CINEMA: CLOSET HAMLET

I gotta say, this is really a terrific skull," Kevin Kline informs me as he holds Yorick's skull in his hand. We are at the Players club in New York City, standing in the private bedroom of Edwin Booth, the legendary 19th century actor whose Hamlet once defined the role. Kline strokes the skull slowly, lovingly. "Smooth. Very smooth."

Kline has contemplated his fair share of Yoricks. Inside the green canvas bag slung over his shoulder--along with a pack of Marlboro Lights and two recently bought pairs of wire-rim reading glasses--is a copy of Hamlet, a play he has carried with him almost constantly since he moved to New York a quarter-century ago. It is hardly as though he needs to read Hamlet again; he can recite the role from memory and has no current plans to perform the lead, having already done so twice in the past 12 years to warm reviews. Yet, for reasons even Kline cannot quite explain, he chooses to keep Hamlet handy at all times. Ever the dutiful student, the star of the forthcoming movies In & Out and The Ice Storm approaches his 50th birthday on Oct. 24 with the tenacity of a young actor still in search of answers. "It changes every time you read it," he says. "Just when you think you have Hamlet figured out, he does something so unexpected, you have to reconsider him completely."

Could it be that the actor has formed a permanent mind meld with the melancholy Danish prince? In a career that has spanned 15 years of movies, Kline, like the Shakespearean character he most adores, has defied all attempts at easy explanation. He routinely follows up a mainstream Hollywood star turn (like 1993's Dave) with an eccentric role in a smaller film (like last year's Fierce Creatures). He switches--almost as though compelled to do so--from dark dramas like The Ice Storm to broad comedy like In & Out, movies he made back to back. He can play the fool or the hero, but typically prefers to morph them into something new. In an industry in which casting generally reflects a movie star's ability to sell tickets, Kline is that rare exception--an actor whose unique talent has kept his name above the title regardless of his ability to affect the bottom line.

"He really is like Cary Grant, who did the most outrageous comedy and also the most sophisticated line readings," says director Lawrence Kasdan, who has worked with Kline in five movies, including The Big Chill and Silverado. "Here's a guy who's made a lot of money for a long time doing exactly what he wants. I think it's a charmed life."

Charmed indeed. Shuttling constantly between plays and movies, Kline has earned two Tonys and an Oscar by finding and playing variations of Hamlet in other men who suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. He first confounded moviegoers in 1982 as Nathan Landau, Meryl Streep's psychotic lover in Sophie's Choice. A year later, he backflipped effortlessly into the running shoes of Harold Cooper in The Big Chill, a successful entrepreneur at odds with his counterculture roots. Even his dual character in Dave--the story of an ordinary man pretending to be President--reflected a Hamlet-like internal struggle between heart and mind.