Alan Arkin: The Reluctant Star

These are busy times for 72-year-old Alan Arkin, a star in the off-beat independent film "Little Miss Sunshine" that caught Hollywood off-guard.

The film, about a dysfunctional family racing to get their daughter to a kiddie beauty pageant, has been nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Arkin for Best Supporting Actor as the heroin-addicted grandfather who is not going anywhere quietly.

"How do I describe him? He's irascible. He's opinionated. He holds nothing back. And trying to maintain a life of debauchery and fun that he's had all his life," he told Sunday Morning correspondent Jerry Bowen.

It's a role Arkin almost didn't get.

"They thought I was too virile for the part which is the best turn-down I've ever had in my life," he said.

"They" are husband-and-wife directing team Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris.

"I guess we weren't ready to see Alan Arkin as a grandpa," Faris said.

When they heard Arkin loved the script, they reconsidered.

"He's a great dramatic actor and can be very truthful in performance," Dayton said. "But he's also obviously an incredibly funny person. And we needed both those things."

"Yeah, and the warmth," Faris said. "There's a warmth to him that was essential in terms of relating to his granddaughter."

When "Little Miss Sunshine" debuted at the Sundance Film Festival, no one knew what to expect.

"I thought it was gonna tank. I said, 'Oh God! The intimate, small, wonderful little experience, they're not gonna — it's just too big a venue for it.' And then they went crazy," Arkin said.

Really crazy. Fox Searchlight grabbed the distribution rights for a record $10.5 million dollars. Since its release last summer, the movie has pulled in nearly $60 million at the box office.

The family road trip that is the story of "Little Miss Sunshine" starts here in New Mexico, Arkin's real-life home. A retreat and getaway for the Brooklyn-born boy who grew up in Los Angeles but feels more comfortable in the Southwest — far from either coast.

Arkin says it isn't just the natural beauty that energizes him.

"Well, I like to be in a place where there are different kinds of neuroses," he said. "In L.A., there's just one: Look at me! And in New Mexico, there's a lot of different kinds. So I get to move around them more fluidly."

In Los Angeles, Arkin said everyone wants attention. That's not his style. People first paid attention to Arkin not for his acting but for his singing with a folk group called the Tarriers.

"It was just gonna be a job that I did on weekends to earn some pocket money," he said. "And within a couple of months after joining the group we had a hit record that took us around the world for a couple of years. Our hit song was — oh God, I'm so tired of talking about this — our hit was 'The Banana Boat Song.'"

Arkin co-wrote the song and the group performed it in the movie "Calypso Heat Wave." Harry Belafonte's version came later. For Arkin and the Tarriers, it seemed to be the ticket to the very good life.

"And that was exciting until I got to the Olympia Theater in Paris and I was playing the guitar and singing my brains out, and looked down at myself with my black satin pants on and my sports shirt opened to the navel," he said. "And I said, 'What the hell am I doing? Who am I?' I said, 'I gotta get back to acting.' And I quit the next day — and starved for another couple of years."

And then came the call to join Second City, a bold new improvisational comedy group in Chicago.

"I can't overemphasize how important it was," Arkin said. "It saved my life for one thing. I couldn't get arrested in New York."

Arkin says Second City, a comedy institution now, launched his acting career. Sketches with other rising stars such as Barbara Harris gave him a new confidence. And Hollywood took note.

His first film role brought him his first Oscar nomination: Best Actor in "The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming."

Two years later, a second Best Actor nomination came as the deaf mute in "The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter." In addition, Arkin terrorized Audrey Hepburn in the thriller "Wait Until Dark," and battled the military bureaucracy as Captain Yossarian in "Catch-22."

Arkin was on a roll, but he was miserable.

"For the first, I guess, 30 years of my life, 35, acting was my reason for living," Arkin said. "And if I wasn't acting or watching acting or talking about it, I felt like I didn't exist. I'd achieved everything I'd ever wanted to achieve as an actor. And once I was off the set, I was just miserably unhappy. And I realized that there was something wrong."

He says he is not as driven as he was, but while acting no longer defines him, it remains his passion.

"I've always had just a deep need to be with a group of people where everything is working and everybody is on the same page, like what happened with 'Little Miss Sunshine,'" he said. "When a movie has that kind of sense of community, the audience knows it. They always know it."

Arkin has made acting a family affair, working with all three of his sons, including Adam, playing the long-lost father to the surgeon son in Adam's old TV series, "Chicago Hope."

And now after all these years, Oscar has reared its golden head again.

"I mean I have fantasies about it," Arkin said about winning. "I have it, I take it home. Where am I gonna put it? I'm not gonna put it in the living room. I don't want to intimidate anybody — everybody that comes to see me."

But Arkin admits he would be a little depressed if he doesn't win — at least for a little while.

"Then my life would go back to being exactly what it is," he said. "I like my life. I love my wife. I love my kids. I love my grandchildren. I have wonderful friends. I get to see this" — indicating the view outside his New Mexico home — "everyday."