TORONTO—Most actors get involved in a movie because of the script. When the character is interesting, the directors have won Oscars, and you are better known for being best friends with a movie star than for your own acting career, one would assume you might see great things in the script. However, Richard Kind wasn’t blown away by Joel and Ethan Coen’s script for A Serious Man. He says that when he got to rehearsals, he realized that the part was better than it had read on the page.

“I didn’t think the role was wonderful when I read it,” he says in a hotel room at the Toronto International Film Festival. “We did a couple of days of rehearsal, and when I got there I could see how important he was to the movie. When I was doing it I thought it would be larger, but everything I did was in the movie. I could see how layered he is and that the movie is layered, but I never realized it from the script.”

In the film—which opens on Friday, October 16—Kind plays Uncle Arthur, the genius but chronically unemployed brother of Larry Gopnik, a professor whose wife is in love with another man. Meanwhile, Larry is getting pressure to give a failing student a good grade, and Arthur may be in trouble with the police. Kind says that although Larry’s life isn’t going well, Arthur, who lives with the family because he can’t live on his own, is jealous of his younger brother.

“Arthur believes that all of life’s options have been offered to Larry. But Larry has children and a job and accepts his fate. I don’t think Arthur will have many options in the future and that his sadness will continue. He is not going to get a job that will funnel what he does, and to keep from being bored, he flirts with impropriety. He is just a gentle soul, and that is what he has in common with Larry.”

Kind is perhaps best known for playing ensemble parts in the series Spin City and Mad About You and being one of George Clooney’s closest friends. He keeps busy doing theatre and says that he doesn’t mind auditioning in person for TV and movie roles. However, he’s not happy auditioning on tape.

“When you look like me, you can see that trying to get a job on tape would be like trying to get a date with a passport picture. You don’t look good, and what you do so well is never transferred well on tape. For this I had to audition while I was doing Damn Yankees in Fort Worth, Texas. I put the movie’s big crying scene on tape for the Coens and I had a hard time doing it. I rented Billy Elliott and watched it all day because there are some scenes that make me cry. I also used the trial scene in My Cousin Vinnie although it kills me that it affects me so much.”