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Professor pretty boy

Aidan Quinn's looks almost cost him a role, but Streep stepped in

BY LEWIS BEALE | Special to Newsday

April 11, 2008

It's not as if Aidan Quinn had a lot of time to prepare for his role as a high-powered physics professor in "Dark Matter," opening today. Fact is, the makers of the low-budget film about the professional and personal conflicts between a Chinese exchange student and his department chair were desperate: The actor who was supposed to play the role of the older academic had dropped out due to other commitments, and the film was in its second week of production. So director Chen Shi-Zheng brainstormed with co-star Meryl Streep, who suggested the 49-year-old Irish-American actor, someone she had worked with in the past.

"My manager called me," said Quinn, "and told me they were shooting in Utah, there was very little money, and they wanted me in two days. I said, 'No thanks.' Then he said Meryl Streep is your co-star, and she suggested you, and I said, 'When's the next flight?'"

In other words, Meryl wants you, you come. But Quinn, a consummate pro who has had success in theater, TV and film, did not show up in Salt Lake City unprepared.

"By the time he came to Utah, he had watched some documentaries on PBS about scientists, and he was trying to work through his physicality to play a professor," says director Chen, who initially felt Quinn was too good looking for the role. "By day one, I knew he was going to work out. We had this big scene with many extras, and I was looking at him, and I suddenly believed when he gave a speech he could be the professor."

"Dark Matter" is about a student who thinks he has made a major discovery in his field and pursues his research, despite his mentor's disapproval. But it's also about cultural adaptation and misunderstanding, something Quinn, whose parents moved back and forth between Ireland and America, understood all too well.

"I liked the story, particularly the cultural thing in terms of Chinese students adapting to America," he says. "Watching my parents as immigrants, I had experienced all that."

A stage-trained actor (he recently appeared Off-Broadway in "Conversations in Tusculum" at the Public Theater) who has done everything from Sam Shepard to Tennessee Williams, Quinn got his start with Chicago's famous Goodman and Steppenwolf theaters.

Quinn eventually moved to New York and replaced Ed Harris in Shepard's "Fool for Love." He was a critical darling until he took on the Stanley Kowalski role in a 1988 revival of "A Streetcar Named Desire," which was not well received.

"That was the fall from grace, and that was hard," says Quinn. "Doing that part was very scary, but I had to do it, because it's a great play. Was I not supposed to do it because Brando did it?"

By that point, however, Quinn had already achieved film and TV success in the 1985 screwball comedy "Desperately Seeking Susan," and the AIDS drama "An Early Frost."

Since then, he's been a reliably attractive presence in "Legends of the Fall," " Michael Collins," "Music of the Heart" (co-starring Streep) and many other films and episodic TV shows.

Even though his looks and skills are still intact, Quinn, who has never been a major Hollywood player, admits that as he approaches 50, the good parts are getting harder to find.

"There's a natural slowing down," he says. "It's gotten more difficult. There are more supporting parts. There is less money. Everything is less."