CHARACTER ACTOR.(The Talk of the Town)

The character actor comes down from Canada. Various handlers--Fisher, Jeremy, Judy, Cara, Nicole--pack his schedule tight. He stays in a suite at the Waldorf Towers, has a few French fries, changes his clothes, and goes on forays to midtown screening rooms where people ask him questions about his new movie. If he had his children with him, he'd take them to Serendipity, because five years ago he played a Bloomingdale's salesman in a movie with that name.

Eugene Levy, of the bushy black eyebrows, the crossable eyes, and the nasal, clerkish voice, has played, among other roles, a polka accordionist named Stan Shmenge and a newscaster named Earl Camembert ("SCTV"), a hairy sunbather ("Club Paradise"), a clueless dad ("American Pie" and its several sequels), a dental-tools salesman ("The Man"), and, in a series of Christopher Guest films, which he also co-wrote, a song-and-dance dentist ("Waiting for Guffman"), a dog-lover with two left feet ("Best in Show"), an addled folksinger ("A Mighty Wind"), and, most recently, a washed-up talent agent named Morley Orfkin ("For Your Consideration"). He portrays geeks and squares with great affection, sapping bit or broad parts of their unkindness, and brings a kind of heedless pride to stupidity and ineptitude. He has occasionally been the best thing about a bad movie.

A window in the schedule: One recent afternoon, Levy went for a stroll and wound up at P. J. Clarke's, where he found a stool at the bar. He ordered a vodka tonic; a companion asked for a Guinness. "Is that, like, a stout, a stout ale?" Levy asked, in all apparent seriousness. "It has the really foamy-looking suds?" When some minutes passed and no drinks arrived, the order was repeated, and Levy remarked, about the bartender, "Boy, so far he's zero for four." The bartender shot him a dirty look.

"For Your Consideration" is a comedy about a troupe making a small independent film called "Home for Purim," and about what happens when a few of the actors are ...