Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, March 3, 1990 TAG: 9003033040
SECTION: SPECTATOR PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JERRY BUCK ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
His current series, ABC's "Family Matters," a comedy spinoff from "Perfect Strangers," is a case in point, as was his acclaimed role as the sympathetic policeman in the movie "Die Hard."
"I always look at an audition as just another audition," he says. "I never count my chickens before they hatch. I never thought I'd get `Die Hard.' At the auditions I heard the other actors yelling and screaming. I thought I'd go soft. I thought it might work.
"A lot of people read for this role. I was up against four well-known actors. I said, `Hmmm, I won't get this.'"
But he did and now he expects to be in the sequel, tentatively called "Die Harder."
In "Family Matters," VelJohnson plays a policeman who is the husband of Harriette Winslow (Jo Marie Payton-France), who had been the elevator operator and is now head of security at the newspaper on "Perfect Strangers." The show focuses on her family.
Their Chicago home gets a little crowded at times. There's Harriette, her husband, Carl, her sister, Wilma (Telma Hopkins), her 6-month-old baby, and Carl's domineering mother (Rosetta Lenoire). In addition, the Winslows have three children.
"People compare us to `The Cosby Show,' I guess because we're a black family," VelJohnson says. "But there are so many differences between the Huxtables and the Winslows. Cosby's wife is an attorney. My wife runs the elevator. He's a doctor. I'm a cop. It makes a big difference as to what goes on the dinner table."
VelJohnson made one appearance on "Perfect Strangers." "I think they'd already decided to spin Harriette off," he says. "They were just looking for the right chemistry for the husband."
As in "Family Matters" and "Die Hard," VelJohnson is frequently cast as a lovable teddy bear in the body of a huge grizzly.
He had a similar role as Tom Hanks' policeman partner in "Turner and Hooch" and as Gus the chauffeur in "`Crocodile' Dundee."
But he's also played the bad guy. On NBC's "227," he was a Santa Claus who stole all the gifts. He was on "The Equalizer" twice, once as a disc jockey who owed money to the mob and once as a mean-spirited school official.
VelJohnson was born in New York and grew up in Queens. "I can't think of anything else besides acting that I wanted to do," he says. "Nothing else ever occurred to me. At 6 I made puppets out of socks and put on shows. I was in my first play, `The Toy Shop,' in the second grade. I was a teddy bear who rolled across the stage. I wouldn't roll. My mother and grandmother in the audience called, `Roll, Reggie, roll.' I finally rolled and when the audience applauded I was hooked.
"In junior high school they didn't know what to make of me. They sent me to a psychologist and he said there was nothing wrong, I just wanted to act."
VelJohnson is a graduate of New York University and began acting professionally his first year in college. He was a spear carrier in Joseph Papp's production of "Hamlet," starring Sam Waterston and Jane Alexander. After getting his degree in theater, he plunged into stage work.
"I wrote plays, I acted," he says. "I had two lines on the soap opera `Another World.' I was a truck driver. I did a pilot for Alan King called `Cool Breeze,' about a cab company in Brooklyn. But ABC came up with `Taxi' and that was the end of that. `Crocodile Dundee' was my first film."
Although VelJohnson regularly plays a policeman, it didn't do him much good when his car was recently stolen.
"I didn't know what to do," he says. "I didn't want to call the cops. The first thing I wanted to do was call my mother."
by CNB