Yakima native Garret Dillahunt is a master craftsman

Garret Dillahunt is talking about acting during a phone interview last week when he cuts himself short and apologizes for getting pretentious.

Thing is, Dillahunt, the Yakima-bred actor starring in the new Fox series "Raising Hope," doesn't sound pretentious at all. He sounds like a craftsman matter-of-factly discussing his craft. In this particular instance, he's talking about creating an on-set dynamic from which he can build a character -- real nuts-and-bolts actor-type stuff -- and, because Dillahunt, 45, is a self-aware kind of guy from Yakima, he's a little uncomfortable about that. ("Craft," you'll please note, is my word, not his; I suspect he'd shudder to hear it.)

This is the contradiction in a guy like Dillahunt: He is supremely dedicated to his work and is almost universally lauded by critics, but he's uneasy talking about acting because he loathes self-importance. In other words, he takes his work very seriously but keeps reminding you not to.

"It's about like any job," he says, a theme he returns to more than once during the half-hour interview.

Dillahunt, a Selah High School grad who grew up with a Yakima address near what was then called the Yakima Firing Center, came by that philosophy the way a lot of Yakima natives did. He remembers swimming in the Yakima River, but he also remembers working in the orchards.

"My parents work hard, just like about everyone else in Yakima does," he says. "It makes me feel like I have to work hard. I've never not had a job."

Though he's not a Clooney-Pitt-level movie star, Dillahunt has -- like Steve Buscemi or Harry Dean Stanton before him -- become one of those guys who turns up everywhere and can steal a movie with just a few lines. The Internet Movie Database lists 19 film and television roles for Dillahunt in 2009 and 2010 alone, including a starring role in the "Last House on the Left" remake, a secondary role in the critically acclaimed Cormac McCarthy adaptation "The Road" and a handful of one-off appearances on TV shows. Other notable recent roles include a comically earnest sheriff's deputy in the Coen brothers' grim, Academy Award-winning McCarthy adaptation, "No Country For Old Men" (2007), ill-fated outlaw Ed Miller in "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" (2007), and Jesus Christ in the television comedy-drama "The Book of Daniel" (2006).

Despite all of those roles, Dillahunt probably remains best known for his work on "Deadwood," HBO's Shakespearean old-West drama that ran from 2004 to 2006. He played drunken gambler Jack McCall in the first season and gentleman psychopath Francis Wolcott in the second, both indelible characters created by mad genius David Milch and fully realized by Dillahunt. That he was able to die as one character and return as another speaks to the kind of versatility that has become something of a trademark. As National Magazine Award winner Chris Jones wrote in an Esquire piece last year, "He can look vastly different depending on how he holds his mouth or eyelids, and he can sound like a hick or an aristocrat by putting just the gentlest shoulder to his naturally nowhere accent. ... If Dillahunt has a single spoken line, I will drive 1,000 miles to watch him say it."

People who remember him as the bloodthirsty Wolcott from "Deadwood" may be surprised to hear that Dillahunt will be on television this fall as a young grandfather in a sitcom. But, he has played good guys before, and he's done sitcoms before. For Dillahunt, who says, "Variety is life; stagnation is death," disappearing into vastly different characters is the fun part.

"It's a nice return," he says. "I like to change it up. I really like to -- probably to my detriment -- take 90-degree turns."

Plus, he says, "Raising Hope" has been a fun show to work on, reuniting him with old friend Martha Plimpton in a cast that also includes Cloris Leachman, Lucas Neff and Shannon Woodward. And, though the shows are completely different, Dillahunt says his experience with Milch on the "Deadwood" set taught him lessons he still uses, lessons about creating a dynamic between actors and carving out space from which to be creative.

And that's when he stops and apologizes for going all "Inside the Actors Studio." He doesn't want to give the impression that he thinks being an actor is some kind of big deal; he's just a Yakima kid whose job happens to have made him a little famous. His goals aren't that much different from those of people back home -- from his brother, a teacher in Prosser, or from his dad, who's been in the trucking business his whole life.

"All I've really ever wanted was to be able to do things I was proud of," Dillahunt says.

* "Raising Hope" premieres at 9 p.m. Tuesday on Fox (locally on KCYU Channel 41).

* Pat Muir can be reached at 509-577-7693 or pmuir@yakimaherald.com.