William H Macy: The luckiest loser in Hollywood

William H Macy is best known for playing tragi-comic characters, but he sees himself very differently, he tells Gill Pringle

When William H Macy strolls into a Los Angeles hotel suite, he has a cigarette tucked jauntily behind his ear. Not so extraordinary in itself - except when you consider that this is the anti-smoking capital of the world, and we're here to discuss Macy's starring role in an anti-smoking film. Seeing Macy's expectant blue eyes, it's almost cruel not to ask. So what's the cigarette for? "I thought you'd never ask," he says playfully. "Well, you light it, and you suck on this end, and it makes you feel really good for a couple of minutes...

"But, seriously, I used to smoke. And I liked smoking a lot. But the couple of times I recently lit a cigarette up, it felt beyond stupid so I don't do it any more," he says.

Macy's love-hate relationship with cigarettes is also the reason for his attraction to Thank You For Smoking, in which he plays a US senator jumping on the anti-smoking bandwagon to further his own political ambitions. "It's the political and ethical questions raised in this film that intrigued me more than anything. What authority does the government have to protect us from ourselves? I personally don't know the answer to that and I think it's constantly changing," he says.

The film, a refreshingly smart satire based on the acclaimed 1994 novel by the former White House speech-writer Christopher Buckley, centres around a tobacco lobbyist, Nick Naylor (Aaron Eckhart), and is essentially apolitical, taking aim at spin doctors on both sides of the political fence, and how they twist facts to suit their purposes. Eckhart's Naylor is a supreme master of this dubious skill, using charm to defend the indefensible.

The directorial debut of Jason Reitman (son of Ivan Ghostbusters Reitman), the movie boasts a stellar ensemble cast including Sam Elliott, Robert Duvall, Rob Lowe and Maria Bello. Financed by PayPal billionaire David O Sacks, Thank You For Smoking further benefits by its distance from big studio constraints, being able to tell its story on its own terms.

"I think this film is significant because the whole idea of spin is not funny really, because Washington is so good at it," says Macy. "And the spin that we're seeing now involves human life. But the main reason Thank You for Smoking works is that they're going after the tobacco industry, which is a paper giant. They lost when they were sued. Since Buckley first wrote the book until now, they've been decimated. They've been sued and lost, and they've paid billions of dollars in reparations. Making fun of the tobacco industry is easy. We're able to laugh at these spin doctors but I wonder how funny it would be if they were the spin doctors for homeland security, for instance. I don't know if you could find a wacky comedy in that."

Macy relished his role as power-hungry Vermont Senator Finistirre, even re-writing some of his lines: "I added in that line: 'The great state of Vermont will not apologise for its cheese'," he boasts. "Politics aside, I think the senator's greatest challenge is that he has to ride the line of impartiality when what he really wants to do is jump up and scream: 'Everyone who smokes is an idiot and the tobacco companies should be thrown in jail.' That's what he actually thinks, but he must comport himself instead in that humble, civil servant kind of way.

"I spent time with an actual senator some years ago when we were guests at the same house. I saw him in the morning, and I was sort of gobsmacked that here I was having coffee with a real-life senator. We talked about fishing, motorcycles - guy stuff. And, because it was in the news, I asked his opinion on legalising drugs. Well, an iron door just dropped right down. The guy couldn't get out of the kitchen fast enough. He totally refused to discuss it. So, I don't know, I find people who are afraid to call things by their right names easy targets. Delicious targets."

But, more than anything, government-enforced no-smoking policies make Macy fume: "There are lots of people in this country who smoke and I think it's getting crazy. The next thing you know, you're going to have to leave the state of California to have a smoke. It's totally crazy and I'm still unsure why the government is trying to legislate brains into us when anybody who smokes knows it's stupid. I mean, there's better ways to kill yourself. Don't you think?

"I've got two little kids, so I don't smoke anymore, although I confess I'm one of those annoying people who can smoke for a part for a couple of months and then just put it down and not really miss it. I put the cigarette behind my ear today just to upset people, I think," Macy admits.

