AT LUNCH WITH: Alan Alda; Hawkeye Turns Mean, Sensitively (Published 1994) (2024)

THE first thing Alan Alda wants to know when he arrives is whether everything is O.K. He has chosen the restaurant, Orso; he hopes that's O.K. He has asked for a table outside, on the patio. Is that O.K.?

In Hollywood, it isn't easy to get a reputation as a nice guy, but somehow Mr. Alda has managed. Perhaps it is because he spent so much time playing Hawkeye Pierce, that superficially snide but deep-down-lovable scamp. Or maybe it is because he has been married to the same woman for more than three decades and campaigned for the equal rights amendment years before the sensitive guy was even invented.

Or maybe it's just because he's the kind of star who, when he arrives for an interview, seems genuinely concerned that things are O.K.

Whatever the reasons, Mr. Alda has had enough. Over the last few years, he has set about refashioning himself, on screen at least, into something of a jerk. First, in the Woody Allen film "Crimes and Misdemeanors," he played a vain television producer whispering his brilliant insights into a pocket tape recorder. Then, in "And the Band Played On," he portrayed Dr. Robert Gallo as an egomaniacal character more interested in getting credit for discovering the AIDS virus than in curing it.