McCarthy (in glasses) with, from left, Dan Esposito ’10, Professor Jorgensen, and Riley Madincea ’11. Photograph: Suzanne Camarata

As it turned out, majoring in philosophy was a smart move for Tom McCarthy ’88. For among many observations the actor/director shared during two days at Boston College this past April was the need to be philosophical about life, especially if you’re starting out in the entertainment business. “You do have moments when you wonder if you’re kidding yourself,” he said, recalling his early, largely unemployed days in New York City at the beginning of the 1990s, when he had the leisure to observe that the only people wandering around Central Park from nine to five were “homeless people, tourists, and actors.”

McCarthy was on campus to attend the April 25 screening of his second feature film, The Visitor (2007), during the 10th annual Boston College Arts Festival, and to receive the Boston College Arts Council Alumni Award for Distinguished Achievement. The award is presented each year at the festival, and past winners have included comedian Amy Poehler ’93, photographer James Balog ’74, and Paul Daigneault ’87, director of the SpeakEasy Theater in Boston.

Since graduating from Boston College and the Yale School of Drama, McCarthy has established himself as an actor in theater, film, and TV. His most notable recent successes have been as a film writer and director; his first project, The Station Agent, was a surprise independent film hit in 2003. The story of a dwarf who inherits a dilapidated railway station, it featured Bobby Cannavale, Patricia Clarkson, and Peter Dinklage. The movie won the Audience Award and the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at the Sundance Film Festival that year and earned Clarkson a Special Jury Performance Award; it also garnered the British Academy of Film and Television Arts award for best screenplay and a cluster of other prestigious nominations and film festival prizes in the United States and abroad.

Among the 300-plus who have gathered under a big-top tent on O’Neill Plaza in the evening chill to watch The Visitor and hear McCarthy speak is economics professor Frank McLaughlin ’54. He’s curious to see the film, he says, because the main character is, like himself, a professor of the dismal science. And as the father of a filmmaker—his youngest son David McLaughlin ’85 is seeking a distributor for his movie On Broadway, which took second place among first features at the 2007 Galway Film Festival—he is interested to hear how McCarthy has navigated this notoriously uncertain profession. Patrick Quinn ’08, a finance major, has made a few films too, all shorts, and is an avid reader of screenplays. He’s there to listen because McCarthy “is living the dream,” he says. “I’m passionate about it, but I have to do it on the side.”

Like The Station Agent, The Visitor is a leisurely paced, intimate study of character and unexpected relationships. Following its premiere at the 2007 Toronto Interna-tional Film Festival, Overture Films, a subsidiary of Liberty Media, snapped up distribution rights for more than $1 million. Chosen as a Critics’ Pick by the New York Times, the film has continued to gather media acclaim since its nationwide release in April 2008. In his review, Times critic A.O. Scott sketches the plot as “the tale of a square, middle-aged white man liberated from his uptightness by an infusion of Third World soulfulness, attached to an exposé of the cruelty of post-9/11 immigration policies.” Scott acknowledges that such a barebones account belies the “impressive grace and understatement” with which McCarthy is able to “resist potential triteness and phony uplift.”

The visitor of the title is Walter Vale (Richard Jenkins), a depressed, widowed economics professor at Connecticut College, whose life is jolted out of its joyless rut when he meets a pair of young illegal immigrants who have rented his rarely visited Manhattan apartment. Through this tentative connection with the couple—Syrian drummer Tarek (Haaz Sleiman) and his Senegalese girlfriend, Zainab (Danai Gurira)—Walter begins to come back to life, learning to play the djembe drum and rediscovering New York in Tarek’s friendly wake.

After Tarek is picked up by police in the subway and dispatched to a detention center for illegal aliens, Walter discovers a new geography of despair, in which relatives and friends of detainees hang out in a seedy diner in the shadow of a windowless building, hoping for news of their loved ones. Tarek’s mother, Mouna (Hiam Abbass), worried about the lack of news from her son, arrives in New York from her home in Michigan, and an awkward courtship blossoms between her and Walter. There’s no Hollywood ending, however, and the film seems to leave the Arts Festival audience thoughtful rather than cheering, though the applause is enthusiastic.

McCarthy receives a roaring welcome when he bounds to the microphone at the front of the stage to answer questions. He’s boyish looking, with cropped hair and glasses, and he’s wearing a black jacket and shirt and dark blue jeans. His first foray into performance was with the Boston College improvisation troupe My Mother’s Fleabag, and his quick-fire delivery still has the energy of stand-up comedy.

