'Closer' star talked his way into role

By LUAINE LEE

McClatchy-Tribune News Service

HOLLYWOOD - When actor Jon Tenney was auditioning for TNT's "The Closer," he talked himself right out of the role.

"They wanted me to play the part of Gabriel. They said, 'It's not in the pilot, but there's going to be a love interest with Kyra [Sedgwick's] character and we want to have a romantic element.'

"I read it and I thought it was very well-written. I said, 'First, I think Gabriel has to be 30 years old max, he has to be younger. And there can't be a romance because they're both in the same squad.' "

Before they could object, he added, "There is a role in the pilot - it's one scene - this guy Fritz Howard.' And I actually pitched it in the room. 'This is interesting, he's known her from the past, he's outside the unit, he's with the FBI, that might be interesting.' They said, 'No, we really want you to be Gabriel.' "

Luckily for Tenney the producers changed their minds.

"That's actually how it happened. To the creators' and directors' and producers' credit, the first scene ever shot was that scene with us," he recalled in an office near the set here.

Tenney, 47, not only went on to co-star as Sedgwick's boyfriend, but by the end of last season their characters tied the knot, opening the show to new possibilities.

Tenney has been the bulwark of series television before in shows like "Brooklyn South," "Equal Justice" and "Crime & Punishment."

Acting has been his passion since the third grade, when he played Kayak in "Kayak and the Wishing Pictures." He can still recite that first line: "Ayyyy, spring is in the air. I can smell it and I can feel it too."

At first glance, acting seems an odd choice for the son of a psychiatrist and a nuclear physicist.

"My mother always thought it was because I wanted my say at the dinner table because I was the youngest of four kids," he said, seated on a chenille couch in one of the producer's offices.

"And so I said, ' . . . now look at me, I'll choose a profession where you have to pay attention.' That was her psychiatrist's analysis of it."

Even so, his parents supported his errant desire. One of his regrets is that his father died soon after Tenney finished college and never saw any if his successes.

"It took me years to work through that grief. Mother died two years ago," he said quietly.

Tenney was married for 10 years to actress Teri Hatcher.

"It was a hard time after my marriage broke up," he confessed.

"Everybody has his own process. I fell off the map a little bit and retreated, and it took me a while till I had this image of coming up for air: 'I'm finally at a place where I can come up for air.' I wasn't working at the time, and then some work came along and it was very, very helpful. I always feel alive at work."

Tenney thinks that losses like that can affect your work.

"Crises in your life make you a broader person and as an actor the goal, at least, is to really be in touch and to be able to access as fully as you can all that's within you - all the experience and all the imagination everything that's inside you," he said.

"The broader your life experience, I suppose there's more material to access. Now whether

you're able to do that, some people close off parts of themselves because it's easier to live with it closed off, in which case it might not help you as an actor.

"I'm always struck by that interesting thing that's asked of actors - especially in this business, which can be so brutal, you have to have such armor in order to survive.

"But the work you do is all about stripping away this armor. It's this odd duality. Have your armor on to survive the business but get naked when we want you to. And it's tricky. I think you have to surround yourself with a lot of support."

Now his biggest support and joy are his 11-year-old daughter, Emerson Rose, and his sweetheart, producer Leslie Urdang.

"We are very happily living together and creating a home. I feel as married as if I had the official paperwork," he said.

"If that becomes an issue and it needs to be official, that will happen. At the moment, I was married for 10 years - lots of fabulous things - part of me says, 'I did marriage, and now I'm not.' "

He and Urdang had known each other since the mid-'80s as friends and colleagues.

"I'd ended a long relationship and she'd ended a long relationship, so when we got back together we looked at each other like, 'Hummm . . . ' The timing was everything.

"What was nice when we did become a couple, we instantly had all these old friends . . . "

Urdang's next project is "Rabbit Hole" with Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart. Tenney plays Eckhart's best friend. "It'll be nice. We'll get to work together," he said, smiling. *