October 16, 2001

All The Small Things

Lex Luthor’s alter ego, Michael Rosenbaum, put down the phone and picked up the baby. “I’m holding my brand-new nephew,” the evil genius said in a telephone interview with the Herald. “I can’t believe he’s not crying right now.”

The 1995 Western grad was due in Vancouver that Monday to shoot the fourth episode of the new Warner Brothers Superman TV show “Smallville.” It debuts at 8 tonight on the WB network.

Superman’s arch nemesis was at his brother’s house in Long Island, N.Y., meeting his four-week-old nephew, Josh.

“He’s awesome, man,” Rosenbaum said before giving up and handing his crying nephew to his sister-in-law. “I have a way with kids.”

From the Hill to Hollywood

His hands free, Rosenbaum was ready to talk about life after Western and “Smallville,” which he described as a cross between Superman, the X-Files and Dawson’s Creek.

In the series, rich kid Lex Luthor forges an uneasy friendship with his future mortal enemy, farm boy Clark Kent. Kent, as the story goes, grows up to be Superman. Luthor grows up to be nasty.

“He’s kind of resentful of his father for sticking him in Smallville to run a fertilizer plant,” Rosenbaum said.

Rosenbaum’s dome was sprouting stubble during his weekend off. For his Lex Luthor costume, he zapped the spiky hair he wore in movies like “Urban Legends” and TV shows like “Zoe, Duncan, Jack and Jane.”

Finally past the struggling-actor-paying-$350-to-live-on-somebody’s-couch-in-New-York -phase — “thank God” — he recently gave up the house he was leasing in the Hollywood Hills. He put his stuff in storage and moved to Vancouver for the seven-month “Smallville” shoot. In the spring, he wants to buy a house in Los Angeles, where last week he was on an episode of the “Late, Late Show With Craig Kilborn.”

“It’s crazy thinking I just graduated from Western six years ago,” Rosenbaum said.

He said he had fun in college at “places only certain people would know,” that he called “The Peach House” and “The Scholar House.”

“People my age would understand. They were the true party palaces of the underground Western party scene,” he said. “One was on State Street and the other was near the library. I don’t think the times we had could be topped.”

Silver screen roles

In addition to “a year’s supply of Mach 3 Razors” to keep his head shiny, the “Smallville” role gives Rosenbaum a chance to explore a darker side that previous sitcom work didn’t give him.

Rosenbaum did “off, off-Broadway” plays when he moved to New York after graduation. He landed a spot on “Late Night with Conan O’Brien” in a segment called “The Amsterdam Kids” in about six months. Later came roles on two WB comedies, as Jonathon on “Tom,” with Tom Arnold, and as Jack in “Zoe, Duncan, Jack and Jane.”

On the big screen, he took the stand in Kevin Spacey’s murder trial in “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” and he played a transvestite in “Sweet November” with Keanu Reeves and Charlize Theron. He got fourth billing in the closing credits of “Urban Legend,” ahead of Tara Reid, Pacey from “Dawson’s Creek,” and Freddy Kreuger.

His old friends in the theatre and dance department are pulling for him.

“He’s a good actor. I think he’s worth more than the comedic roles he’s gotten,” said Nanci Hall, a secretary in the department. “He can do Shakespeare and comedy.”

“When he comes onstage, you just follow him around,” said William Leonard, the head of the theatre and dance department. “He has a magnetism that he creates and you want to see what he’s going to do next.”

A famous face

Rosenbaum said finding work is a lot easier now that people have begun noticing him.

“It’s all about respect and recognition, I suppose,” he said. “I’m getting more opportunities now because I’m working more. Funny how things work. It’s all about experience and getting comfortable and confident. Sometimes I forget that. I still get nervous.”

He shook a lot of his jitters after coming to Western from Castle High School in Newburghh, Ind., in 1991. The broadcasting and theater major directed and starred in Western student plays and films, he was a DJ on New Rock 92 and he starred on a local late-night TV show called “All Nite Long.”

“We made complete idiots of ourselves and had a lot of fun and hoped somebody would see us,” he said.

Next year you can see Rosenbaum in “Pool Hall Junkies” with Christopher Walken and “Sorority Boys” with Harlan Williams.

Williams, who played a cop in “Dumb and Dumber” and a cop killer in “Half-Baked,” is writing a “top secret” project for them, Rosenbaum said.

Rosenbaum wrote a film of his own, with the working title “Green River Road,” which he said he’s going to film either this summer or the next. He’s planning on directing it himself, and he said there’s a strong possibility he’ll film some of it at Western.

“Wouldn’t that be a hoot,” he said.

With all that experience under his belt, Rosenbaum bristles when reviewers refer to him as a newcomer.

“I’m not really a newcomer,” he said. “I’ve been chipping away for the last couple of years, you just didn’t notice.”