With Bill Murray, Just Take the Trip

By DAVE ITZKOFF

WHAT do we still want from Bill Murray? His unpremeditated film career — in which he has parlayed performances as the happy-go-lucky heroes of 1980s-era slapstick into the existentially uncertain leading men of thoughtful comedies like “Groundhog Day,” “Rushmore” and “Lost in Translation” — would seem to be sufficient. Yet we demand more from this 62-year-old actor, on whose rugged face a playful smirk and a contemplative gaze look equally at home, and he appears happy to give it to us in his life beyond the screen. Tracking his movements in the wild, as he crashes karaoke parties and kickball games, has become an online pastime; Mr. Murray himself has become the folkloric equivalent of a leprechaun or fairy godparent, popping up at unpredictable yet opportune moments.

His latest role, in “Hyde Park on Hudson,” feels true to his resistance to being pinned down in any way. In this film, which is directed by Roger Michell and which Focus Features will release on Dec. 7, he plays President Franklin D. Roosevelt as he manages an affair with a distant cousin (Laura Linney), a visit from George VI of Britain and the crippling effects of his polio. It is a part that almost no one, least of all Mr. Murray, expected him to play, and it once again raises the question: Why does he do what he does?

On a recent visit to New York Mr. Murray gave a journalist a front-row seat to see his carefree philosophy in action. Actually, closer: After Mr. Murray’s interview with another interrogator ran overtime, I was invited to accompany him to an evening appearance at Florence Gould Hall — and onto the stage of its theater, where a private chat turned into a public spectacle for a few hundred members of the Screen Actors Guild. (Imagine accompanying Mr. Murray on a version of the famous tracking shot from “Goodfellas,” through the back rooms and bowels of an unfamiliar building until the moment you expect to part ways and take your seat in the audience, only to realize then that you’re part of the act.)

In these excerpts from that day’s conversations, Mr. Murray spoke about his need for a life free from preconceptions as much as he demonstrated it.

The afternoon begins in a Midtown Manhattan hotel room, where a publicist warns that Mr. Murray, now in a plaid shirt and blue shorts, will soon have to change for his public appearance.

Q. It’s good to meet you.

A. I’m sorry I went too long. I just feel badly when someone doesn’t have enough. Everyone wants to talk longer. Even I want to talk longer sometimes. And then I dig myself into holes I gotta get out of.

Q. Have you been getting good feedback on your performance?

A. I’m curious to see what people think of it, just ’cause it is not like an ordinary movie. I don’t know if it’s great or not. We’ll see what you get.

Q. Were you surprised that you were offered this role?

A. I thought, “Can this guy be serious?” I wouldn’t have cast myself. But this guy did, and about halfway through I went, “Wow, he really was right.” Not to compare myself, but certain personality things were similar, like the way he tried to leaven things and move attention around a room, get everyone their little slice of the sun.

Q. When you’re playing a real-life figure like Roosevelt, do you do any additional preparation for the role?

A. I’ve always tried to be a little bit loose. This great director we had at Second City [Del Close] said: “You wear your characters like a trench coat. It’s still you in there, but there’s like a trench coat.” So I figured this was like a winter trench coat, because there was just a little bit more character that comes to the party. So I did a lot more reading, a lot more studying.

Q. What did you learn from your research?

A. People ask, “Did this really happen?” Well, if you read the diaries, it’s very clear that it happened. The writing changes. You read this later stuff, when we’re at war, and he’s not telling his wife, he’s not telling the cabinet — they don’t know where he is. But he’s sending messages by courier to her every day. This girl was the vault. I love that expression: “She’s the vault.” He could tell her anything, and it wasn’t leaving her head.

Mr. Murray, having changed his shirt but still in the blue shorts, leaves the hotel and boards a chauffeured S.U.V., where the conversation continues.

Q. It sounds as if you also wanted to convey Roosevelt’s voice as much as his physical presence.

A. We had a discussion about it, and we agreed that you don’t want to do an impression. You want to get it in you, and then you want to play — — [The car is suddenly cut off by another vehicle.] That person was insane. [To his driver] Well-avoided, Mustafa. But you can bump her now. She’s got it coming.

Q. When an actor decides to play a president, it’s often a signal of larger ambitions or agendas. Is that the case here?

A. The thing I was concerned about was: The story that we’re going to tell, is it going to be a tearing down of an icon? I don’t know if I want to be part of that kind of action, where you trash someone. What was the John Travolta movie, “Primary Colors”? I didn’t want to do something where you were really just napalming someone.

Q. There’s a kind of joy you seem to bring out of people when they encounter you. Do you notice that?

A. Some are more joyous than others. I’m of the habit that if there are people waiting outside the hotel, you don’t sign those autographs there. Because that means when you come back in the middle of the night, they’re still there. It’s usually a one-time thing. That’s it; that’s your one time. You try your hardest, but you can’t always be perfect.

