"For quite a while I lived on beer and Snickers bars," says Cohen of life before prime time.
A trio of plum acting jobs kept Scott Cohen away from his family for nearly 11 months last year, but 4-year-old son Liam hardly noticed. As the two relaxed in their New York City apartment last December, recalls Cohen, "he saw David Schwimmer on the TV screen and said, 'Look, Dad. It's you!' "
In fact, Friends is just about the only TV program not featuring Cohen these days. In February alone, he stars as a man-beast named Wolf on NBC's 10-hour miniseries The 10th Kingdom(airing between Feb. 27 and March 6); plays a detective on the JonBenét Ramsey murder miniseries Perfect Murder, Perfect Town,on CBS; and appears on NYPD Blueas an alcoholic cop putting the moves on Kim Delaney. "I know it was hard for him to be away from family, but I love Scott, and I want him back," says Delaney, who is trying to make Cohen a Bluecast regular. Adds 10th Kingdomdirector David Carson: "He has the panache of Jack Nicholson. That wolfish grin, you know?"
The son of jazz musician Jack Cohen, 76, and his late wife, Leatrice, Scott, 38, first began performing while practicing piano in his native Bronx. "I'd get out a long black coat," says Cohen, "flip up the coattails and pretend I was Leonard Bernstein." He segued into stage roles and small roles in Jacob's Ladderand Private Partsbut didn't hit the big time until Kingdomcame.
Having completed his February hat trick, Cohen is back in front of the camera, this time in home movies with Liam. "They did the Three Little Pigs over Christmas," says his wife of 10 years, playwright Anastasia Traina, 39. "Liam directed, and Scott played all the parts. Of course, he was especially good at being the wolf."-People Magazine March 6, 2000
February 25, 2000 CALL HIM MR. FEBRUARY SCOTT COHEN: THE GUY YOU CAN'T ESCAPE THIS SWEEPS by: Mike Flaherty
Sorry, James Brown, but there's a new hardest-working man in showbiz--at least this month. For years, Scott Cohen has toiled as a bit player extraordinaire, appearing in everything from Law & Order and Oz to Howard Stern's Private Parts, but lately the 35-year-old actor has staged a veritable tube takeover. First, there was his recent three-episode stint as the sleazy, alcoholic investigator Harry Denby on NYPD Blue, and this week Cohen turns up as a manimal in NBC's sweeps fantasy The 10th Kingdom and as a detective in CBS' JonBenet Ramsey telemovie, Perfect Murder, Perfect Town--both of which air on Feb. 27. And, of course, there's that sexy-cute Volkswagen ad--where Cohen's flirtation with another driver is thwarted by a stuffed-animal-tossing toddler in his backseat. ("People recognize me on the street from that," he says. "It's bizarre.") Somehow, the native New Yorker found a few minutes to talk.
Q: Is it a blessing or a curse to be competing against yourself?
A: It's kind of a drag, but hopefully people will tape one and watch the other.
Q: So which will you be watching?
A: I think I'll watch 10th Kingdom because I want my 4-year-old son, Liam, to see that.
Q: In Kingdom you're a half man, half wolf who's into self-help books. What's up with that?
A: His desire is to be a man, but he goes through this phase, like PMS, where he has to eat something--a human being or a sheep or a rabbit or whatever. And because he's in love with Virginia [costar Kimberly Williams], he wants this to stop. So he sees a psychiatrist and he takes all these books with him wherever he goes.
Q: Uh-huh. Which of the three roles was the most difficult?
A: NYPD Blue, definitely. I get scared of characters who have that much depth to them. I literally stayed in my hotel for a month working on it.
Q: All this TV work has earned you the nickname Mr. February. How are you coping with that?
A: Sean Whalen, who worked on Perfect Murder with me, said, "Oh, so it's January, Scott-uary, March..." But I can't complain. I have 17 hours of television in one month. I think that might be a record.
