Harry Connick Jr. bringing his signature style to Santa Rosa

Brash, attractive and multi-talented, Harry Connick Jr. has seen his star shine brighter than ever as he gains new fans with each episode of “American Idol.”

Connick may be the show’s toughest judge since the departure of Simon Cowell in 2010 - he notably refuses to give standing ovations to contestants - but it’s not because he doesn’t appreciate their effort.

“Don’t be fooled by the fact I don’t clap … or don’t stand up. I don’t do that for anyone,” Connick said on the show last year after a singer earned a standing ovation from the other judges, Jennifer Lopez and Keith Urban.

“I’m a judge, and this is my version of how to judge. I have to be very focused.”

Focus has been the key to Connick’s remarkable career. Connick was raised in New Orleans, where his family owned a record store where he met leading jazz musicians and listened to records by Frank Sinatra, whom he idolized.

Connick started playing keyboards at age 3 and joined a New Orleans jazz band when he was 10, according to a feature in American Way magazine.

Intent on success, Connick went to New York to get a record deal in the mid-1980s and placed repeated calls to the president of Columbia Records until the company signed him.

His first album, released in 1987 and called simply “Harry Connick Jr.”, was all instrumental standards.

“I wanted to establish myself as a pianist first because the thing that people see you do first is what they associate you with,” he told Marian McPartland on NPR’s “Piano Jazz” show.

“I’m glad I did that because my singing has long overshadowed my piano playing,” he added, “but people somehow know I’m a piano player even if they’ve never heard me play.”

In the late 1980s, director Rob Reiner gave Connick the opportunity of a lifetime when he enlisted him for the “When Harry Met Sally” soundtrack.

Among the standards Connick sang in the romantic comedy was “It Had to Be You,” to which he brings the swing and verve of Sinatra.

Connick won a Grammy award for Best Jazz Vocal Performance, Male, for “We Are In Love,” one of the songs on the soundtrack.

The suave and debonair Connick parlayed his music success into acting roles. His first film was 1990’s “Memphis Belle.” The following year he starred with Jodie Foster in “Little Man Tate” and later appeared opposite Sandra Bullock in “Hope Floats.” It was in “Independence Day,” the 1996 film starring Will Smith, that Connick reached his largest film audience. He was also a regular on the TV series “Will and Grace.”

In 1994, Connick married Jill Goodacre, a top model for Victoria’s Secret in the 1980s and early ’90s. They have three daughters.

Deeply loyal to New Orleans, in 2005 Connick helped produce and appeared in a benefit concert shortly after the devastating hurricane and flood ravaged his city.

His most recent film, “Dolphin Tale 2,” is a feel-good story of rehabilitating a dolphin in captivity.

In recent years, Connick has starred in Broadway shows (a revival of “The Pajama Game”) and written theatrical scores.

His appearances on the past two seasons of “American Idol” have propelled his career to new heights and helped the show regain some lost luster.

The Los Angeles Times wrote last year that viewers should tune in “if only for Connick. He’s magnetic, as well as the most eager to hear new talent, the hardest to impress and the first to offer technical advice.”

Despite a ratings bump, “American Idol” has been canceled and is in its final season. Connick declined an interview request from the Press Democrat,

In an incident on the show last April, Connick traded barbs with contestant Quentin Alexander during a live broadcast.

Alexander, visibly upset after Connick criticized his performance, said, “This whole thing is wack.”

Retorted Connick: “Quentin, if it’s that wack, then you can always go home because ‘Idol’ is paying a lot of money to give you this experience and for you to say that to this hand that is feeding you right now, I think is highly disrespectful.”

Alexander said he was upset because two of his close friends on the show were on the verge of being eliminated.

Before Connick was an “Idol” judge, he was a guest mentor. He said he’s moved by the trials and tribulations of the young people striving to reach the finals.

Appearing on Ellen DeGeneres’ show last year, Connick said that when an openly gay woman made it to the “Idol” finals for the first time, “I lost it.”

He added: “If this (emotion) is what happens (to me) when someone goes through (to the finals), what’s going to happen when someone doesn’t go through?”

So he doesn’t watch the show, he told DeGeneres. “I don’t want to know the personal stories” of the contestants, he said, “because it would cloud my judgment.”

Michael Shapiro writes about entertainment for The Press Democrat. Contact him at michaelshapiro@pressdemocrat.com or visit his site: www.michaelshapiro.net.