The producers wanted a movie star, but Thomas Kail knew someone more authentic.

So, as he prepared to direct a Broadway show about Vince Lombardi, he reached out to a long-time actor with New York roots and a football background of his own.

“Tommy knew I was a little crazy,” Dan Lauria said. “I would fly in and do a reading.”

Lauria quickly won over any skeptics and began immersing himself in Lombardi’s past, learning little-known tidbits about the legendary coach through conversations with former players.

The show that was supposed to last just weeks went on for several months, drawing rave reviews.

“It was the one play a wife could get her couch-potato husband to go to because they thought it would be football,” he said.

For nearly five decades, Lauria has played a range of roles across the big screen, TV and theatre — most notably Jack Arnold in The Wonder Years.

The Daily Coach spoke to him about why he still reads every review of his work, the common qualities of the best directors, and nuggets he learned in studying in Lombardi.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Dan, thank you for doing this. Tell us about your childhood and how it shaped you.

It’s funny. Whenever we have these panels with these actors, most of them had terrible childhoods. I had the greatest childhood in the world.

I grew up on Long Island, in Lindenhurst. We played ball. That was the big thing. My sophomore and junior year, we had the best team in the state in almost every sport. My closest friends now are still the ones I played ball with.

My father was a truck driver. My mother was a housewife until me and my brother were both in school. Then, she worked in a knitting mill. At Thanksgiving, my father would say, “What do you want for Christmas?” “Well, I could use a new glove, Pop.” At Christmas, there’d be a new glove. I thought everybody only got one gift for Christmas. My parents were the two nicest people I’ve ever met. I didn’t even know we were poor until I went to college.

How close were you to becoming a college coach?

The only thing I wanted to do growing up was play football and be a football coach. I went to Southern Connecticut on a football scholarship. Even the scholarships were illegal back then. They registered us Long Islanders as in-state students. I paid what the Connecticut guys paid.

When I got to college, I tried acting. Then, I went into the Marine Corps. When I came out, I coached at Lindenhurst (High School). Bernie Wyatt was the head coach. He was an all-American at Iowa. He said, “I’ll get you in as a graduate assistant on the football team.” I was about to say yes, but I got a grant for playwriting at the University of Connecticut. It was that big choice.

I wanted to act, so I went that way, but I always think about where I would’ve been. I was a pretty good defensive mind. I have a feeling I would’ve ended up a pretty good defensive coach at a major school.

Did you know immediately that The Wonder Years was going to be such a hit?

I think with things that are good, powerful and meaningful, if they don’t follow a norm, somebody’s always ready to cut them. Look at M*A*S*H*, look at Seinfeld. They bombed the first year.

The Wonder Years had no stars. It was about a 12-year-old boy with a narration while he’s older, not at his age. They couldn’t see anybody liking it because it wasn’t what was already on. I can’t tell you how many network executives wanted us to cut the narration before we went on the air. They don’t know much. If they were creative, they wouldn’t be administrators.

Our pilot aired right after the Super Bowl. We had unbelievable ratings, but they said, “Watch. Next week you won’t have the Super Bowl.” Well, the next week, our ratings were even higher. We were the No. 1 show for the first year-and-a-half we were on.

Was it hard tuning out that type of doubt or criticism early in your career?

I was very fortunate from my first day as an actor in New York to have Charles Durning as my mentor. I did a play once where somebody said I was the worst actor they’d ever seen and that I should go back to school because I didn’t learn anything. Then, one of the other reviews was, “There’s a new Brando on the American Theatre who writes like O’Neill.” Charles Durning got a transcript of the bad review, threw it at me, and said, “You ain’t that bad.” Then, he took the good review, threw it at me, and said, “You ain’t that good.”

All of these actors who say, “Oh, I don’t pay attention to the reviews” are lying. When you work that hard, nobody likes to hear a bad review. But Charlie taught me how to use them. I read every review. I read every line. What I look for is consistency. If 10 critics say, “This moment was great,” I think about that moment, what we did in rehearsal, why it’s working so well, and can we enhance it or use it in the next play?

