May 11, 2003

Where's Eddie?" a couple of passers-by ask, as John Mahoney poses for photographs on a busy Oak Park street corner. Mahoney laughs as if it is the very first time someone has thought to ask him this.

Without the photographer, Mahoney is frequently able to hide in plain sight. His face is, of course, incredibly familiar, but he's so unassuming that people don't always place it. And here in Oak Park, where Mahoney has lived for 12 years, he's just another neighbor.


He talks about his role on the hit show "Frasier" (Tuesdays at 8 p.m. on NBC) as if it's just another job.


"When you do a sitcom," he says, "you work three weeks and then you get a week off, to give the writers a chance to catch up on scripts, so I get to come home every fourth week.... Then we get two weeks off for Thanksgiving and three weeks off for Christmas."


The downtime, combined with a four-month break between seasons, means that Mahoney spends less than half of the year out in Los Angeles, where the show is filmed.


"It's terrific," he says, sounding more like a frugal business traveler than a celebrated TV and movie star, "because I can keep my residency here and pretty much write off all my expenses out there."


He's also pretty sure that his 1999 Lexus SUV is "the only car in L.A. with Illinois plates and an Oak Park sticker on it."


We are having lunch at Cucina Paradiso, a few blocks from Mahoney's condo. Dressed in khakis and a denim jacket, he has walked over, stopping briefly next door at the John Toomey Gallery to pick up a catalog for an upcoming auction of prairie-style art and furniture.


Mahoney lives alone and doesn't cook, so he eats here a lot.


"I'm going to have a pizza because I'll just eat half of it and take the rest home," he says, looking over the menu as he sips his cranberry juice.


"Oh, no," he groans, as something new catches his eye. "Pineapple on a pizza . . . that's not a pizza."


It's like L.A. has followed him home.


"That's one thing I really miss out there, Chicago pizza," he says, deciding to ignore the pineapple-y one and order a classic four cheese.


In his new movie, "Almost Salinas," released Friday, Mahoney plays Max Harris, the owner of a diner and gas station--actually, the diner and gas station--in Cholame, Calif., site of the crash that killed James Dean. Harris is kind of a lonely soul, a divorced guy who seems as uncomfortable with himself as he is with everyone around him.


Living alone is "not easy" for Harris, Mahoney says, "but it's a snap for me. I know some people, they're embarrassed about sitting alone in a restaurant. I couldn't care less. I eat most of my meals that way. Usually, I'll have a newspaper or, if it's lunch and I've already read the paper, I'll take a book."


Still, there is something--maybe it's just the weight of expectations that come from watching him on TV, portraying a family man for so long--that seems to be missing from John Mahoney's life. Like, for example, he doesn't have a dog.


"I was very close to getting one," he says. "These friends from California who sort of apartment-sit for me while I'm here said that they'd take care of it. But then I found out in my building, unfortunately, you're not allowed to take the dogs on the elevators. You can have a pet, but you've got to use the back stairs. I'm a little bit old to be taking a dog up and down the back stairs four or five times a day.


"Still," he says, "I'd love to get one."


And, though he is deeply content being by himself, he also says, "I had always wanted children, always wanted to be married. It just never happened for me. Long-term relationships, but never that final step."


Stopping himself, he changes course.


"Now, there again, I couldn't have done it at 37," he says, referring to his relatively late-in-life decision to quit his job as a medical journal editor and pursue an acting career. "If I had a mortgage and children to put through school and I had a family to support, so, you know, I guess there's a reason for everything . . . I won't say it's luck that I didn't get married, but I couldn't be doing . . . I never could have, I just couldn't have quit my job at that age with a family to support."


"I remember going to midnight mass one time, a couple of years ago," Mahoney says. "I saw this old college classmate of mine who lives in Oak Park. And he said to me after mass, 'Why you? I don't understand that, you know, you weren't that good, I was much better. Why you and not me?' And I said, 'Well, Marty, because when we got through with school, you chose to get married, settle down and raise a family, and I chose to go for it. That's why.'"


We both laugh, maybe louder than we should.


"I hope I get to say that to someone someday," I say, letting a little of my own yes-I'm-still-single angst slip into our conversation.


John Mahoney would not be himself if he had not always had that deep streak of independence. He wouldn't have come here, after his childhood in England, to create a life for himself in America, if he'd been concerned with settling down. But it's too easy to think of him as someone who sacrificed family for career. Because as much as he likes to make it sound like just any old job, acting, for John Mahoney, is something closer to a calling. It, right along with that independence, is the thing that makes him most himself.


"I have no fear whatsoever when I'm playing someone who's not me," he says. "I'll do anything, put myself in any situation, regardless of how ridiculous it is, as long as it's not me. It's being myself that is horrible and hard for me."


He says that giving the commencement address at his Downstate alma mater, Quincy University, was "the most horrifying experience of my life because it was me, giving this speech."


He's going to be doing it again this year--picking up an honorary doctorate from Western Illinois University, where he earned his master's degree and briefly taught English--and says he's trying to figure out a way to do it without breaking out in hives.


"I think maybe I'll just create a character and play that character when I give the speech," he says. "It's funny, as long as I'm somebody else, I have no problem. I just have a problem with being me.


"I wasn't always that way. I mean, I was a very gregarious child and very outgoing. But things change as you get older, even physically. When I was a kid, I was fearless. Now I have--what do you call it?--vertigo. It's amazing . . . I never had that as a kid. I was fearless as a kid, I'd climb the highest diving boards, climb the highest trees, so I just have no idea what happened."


He has his leftovers wrapped up to go.


"No bread pudding today?" the waitress asks.


"No," he says with a smile. He'll come back for it.


He leaves with a friendly wave goodbye, walking back into a quiet, private Oak Park life that might be blissful or sad or perfect or lonely. He doesn't say.