Who is that guy with wild hair and heavy accent?

<p>About a third of the way through "Eyes Wide Shut," Stanley Kubrick's final movie, Tom Cruise wanders into an all-night costume shop looking for an outfit for a sex party.</p><p>A heavily accented man prevails on him to rent something, and in passing seems to be, what's this, pimping his daughter to a group of Japanese businessmen?</p><p>It's weird, all right, but what stands out in memory is that heavily accented man -- familiar-looking in his wild gray hair and beard, distinguished yet corrupt, perhaps clever and perhaps just amoral.</p><p>You can't help but wonder, "Who is that guy?"</p><p>"I hear that a lot," says Rade Sherbedgia, on the phone from the Los Angeles suburb of Westwood. Then he chuckles. "I think it's because no one knows how to say my name."</p><p>When Hollywood goes looking for a Russian nuclear scientist, homeless immigrant or Ukrainian mobster, Sherbedgia is on the short list.</p><p>Since he left his native Croatia in 1992, the Serbian actor and musician has become one of the world's most noticed character actors. From the Russian demagogue in "The Saint" with Val Kilmer, to "Eyes Wide Shut" and "Mission Impossible II" with Cruise, even "Batman Begins," "Snatch," "The Shooter," and a recurring role in Day 6 of Fox TV's "24" -- Sherbedgia has arrived.</p><p>His latest film, "Fugitive Pieces," for Canadian writer and director Jeremy Podeswa, plays Thursday at the Sonoma Valley Film Festival. Sherbedgia will be there, along with two of the film's other actors, Ayelet Zurer and Rachelle Lefèvre.</p><p>Zurer is an Israeli actress who plays the protagonist's love interest, and Lefevre is a Canadian who introduces the two. It stars Stephen Dillane as the grown writer through whose memories the story is told.</p><p>Sherbedgia's role in the post-war drama is pivotal. He plays a Greek archaeologist who rescues a young Polish boy on the run from the Nazis after his family has been captured and killed -- or worse. Sherbedgia adopts the boy, teaching him to trust and, eventually, to become a writer. It's a serious, moving film, already in release in Europe, where Sherbedgia won a best actor award at the 2007 Rome Film Festival.</p><p>It's a kind of second wind of fame and fortune for Sherbedgia, who was born in 1946 in Croatia, then part of Yugoslavia, the son of a policeman who hewed to the Communist Party line.</p><p>Though his parents had little interest in the arts, Sherbedgia attended the University of Zagreb and took to the stage, his robust good looks and talent landing him leading roles as Peer Gynt, Don Juan, Hamlet and Richard III, among others. He also directed stage plays, wrote four books of poetry and became a singer (a skill he used in the 2001 ABC-TV version of "South Pacific," playing the lead opposite Glenn Close).</p><p>But he always chafed against the totalitarian practices of communist Yugoslavia, which attempted to erase the ethnic distinctions of the populace. In 1992, when the Yugoslav Federation began to fracture into ethnic and regional wars, Sherbedgia and his wife left Zagreb, without any passports.</p><p>"We went to Slovenia, which was the first Yugoslav republic to be recognized (as independent) by the European community," he says. "I tried to act in Slovenian movies, but my accent was too thick -- Slovenian is a very soft language. My wife told me, 'If you must act with an accent, go to London, everybody speaks English with an accent there.' " So with their new Slovenian passports, in the winter of 1993 they arrived in London.</p><p>His acting career slowly got "on its own two legs" again, he says, when he took the role of Alexander in "Before the Rain" (1994) by Macedonian director Milcho Manchevski. It's the story of an award-winning photographer who gives up his life in London and returns to his home village in Macedonia, where he reluctantly confronts the animosity between former friends and lovers as Serb is pitted against Albanian, Christian against Muslim.</p><p>"Before the Rain" became an international hit and was nominated for an Academy Award as best foreign film. Sherbedgia thought it a good time to move to L.A.</p><p>And the rest, as they say, is history -- if somewhat obscure, film geek history, for those who wait around for the credits to roll to find out who is that guy with the wild hair and heavy accent.</p><br> Christian Kallen writes a movie blog at <a href="http://inthedark.pressdemocrat.com">inthedark.pressdemocrat.com</a>.