The same goes with the negative. Six out of seven reviewers said, “This doesn’t work.” The only thing you can do is go to the playwright… and say, “If you want to do some re-writing, I’m in. Why don’t we fix it?”

If they don’t want to, well, you did your job. You offered.

What was your process to prepare for Lombardi?

The NFL was terrific. If ever I wanted to talk to one of the old Packers, the Mara family would have them on the phone in 10 minutes. Every Thursday night, we’d have talk backs with an old Packer or somebody who had played for Lombardi, like Frank Gifford. Every one would start with a funny story about him, but within 10 minutes was crying.

My main questions were, “What would you want to see in my performance that’s not in the books?” More than half said a sense of humor. We put in a big laugh. Tommy Kail and David Maraniss were very instrumental in having Eric Simonson cut the football stories everyone already knew and concentrate on the true aspects of his family.

Was there anything you learned about Lombardi that surprised you?

Everybody thinks Lombardi’s favorite quote was, “Winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing.” He hated that. He wasn’t talking about himself. He was talking about the owners. When people would say that to him, he would go up to a player and say, “I’ll give you $10K to bribe the referee.” The player would say, “What are you talking about? I can’t do that.” Lombardi would say, “Oh, so winning isn’t everything. Your honor is more important. Your manhood is more important.”

Of all the quotes, his favorite was, “We will pursue perfection knowing we’ll never get there. Along the way, we will shake hands with excellence.”

Monday after a game, it didn’t matter, win or lose, he’d break down the film, tell you what you did right and wrong. Tuesday, they’d put in the system they’d use the next game. Wednesday, when nobody got anything right, he was a madman. He’d scream and yell, all the stereotypes. On Thursday, by the end of practice, he’d start to calm down. On Friday, he was, “We got it!” He was a cheerleader. On Saturday, they say he was the biggest joker there was. “We’re ready!” You don’t think about him in those senses.

You’ve worked with so many directors and producers throughout your career now. What do the best ones have in common?

A good director will talk about the overall effect he’s trying to get as you sit around the table and do that first read through. Then, when you’re working on a scene, a good director will say, “Remember when I was talking about this when I did the read-through? In this scene, I need this kind of emotion to get that message across to get to the next scene.” He lets you know where you fit in the movie.

Most directors now say, “Well, we’re going to shoot it five times. Do one angry, one this, one that,” and it’s a hodgepodge in a computer. The weaker ones are the ones who are filling the machine. The stronger ones, the better ones are actually asking for your help to create the image they already have in mind. They’re more than willing to do extra takes. But they want the take that fulfills the image they were talking about in the beginning.

How do you overcome a poor director?

It’s the hardest thing in the world. It’s very easy to act when everything is the way you want to do it. I think the greatest acting lesson I ever got was (my first instructor), Ms. (Constance) Welch had all the males do this terrible monologue, every cliché in the book. “Nothing looks as dead as the dead.”

I got about two lines out, and she said, “Mr. Lauria, please sit down. Stop embarrassing yourself.” She showed the movie The Razor’s Edge with Tyrone Power saying the same words, and he’s great. She said, “The difference is Mr. Power is an actor. You all became critics.”

When you’re working on a soap opera and you’ve got the worst dialogue in the world, you’ve got to remember you’re not there to be a critic. You’re there to make that garbage work. We can make anything work.

You’ve been acting and writing for nearly five decades. What keeps you going?

You have to understand the business. I never had a big agent. People still ask me to self-tape after 50 years. They’ve got 9 million miles of footage of me, and they ask you to self-tape. I refuse to do that.

I will go in and audition not because I need a job or anything. It’s because I love to act. I’m old now. My agents (couldn’t) get me a job, so I wrote a play. It went off-Broadway and was a big hit. Now, we’re going to do it in other places around the country.

I just love to act. I still want to be in the game. As long as my knees hold out, I’m going to try to do theatre.

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