You may not place the name, but you’d probably recognize Steve Zahn in a second from his countless comic relief roles in films like “That Thing You Do,” “Out of Sight” and “Daddy Day Care,” even if you can’t quite place him.
“I get that all the time,” he confesses. “I tell them I’m an actor and they are like, `Nooooo.'” A veteran stage actor, he made his film debut in Ben Stiller’s 1994 “Reality Bites” and has been working strong and steady ever since. In the action adventure “Sahara,” starring Matthew McConaughey as novelist Clive Cussler’s hero Dirk Pitt, he gets to add kick-butt wiseacre to his resume.
Promoting the movie, Zahn talked about the film, his career as a character actor, and the pros and cons of being typecast.
Q. How did you land the role of Al Giordano?
A. Matthew (McConaughey) was an executive on it, and he sent me the script and this crazy letter, which was great. I really was very excited to be offered something in this genre, and I thought the characters were good. I usually hook up to a film and then in a month and a half, I’m out, gone. This was six months, all the way through the film. I just don’t get offered that.
Q. Did you meet Clive Cussler?
A. I did. I had to get approved by Clive. And he took awhile. (In a low, drawn-out voice) “You don’t have dark hair,” and I was like, “Well, I could dye it. That’s easily done.” (Again, in a low voice) “He was stronger than you.” “Yeah? How much did he bench?” (Laughs.) But he let me do it.
Q. You and Matthew McConaughey have an unspoken sense of teamwork that suggests a whole history of working together under fire.
A. Yeah, and we knew that that’s where you would get our relationship, and it took a lot of work to figure each other out. Matthew and I, because we spent a lot of time together before shooting, knew each other, knew how to approach each other as people, respect each other’s way of working enough to make that work. We trained together to get a language between us that would come across. And I think it does.
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Q. You’ve had a wide range of roles in your career but your big successes have been comic-relief roles. Do you worry about being typecast?
A. No, it’s a pleasure and a privilege. I really look at it as a career. I remember not getting offered “Dude, Where’s My Car?” and thinking, “Wow, I’ve graduated from college.” To be typecast and make money and make people happy and have people dig what you do, what a great thing, man.
Q. There obviously are advantages to having an instant screen persona, but are there disadvantages?
A. It hurts you on a studio level, depending how much control a director has. With a first-time director, studio film, comedy, there’s this list of people and I’m not on the list for the lead guys. I’m on the list for these guys over here. But some directors can see through that and know that you can do it.
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