Jones: Small Shoes to Fill In the Other Truman Show

There are no small parts, the saying goes, only small actors.

After a film career consisting of mostly peripheral roles -- Smee in "Neverland," anyone? -- British actor Toby Jones has landed the biggest role of his life, playing diminutive author Truman Capote in "Infamous" (see review on Page 32), the second film in 12 months to deal with the writing of Capote's 1965 acclaimed true-crime book, "In Cold Blood." So close on the heels of Philip Seymour Hoffman's Oscar-winning turn as the writer in the 2005 "Capote," does Jones have any concerns that audiences might be suffering from what could be called Capote Fatigue?

"Of course I do. Of course I have that worry," he says by phone, in the cadences of his native Oxfordshire. "I'm not so naive that I think that everyone wants to watch Capote movies for the rest of their lives." Still, despite not having seen Hoffman's performance -- "I fully intend to see it," he says, "probably when I've finished all the publicity, and the film's come out in the U.K." -- Jones believes that this film is good enough (and, with its unusual mix of humor and seriousness, different enough from "Ca pote") to stand up to the competition.

"I've had a lot of interviews where people come in and they go, 'Well, I was expecting to hate this movie,' " he says, with a tone of incredulity. "Why were you expecting to hate a movie? I don't pick up a book expecting to not like it. I pick up a book expecting -- hoping -- it'll change my life. It seems a weird thing, that if you like something very much, you can't like something else as well. It's like you're only allowed 10 good things, and you have to lose one every time something good comes into your life."

Speaking of which, the 39-year-old actor -- previously best known here for his appearance in the 2003 Broadway version of the Brit comedy hit "The Play What I Wrote," hopes that his starring role in "Infamous" will change the perception of him as a mere character actor. Not that there's anything wrong with that. After all, Jones's father made a career out of it, to the extent that the elder Jones is most often described today as "the veteran British character actor Freddie Jones."

"Not by me," laughs the younger Jones, suggesting that a better description would be "veteran loving father."

While admitting that his performance in "Infamous" is a step up from his previous roles, when asked to characterize the career that he has had so far, he hesitates, partly out of fear of limiting the career that he wants to have.

"There's something deep within me that resists this question," says Jones, who draws a distinction between actors who disappear into their roles, as he would like to be seen, and movie stars, who are always a little bit themselves, no matter what they do. "I think it's maybe because I am, pathologically, a character actor. But I resist categorizing myself, because I sort of view it somehow as a danger to myself, to begin to see my work as 'a body of work.' I sort of feel that that is the thing to do when I'm on my rocking chair, being a veteran 'whatever' actor. Then I will make some sense of it."

Up until now, he says, his work, like that of most actors, has been determined more by "a haphazard series of decisions" than by any master plan.

"As an actor, you have very, very little control over anything," Jones says. "If you get a part, that's fantastic. If the film gets made, that's fantastic. If the film gets distributed . . ." His voice trails off.

Suddenly, with this part, a bit of that chaos (and marginality) may be dissipating. While Jones's current job is another small one -- "It's a character actor's role, I hesitate to say," in director Peter Greenaway's "Nightwatching," now filming in Poland -- he expects to graduate to more leads soon, with starring roles lined up in two projects called "Small Apartments" and "The Trouble With Sheldon."

Jones acknowledges that his physical resemblance to Capote, probably at least as much as his acting ability, played a role in "Infamous" director Douglas McGrath's decision, after some initial hesitation, to cast a relative unknown in the part. At 5 feet 5 inches tall and 162 pounds, he is only slightly larger than the real-life Capote, and far closer than the almost-six-foot-tall Hoffman.

Once he got the job, though -- a matter of convincing the filmmaker that he didn't just look the part, but was able to sustain a character over a nearly two-hour performance -- Jones set to work mastering Capote's distinctive, high-pitched voice with a vocal coach and daily 90-minute warm-ups. It's a voice described in the film by Capote contemporary Bennett Cerf (Peter Bogdanovich) as "what a Brussels sprout would sound like if a Brussels sprout could talk."

Studying archival talk-show and documentary footage of the author from the period of the film helped Jones gain insight, not just into his subject's mannerisms but also into his psyche, particularly in relation to convicted murderer Perry Smith, whose complex relationship with Capote is central to "Infamous." Jones recalls one especially telling moment from brothers Albert and David Maysles's 1966 documentary, "A Visit With Truman Capote."

"At one point, he's half-cut -- he's drunk too much -- and he decides it might be a good idea to get Perry Smith's letters out. There's a moment where he sort of falters and pauses, and I think I freeze-framed that moment because it's just a little glimpse into where he loses control somewhere. The whole thing was so much about control with him. Control of other people's perception of him, and the way he gained or meted out information about himself."

Jones insists that he was never intimidated, either by a second film covering much of the same ground or by Capote's larger-than-life legend. "The great thing about Capote, and studying a character like that, a modern character like that," he says, "is that there's so much to sustain you. You're never going to have seen everything or read everything, enough to feel like you're on top of it.

"It's kind of nice," he adds, "to think of the character being bigger than the actor, rather than the actor being bigger than the character."