Arts & Entertainment

Made to Mimic

He's worked with the biggest stars. He also impersonates them.

By P.F. Wilson 

You probably recognize Kevin Pollak as Tom Cruise's mouthy sidekick from A Few Good Men or as a baddie from The Usual Suspects or The Whole Nine Yards. But when he's not on a movie set, the 50-year-old San Francisco native tours the country with his gag bag of celebrity impersonations that he fine-tuned as a kid. "It's just a natural freak gift that came easy," he says. "Ever since I was little, I'd walk out of a movie doing someone from the film. Eventually, my friends in school said, 'That sounds exactly like it.' They said that far too many times, to the point where I thought, 'Hey, I can do this.'" More than two decades after making his onscreen debut in National Lampoon's Hot Flashes, Pollak has put together a new act of spot-on send-ups of Hollywood's leading men, from William Shatner and Christopher Walken to Robert De Niro and Peter Falk. "I realized I had all of these firsthand stories from working with a lot of these people. That's what the act has evolved into: telling real-life stories while doing impressions of the people that I worked with in the past," says Pollak. "I'm not into 'What if Jack Nicholson were a bus boy — it would go something like this.' I'm never a fan of that crap." Showtime is at 8 tonight and 7:30 and 10:15 p.m. tomorrow and Saturday at Hilarities, 2035 East Fourth Street. Tickets are $23 to $30. Call 216-241-7425 or visit www.pickwickandfrolic.com.
Thu., March 20, 8 p.m.; March 21-22, 7:30 & 10:15 p.m., 2008