By Jae-Ha Kim
Chicago Sun-Times
May 17, 1987
If it weren’t for the makeup caked on his face, Judge Reinhold probably wouldn’t stand out from the crew members on the set of his latest movie, “Vice Versa.” Filmed in Chicago, “Vice Versa” marks Reinhold’s first starring role.
Reinhold, tall and boyish, looks much younger than his 29 years. Sitting inside his dressing trailer surrounded by a sea of yellow Post-It notes, Reinhold looks more like a CPA than a movie star. But after Wednesday, when “Beverly Hills Cop II” opens nationwide, Reinhold’s recognition factor will be on the rise. In it, Reinhold reprises his role of Billy Rosewood, the innocent and slightly bumbling detective who teamed with Eddie Murphy in “Beverly Hills Cop” to triumph over evil. In the sequel, Billy has grown up, at Reinhold’s request.
“Part of the agreement between me and the producers was that Billy would not be the exact same guy he was in the original film,” Reinhold said. “I wasn’t interested in playing him as the naive rookie again because this time around, two years are supposed to have gone by. So it’d be ridiculous to have Billy still be a greenhorn. He’s a lot more self assured and comfortable in his position as a cop now.”
The same could be said about Reinhold. At one time, he didn’t feel secure about his career status. That all changed when “Ruthless People” came out, and reporters wanted to interview him and fans wanted to meet him. Until then, Reinhold was a just another character actor. Although he admitted he still doesn’t have the power or confidence to walk up to a director and tell him he wants to star in a picture, he receives enough good scripts to be able to pick and choose. He feels comfortable giving autographs now and can understand why people want to meet him, but he said the adulation sometimes is a mind game.
“I knew there was a problem when I was sitting in a restaurant the other night eating spaghetti by myself, and I was sure that everybody was watching me slurp it up,” he said, laughing. “I looked up and nobody was watching at all. So I realized, `Uh, oh, this is how it starts.’ So you do get self-conscious. But you have to work through that.”
When he goes home to Los Angeles, his wife, Carrie, a casting director, makes sure he leaves his character and star status at the front door.
When he was growing up in Fredericksburg, Va., Reinhold had little ambition to become a film star, or a lawyer like his father. Born Edward Ernest Reinhold, he was nicknamed Judge by one of his father’s friends. Never studious or fond of school, Reinhold joined the drama club in high school to meet girls.
“I thought that the leads would only go to guys who looked like Robert Redford,” he said. “So I was prepared to play secondary roles and make the best of them.”
His first on-camera line was on the television series “Wonder Woman,” where he played a hapless teen. “I had to look at her (Lynda Carter) and say, `Oh, Wonder Woman, I’m so glad you’re here,’ ” Reinhold said. “That was my first professional line, and I was saved by a super heroine. At that point, I thought I had perhaps made a bad career choice.
“I think in the beginning, I was a little shy about my sexuality and so I tried to play against what I thought were those stereotypical sexual guys. I wanted to go against the grain somehow and I wanted to be offbeat, too.”
In `Vice Versa,” Reinhold plays a 30-year-old father whose mind is transposed with that of his 10-year-old son, played by Glencoe native Fred Savage. Although he’s known for his roles as a teenager or a young adult, Reinhold would like to have more mature roles, but he wants to portray the characters with the honesty that he finds in children.
“Kids are so great because, unlike grownups, they’ll tell you whatever’s on their minds,” he said. “And I think every good actor has childlike qualities in him that he draws on for honesty. To get paid to make a film like (`Vice Versa’), this is incredible, in my book. I’m having a blast.”
