From “Space Balls” to “Independence Day” to his award-winning stage performance in “Goat,” actor Bill Pullman has proven he can handle any role from super-silly to deadly serious. Most recently, he was in HBO’s “Too Big to Fail” and has been cast as child killer Oswald Danes on Starz/BBC’s “Torchwood,” which begins Friday. The intriguing story line for the first episode, “Miracle Day,” is about the day humans discover they can’t die. You still get old and sick, but you can’t die. Just another day at the office for the 58-year-old with leading-man good looks. He is married with three children — the youngest just graduated from high school — and spends time in Los Angeles and on his Montana ranch.

So what kind of field research do you do to play an unrepentant child killer who finds redemption through attention?

[Laughing] For me it started with literature. One of the books that I thought was really seminal is this 1940s book by Dr. Hervey Cleckley called “Mask of Sanity.” He is profiling different sociopathic and psychopathic behaviors. That was written in the 1940s. Then there are some books now about sexual predators and things like that. You come to some broad consensus about different patterns of behavior and that kind of thing. I observe people on YouTube videos who have been convicted of crimes or accused of crimes. So you start with that.

When you dip into that very dark place, do you feel like you need to go take a shower?

Well, it’s not like I had something like that happen in my past or had someone I love have that happen to them. I’m dealing with it from a character point of view. You are more like a doctor. You don’t judge. You just look to seek behavior and identify what it is. You look for ways in which we all share some part of it. I mean I don’t really demonize them. I don’t say they’re evil people. Just because, from my point of view, that’s not practical. It’s more practical to look at it from the perspective — is there anything we still have in common as members of humanity and what mechanisms of the brain to compartmentalize, to cauterize certain wounds, to transfer fear and anger on other things — those kinds of things.

So far more analytical. You don’t get emotional about it.

Yeah, I’m hungry to kind of get to work. To get up on my feet at some point so I don’t try to get too far away from that.

Acting is mostly a team sport. Have you found your fellow players to be supportive on the whole or is scene-stealing part of the game?

I have always felt that it’s really not schoolyard. It’s more we are all playing at something that is in a way kind of more transformative than that. You live in a little bit of delusion, just by the nature of saying you are another person. There are a lot of things that come up subconsciously during all that. But I think for the most part they are good people. I always seek out the actor’s company. The couple of times where I felt that people’s self-interest was rising above the project or something — very rare.

Is vulnerability a key component when it comes to memorable performances?

It’s definitely something you hope is available. It’s always a matter of degree and perspective and all that. I think it starts with the writing. One of the things that strikes me about Russell P. Davies, the writer of “Torchwood,” is he’s an exceptional person. I think he’s a very humanist person at the core, so he’s exploring all kinds of facets of character. At the kernel of it is a great sense of range of human emotions, which everyone has no matter whether they are doing good things, bad things or anything in between. Vulnerability is something that starts in the writing. When you find that moment or something is presented to you, it is important to be available to it.

Have you ever played a character on film or stage that left you feeling uncomfortably exposed emotionally?

Yeah. I don’t think that’s my primary condition coming away from things, but there are moments when there’s a dissonance between what you’ve been doing and where you’ve been and what people think you are. I’ve done it, sometimes in plays. I did a movie two years ago called “Surveillance” with Jennifer Lynch and David Lynch [who] produced it. There was a troublesome scene that came out of it. I was really perceived as one person by the crew and I remember coming out of this very kind of insulated room where we were doing the scene and realizing people were looking at me as if they suddenly saw something in me and that I had betrayed them somehow. They’re seasoned pros, but there’s still some fundamental level of human defense mechanism that kicks in if they see something that threatens.

How did you end up in a coma in college?

I was in rehearsal for a play and I was on top of a bunch of people and fell backwards and hit my head. I was in a coma for 21/2 days. I came out of it, but it was one of those times where you get yanked out of your pattern of life and everything you expect. You kind of assume a certain kind of immortality.

Do you remember anything from it or were you just out cold?

I came kind of forward three times. Once shortly after it happened when I was in the ambulance going down the hill and then once right away where I heard someone say, “Stop saying, are you OK?” [laughing] They kept coming up to me, “Are you OK?” And then once I heard my father’s voice. He was standing behind a partition in the room and I heard a doctor say, “Well I think he’s got a 50/ 50 chance.” Then I went back I thought, I guess I better wait for this to resolve. [laughing]

You are a rancher and you made a video plea to convince the Northwestern Energies Co. to put their power lines underground. Did you get them to reconsider?

Patricia, you are very well researched, let me say that. I have been part of this for a couple of years and there have been some interesting developments since I made that video.

Our county, Jefferson County, won a district court case for local government to get a place at the table when large issues of public concern are taking place. So local government can represent land owners and advocate for them. We won that case and it was a David and Goliath thing. Now it’s been appealed by the corporation. Actually it’s a case against the Department of Environmental Quality, a branch of the Montana government. They are appealing that on behalf of the corporation. It has spread now to a Montana House bill seeking to get a huge breadth and depth of control of eminent domain. Montana has always had domain law for public good but this is — they passed a law that allows foreign corporations to take private landowners’ land without the kind of scrutiny they have had to go through before.

You and your wife will soon be empty nesters.

It’s going to free us up to do some more things. I guess we’ve been talking about it every day. [laughing] We have a couple different zones we operate out of — New York City is an important one for me for theater. I wanted to do a play next year which will be easier than it’s ever been because we don’t have people to make lunches for every morning. But I just signed on to do a play in L.A., oddly enough. It’s ironic I get this freedom and have to stay in L.A. anyway.

Maybe after the play you will be able to move more freely?

Curious thing though, people are finding that their kids come back. That’s kind of good, too. My brother calls them homing pigeons that he trained not to come back — he thought. All of our three kids are involved in the arts so the journey isn’t like: Sign up and get a job where you have a pension and health care coverage and you have an income and you rent an apartment. It didn’t go that way for us, so we have to be ready to make all kinds of new models of how they make this emergence into the world on their own and everything.

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