Actor Michael O’Keefe is between performances as he sits down for a quick bite in his dressing room. He’s just come offstage at the Pasadena Playhouse, where he appears as Serge, a would-be art collector in the three-person play “Art.” In the comedy, O’Keefe’s character happily spends 200,000 Euros, or about $263,000, on a gleaming post-modern abstraction: a canvas painted entirely white.
One of his friends, Marc (played by Bradley Whitford), is horrified. Another, Yvan (Roger Bart), is ambivalent and in a panic about his wedding. In real life, O’Keefe has some minimalist art in a downtown Los Angeles loft he describes as “slightly Zen, slightly mid-century modern.” But while Serge’s crisp blazer hangs nearby, O’Keefe, 56, is now back in a comfortable denim jacket, winding down from a matinee and preparing for the night’s next performance.
“Art,” a Tony-winning play by Yasmina Reza, is O’Keefe’s first live theater production in four years. But he’s been a working actor for more than three decades in film, television and on stage, and has shared screen time with the likes of Bette Davis, Jack Nicholson and George Clooney. An Academy Award nomination came early, for 1979’s “The Great Santini,” but O’Keefe might be most recognized as the young caddy in the insane 1980 golf comedy “Caddyshack.”
