Brian Dennehy's credit, piled one atop the other, stand as tall as the 6'3" Irish-American actor himself. His films include Cocoon, Presumed Innocent, Gorky Park, Best Seller, 10, Silverado and First Blood, in which he was the first to unhinge Rambo. Dennehy's stage work moves easily from The Iceman Cometh to The Cherry Orchard. He has enlivened TV and cable with The Jackie Presser Story and To Catch a Killer, in which he played John Wayne Gacy. He's also writing and hoping to direct an adaptation of Elmore Leonard's Swag and will soon appear on TV as the chief psychiatrist in the series Birdland, set in a mental hospital.

When Dennehy isn't working, you'll find him either at home in Santa Fe, New Mexico, at a new home near Dublin, Ireland or indulging a passion for sailing. Contributing Editor David Rensin met with Dennehy in Los Angeles, where the actor stopped briefly on a trip between Ireland and Vancouver, B.C. "Dennehy takes an entropic view of life," says Rensin. "But he seems eager enough to talk about any subject on earth, even though he thinks everything around us is falling apart."

Q 1

PLAYBOY: What are the automatic privileges afforded to a man of size?

Brian Dennehy: They are dubious privileges at best. Years ago people I'd never met would come up to me in bars and say something like, "You're not so fucking tough." People always ask me if my size has helped or hurt me in this business. It's pretty much an even split. There are roles I'd love to do and don't get because of my size. But I don't go home at night and say, "You son of a bitch, why weren't you born Tom Cruise or Kevin Costner?" At some point you just say, "OK, this is it." I guess that's some kind of maturity. But I struggled with it for a long time. I was not happy being who I was. I went to Columbia on a football scholarship. There's something rewarding about making a good, hard tackle, but I was much more interested in the mental aspects of the game. While at school I contacted the Columbia Players, which was a famous drama group. I really wanted to be a part of it. Yet, because I was a well-known football player, there was no way. I remember vividly how much that hurt. I wanted that. And I knew I could not have it.

Q 2

PLAYBOY: What would you like to be small enough to do?

Brian Dennehy: A love scene with Sharon Stone.

Q 3

PLAYBOY: Didn't you once say there are few love scenes for actors over 30 who don't have 32-inch waists? What important erotic secret is America missing because of that attitude.

Brian Dennehy: In France guys like Gérard Depardieu are sexy and interesting and are allowed completed lives on- and offscreen. In this country it's incomprehensible that someone over 50 might still be getting laid. That limits us. But it has always been that way in Hollywood. It's that old rationale: "Do I want to fuck her? If I want to fuck her, I'll give her the part in the movie. Because if I want fuck her, everybody else wants to fuck her." Or it's "She's attractive, she can act, but I don't want to fuck her, so she can't have the part." It's all about fuckability.

Women actors have to be not only fuckable but attainable, which is not to say that certain women haven't achieved success by being really attainable. When I was a kid I was crazy for Lilli Palmer because she was unattainable. The same thing is true of Sharon Stone. She is a very interesting and attractive woman. She has figured out that the process is a joke. It's a gag you play with the audience. You give up a little piece of yourself. But at the same time, you're winking at the audience, saying, "I know what you're thinking and you know that I know what you're thinking, and let's just have a good time and enjoy it." That is a critical breakthrough for an actor to make.

It's popular around this town to knock what Sharon's done the past couple years. Actually, what she figured out is extremely sophisticated. Demi Moore, for instance, desperately wants this thing, and the problem is you can see that. You can feel that. Film critic David Denby said that the overwhelming emotion Moore gives off is anger. The reason is that her desire comes out as "Goddamn it, why don't you get it? You know, I deserve to be a star." [Laughs] And maybe she does. She's not a bad actress. She certainly attractive. Sharon Stone doesn't have that desperation. She has the coolness and this great sense of humor.

Q 4

PLAYBOY: You could easily be talking about Madonna. Why can't she pull it off on the silver screen?

Brian Dennehy: She's not an enormously talented singer. She's not a great songwriter. And yet she's the biggest star in the world simply through sheer fucking will. I respect her enormously. To get on the leading edge and stay there--especially for a woman--is miraculous. As for movies, she was kind of cute and spontaneous in her first few pictures. But she really has no respect for acting. I've met her once or twice. I get the impression that she's really bored. It was the same thing with Sinatra. Although he was a good and interesting actor for many years, he just hated the process of making movies because it was--and he's right, it is--fucking boring. It's hour after hour of just hanging around waiting to do these little bits and pieces. Sinatra couldn't stand the idea that 12 hours of his life were going by every day and he was working four or five minutes. That may be Madonna's problem. She doesn't want it to be boring, but it is.

The thing about acting, especially in front of camera, is that you can't reach out and grab the camera and shake it and say, "I want this." It doesn't work that way. You have to figure out what it is that you want and then you have to hide it from the camera and you have to let the camera discover it. And it better be something you really want.

Q 5

PLAYBOY: What are you obsessive about?

Brian Dennehy: Work, for sure. But in this country we take that as a given. Strange. [Pauses] As I get older I've giving up a lot of my obsessions. I used to be a pretty serious drinker. Heavy in defiance of knowing my family situation, which is chock-full of alcoholism. For a long time I was a functional alcoholic, though it never got in the way of my work. But it affected relationships. I never killed anybody, but I made people unhappy, including myself and people who are extremely important to me, like my kids. It's easy to say I had a wonderful time and a lot of great years, and I did. There were some bad times, too. So that was not a major give-up. That time was due.