An actor's season to howl Tuesday, February 29, 2000
By VIRGINIA ROHAN Staff Writer
For Scott Cohen, this sweeps period has been a triple play. First, Cohen showed up as Harry Denby, a narcotics task force member who was supposed to be keeping tabs on Detective Jill Kirkendall's ex-husband in two episodes of ABC's "NYPD Blue." Now, Cohen's appearing on two other networks, in a pair of high-profile miniseries that both kicked off, opposite each other, on Sunday. In CBS' "Perfect Murder, Perfect Town," which is about the investigation of the unsolved JonBenet Ramsey murder, he plays Steve Thomas, a dogged Boulder, Colo. police detective. And in NBC's sprawling, 10-hour "The 10th Kingdom," Cohen has a starring role as Wolf, a highly conflicted half-man, half-animal who's torn between his allegiance to an evil queen (Dianne Wiest) and his love for the miniseries' heroine, Virginia (Kimberly Williams). Cohen is mesmerizing as Wolf, who struggles to tame his inner beast. Ultimately, he helps Virginia and her father (John Larroquette), who have departed from the 10th Kingdom (aka, New York City) and are transported via magic mirror to the fairy-tale world of the other Nine Kingdoms (where, for example, Camryn Manheim plays Snow White, and Ann-Margret is a 200-year-old Cinderella). The miniseries -- television's longest such project since the 29-hour "War and Remembrance" in 1988-89 -- is a big gamble for NBC, especially in this era of shortened attention spans and instant game-show millionaires. "If you stick with it and follow the story of Virginia, it's a great story," says Cohen, who spent seven months making the miniseries, mostly in England, Austria, and France. "It's a very literate television story, and it will be very sad if people don't watch it." Regardless of how "10th Kingdom" fares in the ratings, Cohen has been winning rave reviews for his portrayal of Wolf. "It was instinct," Cohen says of his acting approach. "That might sound weird ... But the bestiality is something that's in us somewhere .fs2.. "I was so connected to him. His bestiality came out of his neuroses, and that's something I could relate to." Cohen was amazed at how easily he slid into the character during his first audition. He even remembers an incident in the waiting room, when he suggested to a woman auditioning for the Virginia role that they read lines together. "I started reading with her, and this vocal thing started happening in my throat, this growling. I was completely unaware of it," Cohen recalls, laughing. "She got strange, and said, 'I think I should work on this by myself.'" A whole world apart is Cohen's role in "Perfect Murder, Perfect Town." He plays tough but compassionate Detective Thomas, who was obsessed with finding little JonBenet's killer, and is convinced that Patsy Ramsey is guilty. His frustration with the Boulder DA's office ultimately led him to give up his law-enforcement career. "The media just kind of pounced on Boulder, Colorado, and here's Steve Thomas. All he ever wanted to be was a cop. This case destroyed him and he resigned," says Cohen. By comparison, Cohen's character on "NYPD Blue" was kind of a bad cop. During an alcoholic blackout, he lost track of Kirkendall's ex-husband, a drug courier, who later turned up dead. In his most memorable "Blue" scene, set in a bar, Denby, an alcoholic, tried to get Detective Diane Russell (Kim Delaney), a recovering alcoholic, to drink with him. When she refused, he insisted that he wouldn't give her information about Kirkendall's troublesome ex-husband unless she kissed him. Reluctantly, Russell did. Cohen credits Delaney and director Jeff McCracken for showing great sensitivity during the filming of that difficult scene. "You're talking about a scene that really kind of delves into the mystery of what it is to be alive as an alcoholic, and it's a horrible place to be," he says. The actor -- who also played an FBI agent in an episode of the first season of HBO's "Oz" -- says that Delaney has been "pushing" executive producer David Milch to continue the Russell-Denby story line. "David has said that there might be more episodes, but I haven't gotten a phone call to come back," says Cohen, who's "taking a little break," and, among other things, plans to take his 4 1/2-year-old son to amusement parks in Los Angeles. The native New Yorker -- who's also familiar from a popular Volkswagen commercial, in which his flirtation with a woman in the next car is interrupted when a child's toy hits his dashboard -- has appeared in a number of stage and screen productions. His credits include two HBO movies -- "Gotti" (he played Gene Gotti), and "Gia," in which he played an agent for model Gia Carangi, played by Angelina Jolie. "Angelina called me the prince of darkness in that," he says. Cohen was also dark in a critically acclaimed, three-part "Law & Order" from several seasons ago, in which he played an ambitious Hollywood film director who murdered his wife. Like all actors, he has experienced periods of unemployment, which makes this month's embarrassment of riches especially wonderful, Cohen says.
