Richard Robert Redlin Looks Forward to a Different Role : Acting: The disabled actor will play a unique part in ‘Hart to Hart,’ but he wants to portray ordinary characters who just happen to use crutches or wheelchairs.

Actor Richard Robert Redlin, who walks with the support of forearm crutches, steadies what he calls his “sticks” and asks, “Did you ever notice how enamored movie makers are with disabled characters? And how seldom they hire disabled actors to play those roles?”

Redlin, who guests tonight in the latest “Hart to Hart” TV movie, reels off examples of major movies with disability-specific protagonists: “Rain Man,” “Scent of a Woman,” “Piano,” “Born on the Fourth of July,” “My Left Foot,” “Children of a Lesser God.”

“Funny thing,” he continued, “is that out of that bunch of award-winning movies, only ‘Children of a Lesser God’ featured a performer (Marlee Matlin) who is actually disabled, and she went on to win the Oscar.”

The paradox, said Redlin, is that “we work in a business that’s based on imagination and, unfortunately, a tremendous lack of vision prevails, particularly where people with unique situations are concerned.”

Of course, members of the Hollywood disabled acting community, who are organized, have been trying for decades to get a fair casting break from studios and producers.

“Disabled roles don’t always go to disabled actors,” noted director Victoria Ann-Lewis, who develops projects for disabled actors at the Mark Taper Forum. Disabled herself, she emphasized that “it’s a constant battle to integrate us into the movies as ordinary people--judges, nurses, lawyers.”

Ann-Lewis, who directed Redlin last year as a legless acrobat in “PH*reaks” for the Taper’s New Works Festival (in which he had to whirl around on a beggar board and stand on his head), calls Redlin “an incredibly energetic, promising actor.”

“But it’s extremely difficult for talent even like Richard to develop a career. But someday,” she said with some fire in her voice, “I think someone will finally turn the tide and make it big as a leading man or lady who just happens to be disabled.”

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Redlin, who’s 41 but looks 31, broke his spinal cord at the age of 22 when he fell down a Union Oil refinery smokestack in an industrial accident in his native Chicago. Doctors, he said, told him those deathless words heard in many a potboiler: “You will never walk again. Your active life is over.”

In effect, said Redlin, “they told me I should learn to fix TV sets.” But a monumental, decade-long rehabilitation program saved the world from another TV repairman. It took years but he got out of his wheelchair and onto his feet, supported by his trusty “sticks.”

“After my fall, I was full of anger at first. I went through terrible dark periods but I channeled them into constructing my life, trying to maximize my disability. Everyone has some sort of disability, physically, socially, economically. I’m doing everything I can to heal my body spiritually and physically but, at the same time, I’m going forward with life and not getting hung up on my disadvantages.

“People who look at me might say in mock-envy, ‘Look at Richard: He lives at the beach, he’s buying a condo (which Redlin is, in Santa Monica), he drives, he acts.’ But I have tremendous problems every day. Spinal cord injury is a hard nut.”

With rugged, leading-man looks and natural screen magnetism, he unabashedly looks forward to the day when he can reasonably audition for a romantic leading-man role in which he’s coincidentally a guy who’s a paraplegic.

“I want to be hired for my acting,” Redlin said, with an intensity that non-disabled actors couldn’t possibly understand.

In the meantime, Redlin, a comparative late bloomer (he began his acting journey in 1985 in classes under teacher Sanford Meisner), has probably been working more than many disabled actors, essentially in roles where his disability is germane to the plot.

Tonight’s “Hart to Hart,” shot on location in Hawaii, represents big exposure.

His role was originally written for a character in a wheelchair, but Redlin convinced co-executive producer Robert Papazian (with whom he had worked two years ago on a USA cable movie) that his character, who is celebrated in the story for authoring a book called “I Can Do It Alone,” would be more dramatic on his feet than in a chair.

In tonight’s action, which also features guests Vicki Lawrence and Mike Farrell, Redlin’s athleticism is a major plot point. Director Peter Hunt put Redlin through the paces on Oahu beaches during filming last month, from flirting with Jennifer Hart (Stefanie Powers) to dancing at a masquerade ball (in which stars Robert Wagner and Powers are dressed up as Laurel and Hardy) to crawling and pulling himself into the ocean and saving Jonathan Hart (Wagner) from drowning.

“In a twist, my character saves someone who doesn’t have a physical handicap,” said Redlin. “It will encourage people to believe that disabled actors can play different roles.”

* “Hart to Hart: Old Friends Never Die” airs at 9 tonight on NBC (Channels 4, 36 and 39).