KEY POINTS:
Mandy Patinkin has a sturdy face. His skin looks as tough as his expression. When he concentrates, his thick black eyebrows form a sharp arrow that points noseward. Rarely does he smile.
As Jason Gideon, head honcho on Criminal Minds, you can bet his face -and the quietly enigmatic quality it expresses - had a lot to do with him getting the role.
Patinkin doesn't give much away in person either. We're on the LA set of Criminal Minds, in a stark grey room dotted with photos of important-looking fictional authorities. Patinkin is seated behind a table on an elevated chair. Even though he's the one being asked the questions, it's hard not to feel at the mercy of a real interrogation.
"I just wanted to work," says Patinkin, when asked why he took the role.
His other major role as a touring musician is a lonely one. He likes the community of television. Patinkin won a Tony for his performance of Che in the Broadway production of Evita but these days he performs and tours with just a pianist. He's also damned good at television. He won an Emmy playing Dr Jeffrey Geiger on Chicago Hope, and has featured on several series, including Law & Order and Boston Public.
He doesn't talk up the script or his character or the perks of starring in a procedural crime drama that makes him the hero in virtually every episode. He agrees to a role only after sussing out his co-workers.
"You can have a great script and they can mess it up," he says, scratchily. "I met with some of the producers and writers and thought they were good people."
Criminal Minds has perhaps a large cast of kooky scientific types working to get into the psyche of the bad guy before it's too late. But rather than focusing on the forensic or legal processes, this has the immediacy of having an elite team of behavioural analysts working on cases as they happen. They must decipher the bad guy or girl's body language, speech patterns, habits, before they strike again. Of course Gideon isn't just the tough guy. He's also a bit of a softie.
Gideon recites famous philosophers' lines, presumably to give his character even more depth and intellect. The quotes weren't in the original script but Patinkin likes surprises. The use of green screens and "computer gadgets" wasn't in the script either. "Your hope is that those kinds of surprises come about," he says.
Patinkin met and eventually befriended real FBI profilers to get the role of Gideon down pat. But he also wanted to give back, so he asked what they would like to see the show achieve - aside from entertaining viewers. He was told it was to educate people on the nature of the job, and to convince people to get in touch with them the minute a child disappears.
Yet ask him what it's like to play someone with that much responsibility and he says the process was simply "an onion peel. It wasn't some big deal."
The rest of the cast disagree.
"He's fantastic," says Kirsten Vangsness, (who plays Penelope Garcia). "Intense," says Shemar Moore (Derek Morgan). "Insane," says Matthew Gray Gubler (Dr Reid).
Vangsness encountered his spontaneous streak when the cameras were rolling. During rehearsals he practised his lines with her as they were in the script.
"And we go to shoot and he is saying lines that we did not run at all - I'm like, 'Okay, what are you going to say?' But when I saw it I was so happy with it. He is right there. It's a little scary."
"The best word I can think of is refreshing," says AJ Cook (Jennifer Jareau). "Nowadays a lot of people like to pretend they don't care about acting. But he really loves what he does."
Apparently he is funny too but it feels as though most of the cast are a little scared of him. There's a joke going around the set today that the shirt he is wearing looks like a leftover from Studio 54. Someone suggested sneaking in a line about it. "But none of us even tried," says Gubler.
He probably would have found it funny, although quite likely wouldn't have let on.
"He takes his work very seriously," says Moore. "He looks for truth. And to do that he takes risks. Sometimes you don't understand what he's thinking and sometimes they don't work at all. But when he succeeds, he is interesting and brilliant."
Lowdown
Who: Mandy Patinkin, actor and singer
Born: November 30, 1952, Chicago
Key roles: The Princess Bride (1987), Alien Nation (1988), The Music of Chance (1993), Chicago Hope (1997-99)
Latest: Criminal Minds, 8.30 tonight TV One