As he responds to this question, Mr. Murray brings me with him onto an elevator, guiding me through a backstage area and onto the stage, where the expectant audience applauds rapturously. Even though these plans were surely explained to me ahead of time, the effect is one of dreamlike disorientation, followed by a deep breath and a tacit decision to follow Mr. Murray’s lead.

Q. We were just talking about the joy you bring out of people. Do you believe it now?

A. Is this like the “Oprah” show? Does everyone have a gift under their seat? You guys are pretty jazzed up.

Q. I have read that you only consider offers that come to you through a special 1-800 phone number.

A. [Mischievously.] Well, there is that. But no two people have ever had the same route. I try to avoid the ordinary. People follow you into men’s rooms. I don’t want to encourage anyone. But they can be kind of odd. The early days, you could change every single word [in a screenplay], and no one cared. It was like: “That’s fine. That was terrible anyway.” But now, if the script’s really good, you don’t need to change very much. I realized the more fun I had, the more relaxed I was working, the better I worked.

Q. That seems to be a philosophy you apply not only to your work but to your entire life.

A. Well, I’ve made some mistakes in that area too. The more relaxed you are, the better you are at everything: the better you are with your loved ones, the better you are with your enemies, the better you are at your job, the better you are with yourself.

Q. You have enemies?

A. Oh, they’re out there. I know I’ve rubbed some people the wrong way. There was an autograph guy two days ago that got into it with me on the street. I said: “One of my habits is I don’t do exactly what you want me to do. I really didn’t get the guideline about your life. I was just trying to live my own right now.”

Q. I found online that you recently gave a 10- or 12-minute extemporaneous speech to a minor-league baseball hall of fame. Even in a moment like that, are you playing a role or being your authentic self?

A. Well, I think there’s an authentic self. Thank you for reminding me. [The audience laughs.] No, it’s true. You go on automatic sometimes, where you’re just reacting, as opposed to being your authentic self. Up here I can talk like a turkey and be funny, but it’s not necessarily my authentic self. Unless I’m watching myself.

I spoke about the first time I went to Wrigley Field in Chicago, and I was a big Cubs fan, and I watched all the games on TV, but when I grew up, TV was in black and white. So when I was 7 years old, I was taken to my first Cubs games, and my brother Brian said, “Wait, Billy,” and he put his hands over my eyes, and he walked me up the stairs. And then he took his hands away. [He begins to get choked up.] And there was Wrigley Field, in green. There was this beautiful grass and this beautiful ivy. I’d only seen it in black and white. It was like I was a blind man made to see. It was something.

Q. There seems to be so much serendipity in your life. Are you actively cultivating these moments or just hoping that they come to you?

A. Well, you have to hope that they happen to you. That’s Pandora’s box, right? She opens up the box, and all the nightmares fly out. And slams the lid shut, like, “Oops,” and opens it one more time, and hope pops out of the box. That’s the only thing we really, surely have, is hope. You hope that you can be alive, that things will happen to you that you’ll actually witness, that you’ll participate in. Rather than life just rolling over you, and you wake up and it’s Thursday, and what happened to Monday? Whatever the best part of my life has been, has been as a result of that remembering.

Q. Are there days where you wake up and think: “Nothing good has come to me in a little while. I’d better prime the pump”?

A. Well, who hasn’t woken up thinking, “God, nothing good has come to me in a while,” right? When I feel like I’m stuck, I do something — not like I’m Mother Teresa or anything, but there’s someone that’s forgotten about in your life, all the time. Someone that could use an “Attaboy” or a “How you doin’ out there.” It’s that sort of scene, that remembering that we die alone. We’re born alone. We do need each other. It’s lonely to really effectively live your life, and anyone you can get help from or give help to, that’s part of your obligation.

Q. The roles that you did 10, 20, 30 years ago, are you surprised that they still endure the way they do?

A. Certainly. When you did the job, you thought you were just trying to amuse your friends who are all on the job. I’m just trying to make the sound guy laugh, the script supervisor. A movie like “Caddyshack,” I can walk on a golf course, and some guy will be screaming entire scenes at me and expecting me to do it word for word with him. It’s like: “Fella, I did that once. I improvised that scene. I don’t remember how it goes.” But I’m charmed by it. I’m not like, “Hey, knock it off.” It’s kind of cool.

Q. Did you ever think that the lessons you first learned on the stage of an improv comedy theater in Chicago would pay off later in life?

A. It pays off in your life when you’re in an elevator and people are uncomfortable. You can just say, “That’s a beautiful scarf.” It’s just thinking about making someone else feel comfortable. You don’t worry about yourself, because we’re vibrating together. If I can make yours just a little bit groovier, it’ll affect me. It comes back, somehow.