On screen he specialises in midlife crises: jittery salesmen, loser husbands, over-the-hill bikers. In life, he has a desperately famous housewife, a career that's the envy of Hollywood and a box-office hit on his hands. Happy, lucky William H Macy talks to Donald Clarke

IF WILD Hogs is about anything - and that is doubtful - then it is about the idiocies that accompany the male midlife crisis. This (let's be kind) rambunctious comedy follows four middle-aged men as they straddle motorbikes and, hopeful for a kind of spiritual rebirth, head towards a location idyllic enough to accommodate such a breezy film's closing credits.

You might not be altogether astonished to learn that John Travolta, Tim Allen and Martin Lawrence turn up among the cast. The presence of William H Macy, a contender for this era's greatest character actor, is somewhat more surprising.

"Everybody has asked us if we have had a midlife crisis ourselves," Macy says. "I've noticed that John has been particularly cagey about answering that one. Actors don't really have midlife crises. We live fantasy lives. And if you are a successful actor, then most people would be within their rights to kick you out a third-floor window if you dared to suggest you had a midlife crisis."

Macy pats the arm of his over-stuffed chair and glances about the ornate cornices of the snooty Parisian hotel in which we are lounging. "Hey. I have a great wife. My kids are incredible. I am one of the luckiest palookas in the world."

The luckiest palooka in the world? Well, yes, Macy, now 57 years old, is currently in a very good place indeed. Though rarely gifted a leading role, he has an enviable reputation as a supporting player without peer. Since forming a crucial early partnership with the playwright David Mamet, Bill has travelled along a career path that - steadily, unspectacularly - has taken him to the top of the professional heap. Now resident in the Hollywood Hills with his wife Felicity Huffman, star of Desperate Housewives, William H Macy has been nominated for an Oscar and has won an Emmy. There are, I guess, few palookas luckier.

Yet Macy has achieved all this by playing a harrowing series of losers and deadbeats. He was a suicidal cuckold in Boogie Nights. He bumbled as a hopeless car salesman, eager to dispose of his wife, in the Coen brothers' Fargo. Heck, in The Cooler, an underrated film from 2003, he played a man plagued with such infectious bad fortune that he is employed by a Las Vegas casino to stand beside gamblers and foul up their winning streaks.

Slighter than you might expect, with a square, unprepossessing face, Macy does not, it is true, look like the world's most successful human being. But it remains surprising that directors seem quite so keen to drop anvils on his head and push him into cowpats.

"I don't see myself as all that put-upon in real life," he laughs. "I certainly don't see myself in those characters. Quite the contrary, in fact. As I say, I have led a blessed life really. And within my circle of friends I am, if anything, a bit of a leader. The reason I keep getting those parts is Fargo. If something works, Hollywood will keep asking you to do it. Eventually I did say to myself: no more losers, no more men in over their heads. Then The Cooler came along and I thought: how can I turn that down? Here we have a loser of truly biblical proportions."

William H Macy was born in Florida, but raised in a number of locations throughout the US. His father, who won the Distinguished Flying Cross in the second World War, worked in a construction company, before moving into the insurance business. His mother was what we now call a homemaker. It sounds like the sort of archetypal white-bread household whose Christmas dinner Norman Rockwell might have painted for a gravy commercial.

Sure enough, when Macy graduated from high school he was persuaded to embark on a sensible American career with decent American prospects. I can see Macy playing a veterinary surgeon in a film, but I can't really imagine him actually being one. Yet he did indeed study for that profession.

"I realised I was not suited for that as soon as I got to college," he explains. "I suddenly realised that a veterinarian has to remember all this stuff. I was, frankly, a terrible student and I knew that would never change."

Abandoning all plans to make a living sticking his arm in dark, clammy places, Macy headed for the liberal Goddard College, where he began dabbling in theatre. He freely admits that he owes his entire career to his friendship with David Mamet, who, though only four years older than Macy, was already teaching an acting course at the college. Mamet took Bill on as his student teaching assistant and, later, the two men went on to form Chicago's hugely influential St Nicholas Theatre Company.

"I loved acting and had a modicum of success in it at two different colleges," he says. "I was good enough that I stood out a little bit. And, of course, that's where all the women were. I met Mamet at this hippie school and there were no rules, no grades, no tests. We were just stoned all day. Then in walks this guy who says: 'You cannot be late. If you're stoned I'll throw you out. If you ask stupid questions I'll throw you out'."

Even before he had become famous as the author of such plays as Glengarry Glen Ross, American Buffalo and Sexual Perversity in Chicago, David Mamet was evangelical about promoting theatre as a noble profession. And he didn't take any nonsense.

"Here we were at this hippie college and he was saying: 'If you want to learn about acting, shut up and listen.' So, we thought we would stick around and discover what sort of maniac we had here. It turned out he was a rooting, tooting genius who knew more about acting than most of us will ever forget."

