Oh, that guy

John Slattery gets noticed for his many roles, but the Boston native has finally earned recognition with an Emmy nomination for 'Mad Men'

WEST HOLLYWOOD - When John Slattery is stopped on the street by people who love his work, they're not always exactly sure what work it is they loved.

"Sometimes you start reciting your list of credits to people and they go 'No, that's not it,' " the "Mad Men" star says over an heirloom-tomato salad lunch at an airy restaurant here. "They always put their finger on it eventually."

As if on cue, when Slattery momentarily leaves the table the waitress rushes over with a determined look in her eye. Who, she asks, is that silver-haired man? He's an actor, right?

He is. A pretty busy one in fact. As a reporter rattles off the impressive resume the Newton native has built up in both high- and low-profile projects over 20 years, the bull's eye is struck on "Desperate Housewives." In a multi-episode arc over the last two seasons, Slattery portrayed Victor Lang, mayor of Fairview and, literally, short-lived husband to Gaby Solis. "That's it!" the waitress says, visibly relieved.

When told that Slattery now stars on a new drama on AMC called "Mad Men," and in fact, was nominated for an Emmy award the day before, she admits she hasn't seen it but promises to watch.

When Slattery got the news about his supporting-actor nomination for playing cynical ad exec Roger Sterling - hard drinker and avid fan of the female form - the longtime surfer was preparing to hit the waves.

He knew he was on the short list for the nominations but had no expectations. "I had thought about it a bit and I thought either way, a good place to be would be in the water," he says with a smile.

Back on dry land, a tanned and mellow Slattery is pleased at the recognition not only for himself but also for the critically-lauded series. "Mad Men," set in a New York ad agency in the early 1960s, picked up 16 nominations overall. The fourth episode of the second season airs tonight at 10.

"A lot of times I've done work that I thought was good but it was in the middle of nowhere or it was in a movie that no one ever saw," he explains, as the kind of slinky jazz that wouldn't be out of place on the show seeps from the restaurant sound system. "In this case I feel like I'm involved in something that I'm really behind and it turns out that I'm not the only one who likes it, so that's gratifying. It makes you feel like you're not crazy."

Given the schedule he's managed to keep since graduating with a degree in theater from Catholic University in 1984, Slattery, 46, could be forgiven a little insanity.

If you're a Broadway buff you may have caught him as grieving dad Howie Corbett in the Tony-nominated 2006 production of "Rabbit Hole" or in Neil Simon's "Laughter on the 23rd Floor" with Nathan Lane. At the cineplex he's appeared most recently in "Charlie Wilson's War," "Flags of Our Fathers," and "The Station Agent."

Where Slattery has been inescapable however, is on episodic television. He's the handsome patrician-looking gentleman with the prematurely gray hair who has popped up in dozens of shows, including "Will & Grace," "Ed," "Judging Amy," and "Sex and the City." To fans of another period drama, the early '90s charmer "Homefront," he is best remembered as union organizer Al Kahn.

"He's like in every single thing in the world," says "Mad Men" costar Christina Hendricks. "I'm still constantly surprised. I'll turn on the TV or rent a movie and I'll be like, 'There's Slattery!' "

"There's something I find quintessentially Boston about John," says "Rabbit Hole" playwright David Lindsay-Abaire, a fellow Boston native. "It's this welcoming good-natured twinkle that masks something slightly dangerous just below the surface. So whether John's playing a suburban dad, a damaged ad man, or anything else for that matter, there's always texture, depth, and something surprising in his performance."

The acting career came as something of a surprise to his family, says older sister Julie, who lives in Scituate. "He wasn't a theater guy, he wasn't the kind of kid who was at home putting shows on for you or anything." (For the record, Slattery has four older sisters and a younger brother and says he will catch hell if he doesn't namecheck them all: Nan, Julie, Ellen, Lee, and Pete).

By his estimation, Slattery was an average student at Saint Sebastian's in Newton and at Catholic in D.C. Strong in the subjects he liked - English, literature - he was more fond of playing sports and goofing around with his friends. He developed an interest in acting as a kid growing up in an old Victorian across from the 17th fairway at the Woodland Golf Club.

