Finding the Upside

Those corporate fiends in marketing? John Getz doesn’t think they’re so fiendish.

“I know these guys,” says the actor, who is playing one such specimen in Richard Dresser’s comedy “The Downside” at Pasadena Playhouse. “When I moved to New York, I met a group of people who worked in the marketing department of a major corporation. They’re terrific people, whom I still care for. You have to understand: It’s another reality. Lying about things . . . but with a grain of truth. And pretty soon you start to believe it yourself.”

And acting? “Acting isn’t about lying, but discovering truths,” he says. Beyond that, however, there are some moral parallels: “As an actor, you’re presented with the opportunity of making a helluva lot of money to do something despicable. Have I? Sure! Not something with which I politically disgree. But certainly trash. It may not be really harmful, but it does add to the general pollution of ideas in the world.”

Happily for Getz, who is married to writer Grace McKeaney and the father of 9-month-old Hannah, “Downside” is not that. Nor is “M. Butterfly,” in which he served eight months last year on Broadway. Nor is “Born on the Fourth of July,” in which he genially refers to himself as “one of the 130 actors in the movie.”

Except for his clean-cut cop in the series “Rafferty and MacGruder” and cuckholded husband in “Thief of Hearts,” there have been a lot of bad guys lurking behind the handsome face--like his inept murderer in “Blood Simple” and jealous suitor in “The Fly.” And this week, he will go in front of the cameras to wrap Emilio Estevez’s “Men at Work.” Admits Getz of that movie character, “I’m somewhat less than reprehensible. A nasty piece of work.”