The acting life of Keith Kupferer spans two unlikely leading roles. The first was Stanley Kowalski in “A Streetcar Named Desire” in high school. He was barely old enough to drive. “I didn’t understand a lot of it,” Kupferer says now. “To say the least.”
Forty years later, he got cast in the Chicago-based film “Ghostlight,” which made its world premiere in January at the Sundance Film Festival. For his performance, Kupferer scored both Gotham Award and Independent Spirit Award nominations in the leading role category, alongside Colman Domingo. (Domingo recently won the Gotham prize.)
Kupferer anchors the IFC Films release “Ghostlight” as Dan, a construction worker grieving the heaviest of personal losses, while more or less accidentally joining a storefront theater production of “Romeo and Juliet.” After a young actor cast as Romeo bails out, with opening night approaching fast, first-time actor Dan reluctantly steps up to play Shakespeare’s unluckiest teenager in love.
In 30 years of TV and film appearances, Kupferer has played cops, coaches and other supporting roles calling for salt-of-the-earth, down-to-earth, terra firma types. (On stage, he has amassed a far broader array of characters over time.) The “Ghostlight” role was written for Kupferer, now 59, by screenwriter and co-director Kelly O’Sullivan, who’d acted with him in the 2014 American Theatre Company staging of “The Humans.”
So: a comfortable fit. The unlikely aspect is simply this: It’s Kupferer’s first leading role in a movie.
“Before ‘Ghostlight,’” he tells me, after pouring some coffee at his Evanston home, “I would’ve said, ‘Well, this is it. This is my career, and I’m fine with it. I’m a day player. Maybe I can get a week on a series or a movie here and there, but no one’s hiring me as a lead.’ Then, when this came along, I thought, ‘OK, this is my one opportunity. Don’t mess it up.”
In “Ghostlight,” Kupferer shares crucial scenes with his wife, Tara Mallen, founder of Chicago’s 30-years-and-counting Rivendell Theatre Ensemble. She plays Sharon, Dan’s schoolteacher spouse; the couple’s real-life daughter, Katherine Mallen Kupferer, portrays Daisy, a theater kid to the core and a storehouse of resentments. She’s hurting inside, no less than her parents, just in a different way.
With Dan in “Ghostlight,” says Kupferer, “the hard part was figuring out … ” He pauses, clears his throat. “Figuring out how much grief this man — ” Shorter pause, then, quietly: “Figuring out the right amount of grief this man’s holding onto, because of what happened, which the audience learns about as the story unfolds. Holding onto that feeling as an actor, especially if you’re a parent, to stay in the place you need to, that’s … that’s the job.”
He doesn’t love talking about acting. “It’s so easy to sound like you’re full of precious, esoteric crap. Whatever you do — whether you’re an actor, or a writer, or a plumber — it’s the same, really: You get into a headspace where you’re focused on the work. With acting, you do certain specific things to call up emotions to influence your behavior. Sometimes it’s not fun. But you do it.”
Kupferer’s father, now gone, was a plumber. His mother acted professionally for a while, before her three sons came along, and then worked as a sales rep for the Lakeville Journal in Connecticut. The family started out in West Orange, New Jersey, and moved to Millerton, New York, not far from Connecticut. Kupferer and Mallen met when they were 19, at Dutchess Community College. They went out for a while, broke up, got back together eight years later. And in 1992 they tied Mallen’s futon onto the top of Kupferer’s Corolla and drove from New York to Chicago.
The “Ghostlight” reception has launched a nicely busy year for Kupferer. He filmed a recurring role in the limited series “Emperor of Ocean Park,” now streaming. He and Mallen and a lot of other Chicago-based folks did a Coke commercial directed by Christopher Storer of “The Bear.” “Chicago Fire,” two episodes. Two new indie features, “Night Nurse” and, for a one-day gig in Dalton, “Be Right Back.”
During the times when “I felt like I was done with this,” he says, “Tara kept me going. She believed in me the whole time. And I believed in her. And we both believe in our daughter.” In Arkansas, Mallen and Kupferer Mallen recently filmed “Mouse,” the next feature from the “Ghostlight” team of O’Sullivan and co-director Alex Thompson.
For Kupferer, meantime, finding himself on nomination lists alongside Colman Domingo and Adrien Brody, “I mean, whaddya want? What more? After 30 years of doing what you do?”
Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.
