Nice Guy Actor Top Finisher As Villain
By Judi Grove
"I'm always actually interested in flawed characters. They're much more interesting, aren't they?"-Charles Keating, star of 'Another World'
In the subdued elegance of the Colony Hotel patio, Charles Keating stretched casually across the metal chair, looks and sounds less like a villain than almost anybody else. He flashes an easy smile that crinkles his face all the way up to his forehead. His laugh is almost a bass giggle. You know he's genuinely mirthful, not formulating some dastardly scheme.
And the 43-year-old actor was in Palm Beach for a brief visit with his Mum and Dad, Peg and Chas Keating, so you know he can't be all bad. His other life, though, is altogether different...for now, anyway. When Carl Hutchins smiles, look out!
Keating plays the archvillain Hutchins, with a plethora of plots for the ruination of his fellow characters, on the NBC afternoon soap opera, Another World. While the elder Keating, a retired cost analysis engineer, eggs his son's conniving character on daily, he tapes the show for his wife, who is busy at Sara Fredericks Salon. She watches it when she gets home and takes the opposite side-she knows the character is a stinker and can't wait for him to get his comeuppance. Hutchins, you see, is literally obsessed with the belief that his father's death was caused by Mac Corey, the elder statesman of the series. It isn't just hatred with Hutchins, it's a genuine vendetta, and this is a determined man. He means to destroy Corey and his saintly wife Rachel (who used to be pretty wicked herself, when she was trying to steal Steven Frame away from Alice, but then that was a long time ago....) As if that weren't enough to keep him busy, Hutchins has also managed to transfer all his ex-wife's money into a secret Swiss bank account, and they're off to Switzerland together (which is how Keating managed to get the time off for this mini-vacation in the Palm Beaches). The poor woman, of course, has no idea what this cad is up to. He is, says Keating, a very charming liar.
Well, the plot gets really convoluted, as is the wont in sudsy serials, and characters make 180-degree personality turns at the drop of a hat.
"I'm always actually interested in flawed characters. They're much more interesting, aren't they? They can be vindictive, and they can be awful and nasty and all the rest of it. But it's so much more interesting. I mean, who wants to play Romeo when you've got the chance to play Mercutio?" Besides Mercutio's meanness, Keating points out,".... you're dead by intermission; you can be in the pub while the others are still all doing the third and fourth acts. It's much more practical." There is an implied wink in his veddy British accent.
Shakespearean references and quotes pepper the conversation. It's only natural, because Keating is a highly regarded classicist, and performed with Britain's Royal Shakespeare Company for three years. He's done the
Bard for most of his career, in fact, along with meaty feature parts in Brideshead Revisited and Edward and Mrs. Simpson. And he's been fortunate, he says, to have had the opportunity on several occasions to work with such luminaries as "Larry" Olivier, John Gielgud, Tyrone Guthrie and others.
This soap opera is a sort of lark for the actor. He never signs "long-term" contracts, at least in his professional life, but he's been firmly married for 21 years and is the father of two grown sons. He only knows that he'll never give up Shakespeare.
Carl Hutchins shortly will disappear from the Bay City scene. Keating doesn't know exactly what will happen to Hutchins, but admits that the character deserves to be killed off, and that there are doubtless plenty of folks who be happy to do the deed. The show's producer isn't one of them, though. He wants Keating waiting in the wings. "I think what they'll do," confides Keating, "is put me in an asylum somewhere. That's where I deserve to be put anyway. Padded walls."
If he is killed off, there is always the possibility that Hutchins will come back later as his own twin brother, or as the result of some other bizarre plot twist. As the actor points out, "There are no rules. It's soap--wonderful soap bubbles. They've even brought people back from the dead, for God's sake! And people accept this." Wherever Keating ends up for the next segment of his life, his family will be there. "We only travel together," he says, "or I don't take the job." And they have traveled together extensively. Never more than three years in one place, and usually only one. It's practically a rule with Keating, who admits that the idea of settling in somewhere scares him.
Although he doesn't have projects planned five years in advance, "like the great big stars," he works very steadily, and has never had to wait tables of even take an acting job he didn't really like just because he needed the work.
He declares himself lucky.
The Times
Palm Beach, Florida
1984