Fifth business

Eric Stoltz created a cameo role for himself in ``My Horrible Year!'' He pops up in brief black-and-white flashback clips as Uncle Charlie, who had ``a talent for life.'' ``That's my fantasy of myself - how I would like to be. How I would certainly like to be perceived,'' says Stoltz. He admits that he stole the phrase from a short story by Anton Chekhov, although he can't recall which one. The 39-year-old actor makes his directing debut with this Showtime Original Picture For All Ages, premiering Sunday, July 8 (8 p.m. EDT). The family-friendly tale focuses on a girl whose normal teen-age anxieties are heighten by the fear that her parents may be planning to divorce. Allison Mack stars as Nik. Karen Allen and Brian Heighton play her parents. The fact that Uncle Charlie, for all his talent, is not alive, is a subtle plot point that Stoltz added to P.J. McIlvaine's script. He believes it was important that Nik ``have a slight sense of loss that motivated her fear of the family disintegrating.'' But he also jokes that he wanted to put himself in this light comedy so he could be married to the sexy Aunt Marion, played by Mimi Rogers. Rogers and her partner, Chris Ciaffa, the film's executive producers, are responsible for Stoltz receiving the script ``out of the blue.'' In recent years, he's been expanding his career to produce independent feature films such as ``Bodies, Rest & Motion'' and ``Sleep With Me.'' ``They came in on time and under budget, which seems to be the most important element in filmmaking these days,'' he says. Scripts to direct began coming his way, and ``this one for some reason stuck with me.'' Although he loved ``every minute of it,'' Stoltz says his directing debut ``was like juggling buzz saws on a tightrope, a thousand feet in the air while being strafed by machine guns.'' He's grinning, of course. Stoltz is flamboyantly low- key, able to bring impact with a murmur, where others might need to shout. Wearing a gray suit, open-necked blue shirt and clumpy open-toe sandals, he's seated in the conference room of his manager's office, where the walls are decorated with movie posters bearing his credits. His films include 1985's ``Mask,'' 1990's ``Memphis Belle'' and 2000's ``The House of Mirth'' He also co- starred in the '90s TV series ``Chicago Hope.'' ``Mask,'' directed by Peter Bogdanovich and also starring Cher, was based on a true story about a boy disfigured with a horrible disease. ``The makeup in the '80s was terrible,'' says Stoltz, recalling his role as Rocky Dennis. ``Now it's much easier to apply. ... But then it was basically foam rubber. You took like a piece of couch and glued it to the face and then tried to make it up to look like skin. It was awful. One time they accidentally glued my eyes shut.'' Upcoming, he has a small role as a rapist in Allison Anders' Showtime movie ``Things Behind the Sun.'' He'll also be seen as an undercover FBI (news - web sites) agent investigating mob infiltration of college basketball in James Toback's ``Harvard Man,'' and he'll appear with Anthony LaPaglia as ``two writers who like to drink'' in ``Happy Hour.'' Stoltz grew up in Santa Barbara, Calif., ``funny- looking ... awkward and shy and obnoxious at the same time.'' Obnoxious? ``Because I was smarter than everyone else and I knew everything and I had to let them know that,'' he says. He played piano in local theaters, where he noticed ``how much fun the actors were having, and being a shy kid, that was very appealing to me.'' His feature film debut was in the 1982 teen comedy ``Fast Times at Ridgemont High.''