The mother of Macy's two children is Desperate Housewives star Felicity Huffman. Between them, this married couple share two Oscar nominations - Huffman, 43, for this year's Transamerica, in which she portrays a trans-gendered man and Macy, 56, for Fargo, a decade earlier.

If the actor is too modest to confess to any disappointment at losing out on his Oscar to Jerry Maguire's Cuba Gooding Jnr in 1997, then he's vociferous on the subject of his wife Huffman's loss this year to Reese Witherspoon. "The one thing about these award ceremonies, let's be honest, is [they're there] to sell tickets. It's all about marketing. And the actors pay the price for that. They put us in a little contest. I think George Clooney said it best: 'How are you going to decide which of these five is the best unless all of us put on a batsuit? Then you can decide.'

"Although, when I was talking to Felicity afterwards, saying: 'Yada yada yada, your career has changed, you'll never have to audition again,' I thought she was going to levitate! She said, 'What? What?' I said, 'Girlfriend, you'll never have to audition again. You're at the grown-ups' table now. That's it.' Her eyes were like saucers," he recalls. "Was she disappointed? Yes, I think so. But not as much as me. I was bitterly disappointed and said so. I think I was not gracious," says Macy, with surprising ferocity.

Having made such a brilliant career of playing underdogs and damaged souls, it comes as a revelation when Macy confesses that beneath his humble portrayals beats the heart of a truly ambitious, even ruthless, actor. "I'm an ambitious fellow, it's true. I try to rein it in - in fact I devote a lot of energy towards doing so - but the truth is that I am very ambitious and nothing is ever quite good enough.

"To this day it puzzles me why it is that I'm always cast as the regular American guy who's confused, whose world has just burned down around him, and now finds himself wondering what he's supposed to do next. Because, even in my darkest days, that's never how I've perceived myself. I work hard to maintain a high standard of work and professionalism to the extent where some might even describe me as a perfectionist. The only thing that I'm completely satisfied with is that I married well and that I have a wonderful family."

Born in Miami, the son of a decorated bomber pilot who was killed during the Second World War, Macy originally planned to become a vet, but instead became fascinated by acting. Transferring to Vermont's liberal Goddard College, he studied under the playwright David Mamet, with whom he also later worked to create the St Nicholas Theater Company in Chicago. "Mamet taught me everything I know. I truly believe he was the guy who found the American voice and the music in it better than anyone else before him," Macy says.

Even with a mentor like Mamet, Macy was forced to spend the next 15 years after graduation languishing in television obscurity, paying the bills by doing voice-overs for deodorant and detergent commercials, and going broke twice. Though he achieved some recognition as ER's Dr David Morgenstern, it was his career-making turn as Fargo's woebegone used-car salesman Jerry Lundegaard that launched him into the public eye.

Fargo was followed by one heartbreaking portrayal after another. Outstanding among them is Boogie Nights' cuckolded husband of a porn actress; Pleasantville's self-effacing father trapped in a monochrome world; Magnolia's pathetic, middle-aged former television quiz kid drowning his sorrows in the bottle; and The Cooler's walking bad-luck jinx whose fortune finally turns. Rarely does Macy break from the hapless loser mould that he does so well, although when he does it's usually memorable, as with his scene-stealing, fast-talking 1930s radio commentator in Seabiscuit.

Mamet once famously said: "Nobody becomes an actor because they had a happy childhood." Given that Macy hails from a relatively carefree background, you wonder whether it's a sentiment he shares. "It's a genius quote, isn't it?" he says. "And I think it's true because you're betting the farm on a real long shot.

"Most actors live on the edge. A New York City actor, if he's wildly successful, I mean wildly successful, and does every play that comes along plus the occasional commercial, is still going to make maybe $100,000 or $125,000. I know that's a lot of money but not in New York City. Not with a family of four. And we're talking about the winners, the guys who really do it. A lot of the actors out there have two other jobs to support their habit. My daughters want to be actors. And I'm for it. I just don't want them to be dancers. That's my only stipulation."

'Thank You For Smoking' opens on 16 June