During the 10 years that Macy and Mamet worked together in Chicago, the actor originated major roles in some of the playwright's most admired plays. They developed their own fibrous style of acting and, happily ensconced many miles from either coast, did so with no real thought of progressing towards Hollywood or Broadway. This was their own proud theatrical fiefdom and they required nobody else's imprimatur.

"Oh yes, we were so egotistical about the Chicago theatre scene and so disparaging of everything else, particularly Hollywood," he says. "Chicago was the centre of the universe. I played Bobby in the original production of American Buffalo and I didn't even bother auditioning for the New York production. Why would I want to do that?"

Macy eventually became tempted by the sheer challenge of making it as an actor in New York. Consistently told that he would not even be able to get an agent in the city, he decided to head east just to prove the doubters wrong.

A decade of rising success followed, before he decided to risk corruption and light out for California.

"Some broad broke my heart and that's why I decided to go Los Angeles," he says. "I was getting away from that and, happily, I hit the ground running. Those 10 years in Chicago and 10 years in New York helped and I have never really been out of work since."

This was the early 1990s and Macy was already in his 40s. But one of the joys of being a character actor is that the accumulating years do little damage to one's career prospects. Indeed, if your main line is helpless losers, then bags under the eyes may actually enhance the product. Macy secured a regular roll in ER and then joined the tight band of oddballs gathered together by Paul Thomas Anderson for Boogie Nights and Magnolia.

With such a long, steady career, it would be foolish to talk of a big break, but his Oscar-nominated performance in 1996's Fargo probably did the most to cement his reputation.

"Yes. After Fargo I no longer had to audition for roles," he says. "The moment I read it I knew I was born to play the part. I read for it once and then I heard they were doing more readings in New York. I flew out there myself and told the Coens I would shoot their dog if they didn't give me the part."

It is, I suppose, a peculiar sort of fame that William H Macy enjoys. Impressively prolific and greatly liked, he, nonetheless, is not really a movie star in the Cruisean sense of the word.

Until recently, much the same could have been said of Felicity Huffman. Then Desperate Housewives happened. Felicity, subject of a hundred magazine covers, is now arguably a tad more famous than her husband.

"Felicity now gets recognised everywhere. People love her," he says proudly. "I don't know if it is because of how we comport ourselves in our private lives, but we don't suffer too much intrusiveness. People are very respectful. The coaches full of tourists do stop outside our house, though. We'll be jogging past and they will be staring at us. It is like a zoo, but, looking in at them, I am never sure which of us is the animals."

Is there a degree of competition between husband and wife? They are, after all, both in the same business and striving for the same objectives.

"In almost every household that would be the case," he says. "But not in ours. I am not sure I understand it. I am very competitive and she is incredibly competitive. But she wants only good for me and we never feel threatened by one another. We share scripts. We give each other notes on our performances. We do constantly assist one another."

Huffman - and this is where we came in - has also helped Macy out of a modest midlife crisis that assailed him in recent years. He concedes that he can now do some character roles "without breaking a sweat" and had begun worrying that he might be guilty of operating at too comfortable a level. So he decided to try a spot of multitasking. Macy is currently in Cape Town shooting a picture that he both wrote and produced. Later this year he will step behind the camera for his debut as director.

"Directing is the great ambition remaining. I want to be the founder of the project. I want to see if I have the goods to make that happen. My private life remains untroubled. But my career was starting to bore me a little and it was Felicity who suggested that it might be time to kick out the jams and take a few risks." I don't think he's talking about Wild Hogs here.

Character builders

Hail the character actor. While the romantic leads desperately pump in the botox and stare wistfully at phones that don't ring, their grotesques, best friends, hags, factotums and trusted advisers age gracefully. Here are five of the best.

Walter Brennan (1894-1974)

Arguably the greatest American character actor, Brennan, who won three Oscars, managed the puzzling feat of playing crotchety old men for close to 40 years. Key films:Rio Bravo, My Darling Clementine, Bad Day at Black Rock

Claude Rains (1889-1967)

Some might argue that Rains - ever the wry observer or the sinister intellectual - was a little too suave to be considered a character actor and that he did have his fair share of leads. But his four Oscar nominations all came in supporting roles. Key films:Casablanca, Notorious, Now Voyager

Thelma Ritter (1902-69)

Always grumpy, but always capable of seeing what her flightier employers failed to grasp, the mighty Ritter remains cinema's most redoubtable maid, dresser and cleaning lady. Key films:Rear Window, All About Eve, Pillow Talk

Warren Oates (1928-82)

Oates is best known for playing only modestly intelligent sidekicks in the westerns of Sam Peckinpah, but he also enjoyed a fertile partnership with experimental director Monte Hellman. Key films:The Wild Bunch, The Hired Hand, Two-Lane Blacktop

Paul Giamatti (b 1967)

Perhaps William H Macy's closest competitor for the title of our era's greatest character actor, Giamatti often exhibits the same hangdog misery as the older man, but his more substantial frame grants him a very different on-screen energy. Key films:American Splendor, Sideways, Cinderella Man