When Steve Martin started acting in movies, he wanted to have a plan, to know exactly what he was going to do.
It’s different now, says the white-haired actor who jockeyed to fame as the wild and crazy guy who could be scrupulously silly in a restrained white suit.
Martin got tired of doing the same thing every night and in 1980 plunged into filmmaking with “The Jerk.” But it wasn’t until “Father of the Bride” in 1991 that he felt like an actor.
“I didn’t really start to like myself on screen until I did `Father of the Bride,’ ” he says, sipping iced tea from a wine glass at a Beverly Hills hotel. “I can also distinguish the film from me. I can look at `Dirty Rotten Scoundrels,’ in which I don’t really like what I did . . . but I love the movie.”
There are moments in his latest film, “Leap of Faith,” when we are seeing the real Steve Martin on screen instead of a carefully coached and well-oiled performer prancing through his paces.
“I found myself doing things that were so without thought-meaning that when they happened, they were me. They were unedited. And it’s very scary to come back and see yourself unedited . . . having gone through no acting process, no filter. It’s scary.”
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Martin plays a con-man evangelist in “Leap of Faith,” a role that permits him to flail on the edge of excess while he cunningly seduces everyone around him.
In person, though, Martin is the exact opposite of the wily Rev. Nightengale. Although he is known for his nonsensical humor, Martin is a cerebral man, circling back over a question that still troubles him, like a dog preparing his resting place.
He tired of standup comedy because it didn’t challenge him, he confesses.
“No matter how you ad-lib, change or (make) spontaneous it’s three minutes a night,” he says. “I couldn’t do it anymore. I knew with movies I’d be doing something different-not every year, but every day.”
Although most of them have been based on humor, his films have been very different from each other. After his first three, “The Jerk,” “Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid” and “The Man With Two Brains,” Martin started getting restless.
“I didn’t have a direction. I’d always had a direction in my head. And I didn’t know where I was at. I wondered if these were the movies I should be making. I like comedy. I like being silly. But I’ve done it now. . . . After `All of Me’ (1984), I kind of found a direction.”
Not content to stand up and deliver someone else’s lines, Martin has always been involved in the entire filmmaking arena, from writing to directing to casting.
“I like the collaborative process,” he says. “And that’s a private process with the director, the writer, the actors. And sometimes the actual shooting of the movie is the only fun you get because there you’re still innocent. You don’t know what you’re making. It’s a gestalt.”
The results can turn out to be a surprise, not always a pleasant one. “You know what you’re making on a daily basis,” he says.
“But this thing has never existed before they show it the first time. It may have a completely different meaning or purpose than what you thought you were doing. So when that thing is finally up there, everything may turn ugly. Everybody may hate it.”
Everybody did hate “The Lonely Guy,” Martin says. And some of his other movies were not box-office bonanzas.
The worst part about the work is the roller-coaster effect it has on your life, says the 47-year-old actor, who is married to British actress Victoria Tennant.
“You can be ecstatic or crushed within 24 hours. Sometimes you screen a movie for the first time and you just say to yourself, `Why do I do this? This is a nightmare. I’m so afraid. This thing we’ve worked on-everybody believed in it-now we’re going to get this test that’s going to be so devastating or uplifting.’
“I remember the first time we screened `Roxanne,’ I said, `I think there’s two laughs. They’ll laugh here and they’ll laugh there.’ Two minutes into the picture and they laughed. And you go, `Wow, they’re with you. And it’s great!’ “
Even if the movie’s flagging, says Martin, breaking into a grin, you manage to fool yourself.
“There’s this will to believe and even when it’s bombing, you say, `It’s working. It’s working.’ “