Bill Irwin sees life after the circus

See, Ma, you can turn out OK after running away with the circus.

That's what actor-

director Bill Irwin did, helping establish the Pickle Family Circus in San Francisco after graduating from Ringling Brothers' clown college in the 1970s. From there, he went on to create, direct and star in a series of Broadway shows ("Fool Moon," "Largely New York") where he barely uttered a sound but captivated audiences with his agile, athletic foppery. Someone decided the dude could actually speak onstage, and he began nabbing Broadway roles in "Waiting for Godot," "The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?" and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" (for which he earned a Tony Award for best actor in a play).

On-screen, he has popped up in "Rachel Getting Married" (as Anne Hathaway's gentle dad) and episodes of "CSI" (as a psychopath).

Oh, yeah, and along the way, he snapped up one of those MacArthur "genius" grants.

In the latest production of "King Lear," which opened Tuesday at the Public Theater and runs through Nov. 20, he's back to his rubber-limbed tricks, playing The Fool to Sam Waterston's Lear.

Irwin, who is married with one son, spoke with Newsday contributor Joseph V. Amodio about clowning, baggy pants and the dark secret of Waterston's "tight buns."

SEE PHOTOS‘Jersey Shore’ cast stops by Z100, more celebs in NYC

This is the first Shakespeare play I read all the way through. I grew up partly in L.A. . . . but went to high school in Belfast. We did the best approximation that 17-year-olds can do of the play. It's lived in my mind for a long, long time. I shamelessly begged to be part of it. I really wanted to do this role . . . and work with Sam Waterston.

He's got the energy and tight buns of a 30-year-old actor. I can say that because we have to carry him offstage, and I always think, "Jeez, trim little set of hamstrings." He's amazing. He's in the theater wanting to make everything better each day.

Here's the dark secret -- he's got a rowing machine at the Public. He's religious about it. And he knows Shakespeare backward and forward. He's played so many roles.

Well . . . [He laughs.] Baggy pants say something. They're intrinsically funny -- they change the shape of the body. But they also hearken to an unconscious cultural memory we have from the silent film era and previous traditions. Chaplin, Buster Keaton, they all experimented with clothes that were too large -- or too small. I just love baggy pants.

Uh-oh . . . let me just guess.

Wow, it's nice you have some sympathy. Most people don't bother to feel bad for clowns. It's amazing the number of people who say, "As a kid, I hated clowns," but with an edge. [He chuckles.] Like this particular practitioner they're talking to is somewhat responsible. Here's what I find interesting -- if you formed a committee to sit down and create an image for comedy and children's entertainment, the clown is the last thing you'd create. And yet that's what we have, coming down through time. And then there's coulrophobia -- the clinical term for fear of clowns. If you go on the Internet, you can find a video of a woman crying, "HE'S NOT GONNA COME IN HERE, IS HE?" It's sad, really.

That's the actor's life. It's a profession that resists planning.

They bolster each other, sometimes. She'll be attending a client who has two other kids and . . . sometimes, Mr. Noodle, my character from "Sesame Street," has been called upon to distract. . . . You know, being around birth, even vicariously, it's great.

In the '70s. Oh, did I learn a lot. There's a sort of calculus always going on in your mind -- "I'm losin' 'em, "I'm losin' 'em." There are various techniques to get 'em back again. But if the clown you're playing isn't interesting to them, they can do lots of other things with their energy.

Oh, it's much more primal.