‘I am that guy’

Jason Kravits began his professional career more than 30 years ago. He’s appeared in dozens of plays, television shows, and films, and has reached the pinnacle of success for a character actor.

“I am that guy,” he tells me in a Zoom interview.

“People recognize me, but they’re not sure from where. ‘Are you that guy?’ ‘You’re that guy.’ Sometimes they recognize me, and they don’t think it’s from television or film. They just say, ‘Hey, did you go to school in Boston? Did you live on the Big Island of Hawaii? Where do I know you from?’

“At some point, every character actor has that happen. Where do I know you from? And you’re like, ‘How do I know? What do you watch? What are you a fan of? Is it “Curb Your Enthusiasm”? Is it “Everybody Loves Raymond”? Is it “Halston”?’” Mr. Kravits has appeared in all these TV series, among others.

“It is better than anonymity,” he continued. “It’s a good problem to have. But the illusion people have is that I’m working all the time. And I’m like, ‘That’s not true.’ There’s something airing now, but I worked on it a year and a half ago, and I’ve been trying to get a job ever since. But it looks like I’m constantly on television because of reruns and Netflix.

“I’m very pleased with my career, but it’s not quite as glamorous as it may seem.”

I ask him if the insecurity ever goes away. “No,” he said. “Somebody told me a story about Gene Hackman. He finished a movie and he and the rest of the cast were on a plane back from the premiere. Someone asked, ‘How are you feeling, Gene?’ And he was like, ‘I think that was it. I think I’m never going to work again. I don’t know. The phone’s not ringing.’

“Well, if that life is good enough for Gene Hackman, then that life is good enough for me.”

That level of honesty is rare in celeb interviews. But Mr. Kravits likely was emboldened by the fact that his phone doesn’t have to ring — at least for the next four months. He is now co-starring as Vice Principal Panch in the hilarious revival of “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.”

The show’s reviews were so ecstatic that the just-opened musical was extended for eight weeks, through April, at the World Stages in Manhattan.

“I haven’t done a Broadway show or an off-Broadway show of this length for years,” Mr. Kravits said. “When you are doing a show like this, it changes your entire sleep schedule. It kind of takes over your life — but not in a bad way. Everything revolves around when you get to the theater, how much rest you need, when you eat. Everything revolves around the show.

“But everybody loves a gig. Having a regular schedule is something most actors aren’t used to.”

Acting is the career Mr. Kravits seemed destined to enter. He was born in Passaic and lived in New Jersey — in Fords and Flanders — for the first eight years of his life.

He remembers holidays at his grandparents’ apartment. “Until the day he died, my grandfather would tell the story of how they had Passover and I was under the table and they couldn’t get me out.

“I had three siblings” — sisters Marci and Vikki and brother Garth — “and I have cousins as well. We were always riling each other up. We had our little kids’ table, and I remember the seder being mostly in Hebrew, which was so boring I couldn’t wait to eat.”

The family moved to Rockville, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, where he started Hebrew school and became a bar mitzvah.

It is also where he and his siblings developed a love for show biz. That was thanks to their dad, Stuart, who “was always involved in community theater. My sisters and my brother were always at the theater. We did everything. We took nails out of boards. We did props. We hung lights. We ran sound boards. We sold concessions.

“We loved being part of the theater community. It was a very family-oriented theater community, so there were other people with kids our age. We would show up and have the run of the place. It just instilled a love for theater.

“We were already a performing family at home. Just a lot of music going on at all times. A lot of comedy routines. A lot of shows we were doing on our own.”

In addition to home productions, Mr. Kravits appeared with his father in a community theater production of, appropriately, “Life With Father.” That was followed by “A Thousand Clowns,” directed by Dad.

Mr. Kravits landed a role on “Powerhouse,” a 16-episode PBS children’s series, when he was 13, but he didn’t pursue professional roles until after he graduated from the University of Maryland. While he still was in college, though, he co-founded an improvisation group called Erasable Ink. It’s now celebrating its 40th anniversary.

His first big break came when he landed roles in D.C.’s Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company productions of Nicky Silver’s “Free Will and Wanton Lust” and “All in the Timing” by David Ives. Both earned him nominations for Helen Hayes awards.

He worked steadily in D.C. for six years. “It was like a grad school,” he said. “I got to work on so many different types of shows and learned a lot and got my union card. Then I moved to New York, and everything stopped.”

He and a friend, Joel Jones, developed a two-person show that they took to Los Angeles, where it was successful enough to put them on the map. And that’s when it happened.

“I got an audition pretty quickly for a television drama, ‘The Practice,’” Mr. Kravits said. “It was going to be a one-off, one episode, maybe two episodes as this D.A. [Assistant D.A. Richard Bay]. Fortunately, [series creator] David Kelly liked the character and kept writing for it. I was on that show for two years, and that basically launched my career.”

That brings up a discussion of Mr. Kravits’s career, which included an appearance on Barry Levinson’s “Homicide: Life on the Street.” That prompted a reminiscence of a day Mr. Kravits spend on the set of Levinson’s “Avalon.” The film was about an immigrant Jewish family’s assimilation into American life. It begins with sumptuous family dinners and ends with a TV dinner eaten at a snack table.

“One of my first film experiences when I was in Washington, D.C., was as a stand-in for one day for Kevin Pollak on the set of ‘Avalon,’” Mr. Kravits said.

Being a stand-in on a film set is not having an acting job. Stand-ins do the scut work. When the director is doing lighting for a scene, stand-ins stand in so that the actors aren’t disturbed.

“I didn’t work at all,” Mr. Kravits said. “They never needed me. But I sat on the steps of this set when they were doing the Thanksgiving dinner scene and watching Lou Jacobi go, ‘You cut the turkey without me.’ I got to have lunch with him, the great Lou Jacobi, and his wife. They were both so sweet to me. And I just had a great time.

“Years later, I did a movie called ‘What Just Happened,’ which was Barry Levinson and Robert De Nero. I had one scene early in the movie. Blink and you miss it. But I got to tell him my first film gig was on a set with him.

“I loved that movie. It was so familiar to me because it really captures the diaspora of Jewish families from the cities to the suburbs. In my family it was Brooklyn, Brooklyn, Passaic, Passaic and then eventually we were all moving to Morristown or Washington, D.C.

“We kind of spread out so getting the family back together was a really big deal. It was familiar to me.”