Actor Ron Rifkin and I spent an hour chatting in one of his favorite neighborhood haunts, Odeon, in TriBeCa. Strictly a liquid meal, Mr. Rifkin contentedly sipped a carrot soup an alarming shade of bright orange, chased by a single glass of red wine. I settled for a Heineken. We were there to discuss his starring role in the new film version of Jon Robin Baitz's hit play of a few years back The Substance of Fire, but inevitably, the conversation never strayed very far from the inextricably linked subjects of theater and Mr. Baitz, with whom Rifkin continues to share an enormously fruitful creative alliance, as well as close friendship. Mr. Rifkin was gracious and down-to-earth, and as always, the time went all too quickly.	. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

.

UD:  Was acting something you always wanted to do since you were a small kid? RR:  Well, I grew up in Brooklyn, in Williamsburg, and at that time, it was a kind of shtetl-like community of orthodox or conservative Jews. My mother was one of 14 children so we had a lot of relatives around us. So that was my background, and I never really knew about the theater or what the theater was. But I always knew that I loved to sing and dance and be somewhat in the center, whatever that meant. I remember I had a cousin who had a one-room apartment where the bedroom area was separated from the living area by a curtain. And I would tell my cousin, "Now I'll get behind the curtain, you announce my name first, and I'll come out singing and dancing." I couldn't have been more than three or four. The only connection I can make with that probably has to do with the synagogue. It was huge (it probably wasn't, but I remember it like that), the women sat upstairs in the balcony, the men sat downstairs, they would open these big curtains out of which would come these big Torahs. We would kiss it and touch it, and it was wrapped in blue velvet, burgundy velvet, jewels and silver. Very beautiful. Very theatrical. There was music. It was all very thrilling. So I must have made some connection there, some sort of a religious connection. Theater really is some sort of a Temple, I guess. UD:  And later on in school? RR:  I did do theater in high school but I was never given good parts in college. But I apprenticed in summer stock. One summer, I was given a lead in a play -- actually, a musical -- the same musical in which Barbra Streisand had her first professional job -- The Boyfriend. And she had a tiny little part and I had a big part. So you see, I started in musicals. UD:  When you started off, did you see yourself as the leading man type, or as a character actor or what?

RR:  I don't think I ever really thought about it. There are certain actors who really have a very good sense of the business of show business, figuring out who they are, what they can do, what the market is. I've never been very good at that. I've never planned my quote-unquote career. It's just never been something I was interested in doing, nor is it something I would have been very good at had I tried. I just sort of went with whatever seemed to be happening. I wish I had been better at it. I wish I did have a sense of: Oh, this is what you're supposed to do. Now you'll do this, now you'll do that. This is where you'll go for this. And these are the parties you should go to and these are the people you should hang out with. You know, I've been doing this for 30 years, and in retrospect, I wish I had been better at it. UD:  But haven't you gotten to a point where you really don't need to? RR:  I think you always need to. I think I'm pretty naive about those things. You know, my father was a really brilliant businessman. He was very good in that world. And consequently, I'm not. I was never interested in business things. How to make money never interested me, all those things in that area, I was never very good at. Probably because my father was so good at it, I guess. UD:  How did your ongoing creative collaboration with Jon Robin Baitz come about? RR:  In the summer of 1988, I did an Arthur Miller play -- The American Clock -- in Williamstown, Massachusetts. Robbie happened to be in the audience and he told me afterwards that when I came out on stage, something happened to him. He didn't quite understand what it was but he -- this is Robbie speaking, not me -- he felt he was watching a man at the height of his power and he came up to me afterwards and said that he'd like to write a play for me someday. I laughed and said, "Uh-huh, sure. Of course..whatever." And we became friends after that summer. I eventually joined the company of Naked Angels and Robbie wrote The Substance of Fire. So Isaac was a gift for me from Robbie. You know, he is in touch with a kind of genius. There was no question of my ever doing or not doing it. It's just what I was supposed to do. He's very much my family, one couldn't be closer with another human being. We're great friends.