"Too bad he's nearly 70 and married," our youngest staffer Reyhaneh Fathieh told me after her lively interview with the charismatic Raymond J. Barry, a character actor you've seen in a million movies. "We had great chemistry." Sometimes that's how it goes in an interview and Reyhaneh clearly had a good one with Barry, 68, who has played dad to the likes of Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, Ashton Kutcher and Charlie Sheen. No wonder Barry calls himself  “father of Hollywood.” Here's Reyhaneh's report:
"Ray still has plenty of mojo left. He stars in five 2008 movies (including Hotel California with Tyson Beckford and Simon Rex -- check out the trailer below); he just wrote his first political play; he paints; he sculpts; he works out; and, what’s more, he’s still fertile. 'I’m 68, but I’m young. I think my wife might even be pregnant,' Ray told me. 'Can you believe this ----? I’ve got a 7-year-old, a 16-year-old, and a 35-year-old; I’ve been around.' Almost alarmingly forthcoming (he offered me his phone number and home address, and only said 'I don’t think I would have given it to you' when he realized I was joking when I asked for his social security number), Ray is funny, humble, and wise. The Brown graduate and Yale dropout is clearly an intellectual and takes every opportunity to wax philosophical. Case in point, Ray casually says things like, 'This age of specialization condescends a jack-of-all-trades, and I believe it’s wrong. I think we’re capable of doing numerous things with a lifetime'—and he lives by his axioms. This well-rounded writer/artist/actor (stage, TV and film) also had stints as a dishwasher, longshoreman, doorman, and construction worker to supplement his $1.50 per hour income as a stage actor. Not that he had to.  The former star athlete turned down a, I imagine, lucrative offer to play football for the New England Patriots. He struggled; he was laughed at; he had to greet a former teammate, now a stock market 'power suit,' in rubber dishwashing gloves. 'You know, to be an actor, you have to know that there is nothing else that you will do,' Ray says. And now, after 100 plays and dozens of movie roles? 'It’s friggin’ great.' "