Bayside resident Mark Metcalf is an actor who has worked in movies, TV and on the stage. He is best known for his work in "Animal House," "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Seinfeld."

In addition to his work on screen, Metcalf is involved with the Milwaukee International Film Festival, First Stage Children's Theater and a number of other projects.

He also finds time to write about movies for OnMilwaukee.com. This week, Metcalf weighs in on the work of actor Philip Seymour Hoffman.

I've been working with and hanging out with actors all of my adult life. Because the job is to represent people from all walks of life and from all periods of history, I have made it my business to spend time with and study people who do a lot of different things.

Of all the people, I have known, actors, as a general rule, are the smartest, the best read, the most knowledgeable and articulate, the kindest, most compassionate, funniest, most self-aware, self-centered, and the cruelest.

I have never felt more alone than I have when in a room full of actors. But, I have also never felt more a part of a family, or a tribe, or a group of friends than when amongst people I am doing a play with or that I have done a film with.

Acting has brought me a lot of attention, some of which I crave and some of which I can easily do without. I think it's a lonely job. In film and television especially, you tend to work alone preparing and researching your part. You don't rehearse with the other actors very much and you perform with them quickly and, if you are working where you live, you go home. If you are on location, you go to the bar or restaurant and hang out.

In the theatre, you rehearse for four to six weeks and spend a lot more time talking and questioning each other. You also spend more time in the bar or restaurant before you go home. When the play finishes its run, you go home or to the next job, and the goodbyes are quick, and there are lots of "call me when you get back to the city" remarks, but often it doesn't happen. The next time you see someone is the next time you do a play with them, which may be a year or seven years in the future, if at all.

So, you learn to experience as much as you can each time out and then move on to the next experience without taking a lot along with you. You are liable to end up with a bunch of great stories, but you'll be darning your own socks.

All of this came to mind because I watched three Philip Seymour Hoffman films and was feeling a little depressed. Not because he was doing all this great work and I wasn't, although that is a feeling that actors are not immune to -- envy. I felt down mostly because all three characters in all three movies are lonely, desperate, depressed, and highly dysfunctional, by normal standards. But most of the interesting characters in movies are like that.

In "The Savages," Hofmann plays a depressed theatre professor in Buffalo whose father abused him but is now suffering from dementia and must receive care. There's a line in "A Chorus Line" where a character from Buffalo talks about trying to commit suicide until he realized that committing suicide in Buffalo would be redundant. It's a long winter in Buffalo. Longer even than here in Milwaukee. His sister, with whom he hasn't really gotten along but must now, is played by Laura Linney. Philip Bosco is the father who is definitely abusive and only slightly demented, but is dying. Hoffman's character lives alone. He has a Polish girlfriend who is being deported and he can't seem to bring himself to marry her, or she him, although he wants to and she is willing but they just can't seem to get it together.

He can't finish the book on Brecht he is supposed to be writing and nothing is working out very well. There are no more good days. The movie is darkly funny because it is so well observed and true, but it is ultimately depressing. Especially if you have a parent in a nursing home or heading that way, or are looking at the prospect yourself. Hoffman gives a brilliant performance of the kind we look for in actors these days. He completely cloaks himself in the character to a point at which you totally believe that he and the character are one.

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