“Are you going to make us wait five years for the next movie?” someone asks. “I’m a really slow writer, and for that I blame my education at this university,” he replies, to laughter. To a student who asks whether it’s true that Walter, the failed professor, displays a diploma from Boston University on his office wall, McCarthy jokingly responds, “You’re an agitator.” Then he adds, “It’s important to point out that Walter hasn’t achieved everything he wanted in life,” to another round of laughter.

After weeks on the interview circuit promoting the film, McCarthy has fluent answers to most of the stock questions. The idea for the film began with the character of Walter, he says, and Tarek’s character evolved from people he met on a trip to the Middle East in 2004 to promote The Station Agent. When asked how he balanced the characters’ personal stories with the immigration issue, he says, “First and foremost, my job is to tell a story. I didn’t want it to be ‘the immigration movie’.” But once it became clear to him that the treatment of illegal aliens was an important part of the story, he researched the invisible bureaucratic world of detention centers by joining a church group that organizes visits to centers in Queens and New Jersey.

“How do you go from being a student at Boston College to making movies in L.A.?” asks Patrick Quinn, he of the professed filmmaking ambitions. McCarthy recounts how after college he and fellow Fleabaggers, including Maile Flanagan ’87 and Nancy Walls ’88, moved to Minne-apolis, where there was a thriving arts scene but not the intense competition he would later find in New York. “All we did was write and perform,” he says. He describes how, coming from conventional family backgrounds, the group had a shared sense that life as professional artists was daring and mysterious. Flanagan and Walls would themselves go on to successful careers in entertainment, Flanagan winning a Daytime Emmy in 2006 for her voice-over work as the title character on the PBS cartoon show Jakers! The Adventures of Piggley Winks, and Walls appearing as a regular on Saturday Night Live and as an occasional correspondent on The Daily Show.

Back then, however, “We didn’t know anybody who did this for a living,” says McCarthy. “It was like talking about being a communist.”

Mccarthy returned to this theme the next day, in a late afternoon Inside the Actor’s Studio–style interview with associate professor Luke Jorgensen ’91. “My whole family did the business thing,” he explained. His older brother Jay ’84 went from Boston College to Morgan Stanley; younger brother Bill ’92 would head to EMC Corporation. When McCarthy announced his intention to pursue acting, his parents were not entirely thrilled. In a story recounted by Flanagan, McCarthy’s mother and father came to see him perform improv on Cape Cod the summer after graduation, “and I can tell you one thing, Tom’s dad was not happy. We could feel the white-hot fire of a thousand suns directed at us on stage.” Still, McCarthy’s family always supported him in his choice. When he moved to New York in 1993 his brothers let him stay in their apartment, paying rent when he could. “I lived on their generosity and kindness,” he admits.

McCarthy built his career initially as an actor, and still considers himself primarily an actor. His film credits include Flags of Our Fathers, Syriana, Good Night and Good Luck, The Year of the Dog, and Meet the Parents. Asked by Jorgensen what kind of roles he’s offered these days, McCarthy replies, “Right now, I’m on a string of weasels.” First among the weasels would be Scott Templeton, the self-promoting journalist he played in HBO’s critically acclaimed series The Wire. Comparing the various dimensions of his crafts, McCarthy describes writing and directing as “a more consuming process, though sometimes more satisfying,” while acting gives him the luxury of watching directors like George Clooney, Peter Jackson, and Lukas Moodysson at work.

“Are you tempted to get back into improv?” asks theater major Riley Madincea ’11, a current Fleabagger. “I would be terrified to do improv again,” McCarthy responds. “I just have to wait and see what comes up in the acting arena.” His most recent role finds him in the company of Clive Owen and fellow Yale alumnus Paul Giamatti, in a corporate espionage thriller under the direction of Tony Gilroy. According to McCarthy, it has involved three consecutive night shoots in which his character is bound and gagged by Julia Roberts.

“Did you kiss Julia Roberts?” asks Jorgensen. “She came very close to my face,” McCarthy deadpans, “and then she wrapped it in tape.”

Clearly the former Fleabagger hasn’t lost the art of improv.

Jane Whitehead is a writer in the Boston area. Luke Jorgensen’s interview with Tom McCarthy may be viewed in its entirety here.

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