The New Yorker:

Figuring that he can fall back on vaudeville if his film career dries up, the actor has devised a new act, “Mister Romantic.”

By Michael Schulman

"I'd always wanted to do a show where I came out of a box,” the actor John C. Reilly said the other day. For fifteen years, he kept a steamer trunk in storage, just in case. “Then I thought, I’m never going to do that show. I should get rid of that trunk—it takes up all this space. I got rid of the trunk, and a week later I was, like, No, I am going to do it! I have to find another trunk! So I measured myself and looked on eBay, and within two days I had another trunk, and I spray-painted this stencil on it that says ‘Mister Romantic.’ ”

Mister Romantic is Reilly’s alter ego, a crooner in coattails who serenades audiences (“What’ll I Do,” “Are You Lonesome Tonight?”) on a quest for everlasting love. For the past two years, Reilly has been sporadically performing the character in a roaming, semi-improvised solo act, in under-the-radar engagements in Los Angeles and elsewhere; he did his first show two days after wrapping the HBO series “Winning Time.” “I realized, if actors can’t make money on residuals anymore, what’s my long-term plan?” he said, grinning. “When the going gets tough, the tough go to vaudeville!”

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