| By Bob Andelman

(Editor’s Note: John Hawkes was a guest on the show back in October 2009. He was a great guest, so why not re-run the interview now? Tomorrow night, we’ll find out whether he won the 2011 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Winter’s Bone. Hopefully, this will put him over the top!)

John Hawkes is best known for his role as Sol Star, the co-owner of the hardware store and best friend of the sheriff on the beloved, cocksucker HBO series “Deadwood.”

Hey—I don’t write these intros, folks, they just sort of write themselves.

But like most everybody who had a star turn on that amazing but short-lived drama, Hawkes has been busy ever since, including roles in the movies American Gangster and Miami Vice. He’s currently starring on a new HBO comedy series, “Eastbound and Down.”

AUDIO EXCERPT: “As a poker player I would say you’ve got pretty bad odds on (a ‘Deadwood’ movie)… I know that David Milch, the show’s creator, had wanted to set the films in the future aways. So who knows? Maybe in 7, 8 years they’ll round us up again and we’ll do something. I always thought it would make a great feature film.”

Hawkes also keeps busy writing and performing music with his band, King Straggler, which has played at the Sundance Film Festival and SXSW. I’ll spin one of the band’s tracks, “Good Man,” a little later in the show.

(UPDATE February 2010: King Straggler’s song “Good Man” was used over the ed titles in an episode of TNT’s “Men of a Certain Age.” Also, John Hawkes joined the cast of ABC’s “Lost” in the role of “Lennon” for the show’s final season.)

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Bob Andelman is the author or co-author of 10 books, including ‘The Profiler’ with Pat Brown, ‘Built From Scratch’ with the founders of The Home Depot, and ‘Will Eisner: A Spirited Life.’ • Follow Bob on Twitter or Facebook.

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Melissa Leo, image via Wikipedia

By BOB ANDELMAN

Mr. Media® Radio Network

(Editor’s Note: Melissa Leo was a guest on the show back in March 2010. She was a great guest, so why not re-run the interview now? Tomorrow night, we’ll find out whether she won the 2011 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in The Fighter with Christian Bale. Hopefully, this will put her over the top!)

I think it was the hair.

A Niagara Falls of cascading, curly, dirty red tresses framing a face that could alarm the viewer with its world-weary concern or lighten up any scene with a rare outburst of laughter.

That was how most of us came to know Melissa Leo, a.k.a., female Det. Sgt. Kay Howard, on NBC’s long-running series, Homicide: Life on the Street. She was a hardened veteran investigating murder among a crew of tough guys who treated with respect and a smidgen of trepidation.

Homicide was one of TV’s all-time great shows, continuing the careers of Yaphet Kotto and Ned Beatty and introducing us to new talent such as Leo, Andre Braugher, Kyle Secor, Callie Thorne, Clark Johnson, Michelle Forbes. And it caused the transformation of legendary standup comic Richard Belzer into what must be one of TV’s longest running character, Detective John Munch, who started on Homicide in 1993 and lives on today in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, having wise-cracked his way through more than 260 episodes all told.

But I digress.

Having survived her Homicide partner, Daniel Baldwin, Melissa Leo’s career was low-key for a few years as she became a frequent guest star in TV dramas from The L Word and CSI to Shark and Law & Order.

So how she then went from appearing in Mr. Woodcock with Billy Bob Thornton to being Oscar-nominated for Best Actress for 2008’s Frozen River has got to be a good story.

Melissa Leo is about to join us to talk about a raft of new movies she’s in-—including: Welcome to the Rileys with Kristen Stewart and James Gandolfini; The Fighter with Christian Bale and Mark Wahlberg; Betty Anne Waters, starring Hilary Swank; and the just announced Mildred Pierce remake in which she stars opposite Kate Winslet, who beat her for the 2009 Oscar—as well as the April 11 premiere of the HBO series Treme, in which she co-stars with John Goodman.

MELISSA LEO AUDIO EXCERPT: “Kristen Stewart will grow as an actress as she works. She’s interested in learning and expanding. She doesn’t think she knows it all. She is not going to be caught in the persona she played in those Twilight films. She is going to make a choice to step out of those parameters. This is an actor, not a movie star.”

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You can LISTEN to this interview with MELISSA LEO, star of FROZEN RIVER, WELCOME TO THE RILEYS, HOMICIDE: LIFE ON THE STREET and TREME, by clicking the audio player above!