"I would stay up until all hours by myself watching movies and then couldn't get up for school in the morning," he says.

Following a post-grad sojourn in Europe, Slattery moved to New York and punched the clock briefly as a file clerk in a law firm and as a waiter. He landed a national Levi's 501 commercial and shortly thereafter, in 1988, a role in a quickly canceled Fox series based on the film "The Dirty Dozen." He hasn't worked a day job since.

On television Slattery has often played characters that share a worldview with the acid-tongued Roger Sterling. They are dapper, charming, sometimes duplicitous, and in one memorable role, kinky - "Sex and the City" devotees can't forget campaigning politician Bill Kelley, who was flushed by Carrie Bradshaw for a predilection involving bodily fluids typically associated with the rest room, not the bedroom. (Slattery's sister Julie reports that her mother asked her to explain the character's fetish. She replied, "Mom, you ask John all about it.")

They also tend to be authority figures who are emotionally remote. Slattery, every inch a genial wiseacre, is unsure why he is cast this way on television since every time he does a play he usually portrays quivering wrecks.

He chalks up the difference, in part, to audience size, with theater allowing more idiosyncrasy of character. He draws a similar distinction between broadcast and cable television.

"[Cable's] this sort of niche that allows you to be more creative because you're not trying to go after the whole world, you're just trying to do this particular story as well as you can do it," Slattery says. "I just haven't maybe had that much of an opportunity to play many people who are that free emotionally in movies and TV."

The actor was given a chance to show his more vulnerable side last season when his character suffered a heart attack, while engaging in a little extramarital hanky-panky in the Sterling Cooper offices. As funny as Slattery makes Sterling, it was the way the actor extinguished the mischievous, ain't-life-grand glimmer in his eyes and replaced it with guilt and anguish as he embraced his TV wife from a hospital bed that likely clinched the Emmy nod.

It helps that the actress playing Mona Sterling is Mrs. John Slattery, Talia Balsam.

"Mad Men" creator Matthew Weiner, who had seen "Rabbit Hole," is glad he doesn't have to share Slattery with "Desperate Housewives" anymore. "We shot his episodes out of order so that we could have him because I didn't want to do the show without him," says Weiner. "He inhabits that guy."

While Slattery may be less closed off than his onscreen counterpart, he does share at least two traits with Roger Sterling, say past and current costars. "He's wickedly smart and wickedly funny," says Kyle Chandler of "Friday Night Lights," a Slattery colleague from "Homefront."

"I think I probably have a fairly cynical sense of humor and that sort of stuff appeals to me," Slattery says of the lines he gets to spout as Sterling. When asked what women might think of a product: "Who cares?" When asked what kind of agency ditches clients: "The kind where everybody has a summer home?"

"You could easily hate Roger Sterling, the things that he says," says Hendricks, Slattery's former, and perhaps future, onscreen mistress. "But the way John Slattery says it, he's got such a sense of humor, and charm, and loveliness about him that while he's saying these horrible things you can't keep your eyes off him."

It's true, when asked about a particularly nasty scene in which he had to mime vomiting, Slattery explains they used clam chowder and deadpans, "being a New Englander, I insisted."

During the hiatus following this cycle of 13 episodes, Slattery, who splits his time between Los Angeles and the Manhattan home he shares with Balsam and 10-year-old son Harry, doesn't have anything particular lined up. But he's confident he'll find something. In the meantime, he's going to surf, a passion he picked up during summer vacations on the Cape and Long Island.

"It's like the perfect antidote to show business," he says. "I love Los Angeles, but sitting by the phone with every other [shnook] in town and waiting for someone to call and give you a job is a really good way to induce an anxiety attack. Being in the ocean away from all that is a good way to get rid of one."

About to take his leave from the restaurant, Slattery laughs good-naturedly when told of the surreptitious visit from the waitress, but admits to tiring of reciting his many roles. Maybe after the second season of "Mad Men" and the Emmy nomination, he muses, "I won't have to."

Just as Slattery heads out the door, a diner at an outside table who spied the actor inside rushes up to get an autograph on the "Mad Men" poster he retrieved from his car. He knows exactly who John Slattery is.

Sarah Rodman can be reached at srodman@globe.com.