Boston Common - Niche Media - A side of Boston that's anything but common.
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alma mater. Armed with a healthy skepticism toward authority, he and his buddies enjoyed wreaking havoc at the school. "We turned it into a zoo," he says. It was during his cut-up days at St. Sebastian's that Slattery discovered the appeal of acting. At night he would channel surf and stop at scenes that hooked his imagination, like those from I, Claudius, the BBC TV miniseries starring Derek Jacobi about the machinations of lust and power in ancient Rome. "The production values were cheap, but the acting was so good that I would be riveted for hours," he says. It dawned on Slattery that he might take a flyer on an acting career, and after graduating with a fine arts degree from The Catholic University "I LIKE ROGER. HE MAY SAY AND DO THINGS THAT I FIND ABHORRENT, BUT I UNDERSTAND HIM. WE ARE ALL TRAPPED, TO SOME EXTENT, BY OUR CHOICES." of America in 1984, he headed to New York. "My father said, 'Give it a couple of years,' but I never put a time limit on it," he says. "I had no plan B." His ascent was incremental, marked by the insecurity of where the next job would come from but also buoyed by growing critical acclaim in such plays as Terrence McNally's The Lisbon Traviata and Richard Greenberg's The Extra Man, Night and Her Stars, and Three Days of Rain. It was in the latter 1997 production, opposite Patricia Clarkson and Bradley Whitford, that Slattery earned the best reviews of his career, as "a taci- turn architect" whom he played with a quiet, deeply wounded intensity. Featured Broadway roles were also in the mix, including Neil Simon's Laughter on the 23rd Floor and a 2000 revival of Harold Pinter's Betrayal opposite Juliette Binoche and Liev Schreiber. With a slew of good notices and numerous offers for featured parts in film and TV, Slattery seemed to be on a career arc that commanded critical acclaim and respect—but not much money or fame. Then, in 2006, Rabbit Hole changed his life. Matthew Weiner, Mad Men's creator and executive producer, saw him in the play. Shortly after catching the performance, Weiner called Slattery to audition. What appealed to the producers was how he managed to bring a wry and baffled masculinity to the Sterling role that makes the character sympathetic, despite his overt selfishness and sexism. "I like Roger," says Slattery of his Mad Men alter ego. "He may say and do things that I find abhorrent, but I understand him. We are all trapped, to some extent, by our choices and the consequences of those choices." Even after the success of Mad Men, now in its fifth season, and featured roles in the films Iron Man 2 and The Adjustment Bureau, Slattery can't shake the insecurity that shadows most actors. "The series will go on for a couple of seasons, and then what?" says Slattery. "Not Mohair suit, Prada ($2,940). Saks Fifth Avenue, The Shops at Prudential Center, 617-262- 8500; saks.com. Dress shirt, Thomas Pink ($185). Copley Place, 617-267-0447; thomaspink.com that I want it to go on forever. That's part of what I like about what I do—the unpredictability of it all." Styling by Cannon for Judy Casey Grooming by Joanna Pensinger for Exclusive Artists Management Slattery is happy to spend his current capital on adventurous, often small roles in independent films, such Liza Johnson's Return, where he plays a flinty, Oxycontin-snorting Vietnam War vet, or Savelson's In Our Nature, about a father who finds himself accidentally holed up in a remote cabin with his estranged son and their respective girlfriends. They both came out earlier this year, and Lance Edmands' Bluebird—which Slattery recently finished filming, playing a logger in the north Maine woods whose job is threatened by the closing of the local paper mill—is slated for release later in 2012. Irrespective of billing or box-office draw, says Slattery, "You look for things that you have an emotional and intellectual connection to, roles that excite you." in Brian Slattery has also branched out into directing, having done so on a couple of episodes of Mad Men, and is hoping to direct his own adaptation of a Pete Dexter novel, God's Pocket. Though the latter is set in Philadelphia, the characters are small-time hoods who remind Slattery of the Boston wiseguys in films like The Friends of Eddie Coyle and The Departed. "They were menacing men who didn't have to show it because they were so thoroughly who they were," he says. Slattery appears to be "thoroughly" who he is as well. An actor, for sure, but also a husband for the past 13 years, to the actress Talia Balsam (who was once married to George Clooney and who played Sterling's bitter ex-wife in earlier epi- sodes of Mad Men), and a father to their 13-year-old son, Harry. Slattery says that Sterling's flaws have helped him realize just how dif- ficult change is. Nonetheless, he hopes to avoid the same fate by evolving as an actor. "There's a line in this season of Mad Men that goes, 'Happiness is the moment before you need more happiness.' Which is true. We're not satisfied as human beings, and that's good and bad: 'If I have this, can I have that?' But it's not the having that's worth it. It's the opportu- nity to create. That's the satisfaction." BC