New York — IT'S hard to imagine a better place to meet Dennis Farina than in New York's Friars Club. Its borscht belt clientele and social-club ambience is old school, like Farina himself.
"A lot of them are in show business in one way or another," says Farina, surveying the wood-paneled room and its lunchtime customers, some of whom stop to say hello. "A lot of them are retired. Some guys run casinos in Vegas." Farina fits right in, though he's wearing an orange shirt, which is at odds with the conservative suits and ties all around him. But he's nothing if not slick: He's got a pinkie ring, polished nails, a trim gray mustache, a full head of gray hair and a rough, ruddy complexion. He's the most colorful guy in a room full of colorful guys.
For years Hollywood has used Farina's off-screen qualities for on-screen duty as gangsters, cops and other assorted tough guys in such films as "Get Shorty" (1995) and "Out of Sight" (1998) and on television shows such as "Law & Order" (2004-06).
"You meet a lot of people who play tough guys and you realize they're just actors and they're not tough at all," says director Zak Penn. "The thing about Dennis is he's a pretty tough guy." Adds director John Dahl, "He's really become a cultural icon for that genre of a guy. He's almost gotten to the point where he's not an actor anymore. He's Dennis Farina."
This image gets a workout in three new or upcoming films. In Dahl's "You Kill Me" (which opened Friday), Farina plays a cold-blooded Buffalo, N.Y., mobster who's rubbing out the competition. In Penn's improvisational "The Grand" (which will land in theaters next year), he's an old poker pro disgusted by the Disney-fication of the game and Las Vegas. And in Ed Burns' "Purple Violets" (looking for distribution), he is featured in a cameo role as a cutthroat New York real estate agent. He'll also be appearing in a movie produced by the Farrelly brothers -- "National Lampoon's Bag Boy" (release pending), playing a grocery store owner who sees world-class bag-boy potential in one of his employees.
Farina says he doesn't mind being pigeonholed as "Dennis Farina" -- what he cares about are the characters. "I really never cared about what the guy did, whether he was a good guy or a bad guy," he says. "But I was always interested in the way he did it. There are good bad guys and bad good guys. I don't mind playing them if they're funny. I think it happens that those guys are funny. Whether the rest of the world thinks they're funny is another subject."
