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Savalas' career as an actor began when he was 37, and more or less by accident. An agent asked him to find someone who could play an East European judge on television's Armstrong Circle Theater. Although totally untrained, he auditioned for the part on a whim and got it. "I became an actor out of curiosity," he said during a Kojak shooting break last week in Hollywood, "and at first my career was fascinating because the parts were varied." Savalas won an Academy nomination for playing a convict colleague of Burt Lancaster's in the 1962 movie Birdman of Alcatraz. The studios then typecast him in a long series of heavy roles, notably the swinish pervert in The Dirty Dozen (1967). When Hollywood sagged as a film center in the '60s, Savalas moved his wife Lynn and their three daughters to Europe, where he worked unenthusiastically as a villain in Italian potboilers. "One day," he says yearningly, "they will realize I can do a romantic story. Forget the gorilla exterior. Inside is a 16-year-old Romeo."
Enjoying Life. Middle-aged Lothario might be more accurate. Lynda Day George, who acted with him in a recent TV movie of the week, observes: "When he finally relaxes and finds it isn't necessary to conquer every woman he meets, he'll begin to enjoy life more."
Meanwhile, Savalas is giving a pretty good imitation of enjoying life. He storms without a fluff through grueling six-day weeks of shooting, barely stepping out of character to slip off the set and make phone calls to his bookie, and slurps ice cream happily, surrounded by Greek crew members. "Forget the fame, forget the money; that's nonsense. You get your friends jobs."