a thousand out there, watching you, hanging on every word. They’re pouring this energy on you, and you feed off it and give it back to them.”

The script is the same every performance, though. How do you make it different? “By really, really listening to what’s being said to you. It’s said a little differently every time. The actor you’re working with might have had a root canal. He’s been in a lot of pain the last couple of days. That influences his performance. Or if he’s in a good mood, that’ll have an effect. If I listen not just to the words he’s saying, but what’s behind them, and respond to that, it really is new every performance.”