KEITH Carradine is kindly indulging a few questions about The Long Riders, a Western he starred in nearly 30 years ago. It was, he says, a fun shoot, one that allowed him to wear a gun and holster, saddle up a horse and “play” with his brothers, David and Robert, who also starred in the movie.

   ”You know, we actors, all we’re doing is playing, that’s all it is,” says Mr. Carradine, 59. “That’s why we do this, we figured out a way to keep playing as adults, doing something that when you’re a child comes naturally. But as you go through adolescence and become an adult, it becomes very challenging to be able to maintain that sort of sense of joy.”

   The actor’s next play date will take place at George Street Playhouse in New Brunswick, where he’s starring in the world premiere of Arthur Laurents’ New Year’s Eve, April 14 through May 10. It’s a role that offers the opportunity to collaborate with people like Mr. Laurents and Marlo Thomas while exploring new depths as an actor.

   ”I just thought this was going to take me into areas that I’ve never explored as an actor,” Mr. Carradine says before a day’s rehearsals at George Street. “That’s what I look for, I look for stuff that’s going to scare me, that’s going to push my envelope, that’s going to take me into uncomfortable areas for me, new territory. That’s what keeps me alive and growing.”

   Mr. Carradine arrives at George Street not through auditions, but by networking, perhaps even a bit of serendipity. Last fall, he worked with Kathleen McNenny in Mindgame at SoHo Playhouse in Manhattan. Ms. McNenny then appeared in Sight Unseen at George Street. Mr. Carradine attended the premiere and met David Saint, George Street’s artistic director, and the director of New Year’s Eve.

   All of that happened a few months after he had met Mr. Laurents at last year’s Tony awards. Mr. Carradine attended the ceremony with his daughter, the actress Martha Plimpton, who introduced him to the legendary writer. It was a short meeting but one Mr. Laurents remembered, Mr. Carradine recalls.

   ”The first day that we all met here (at George Street), to begin this process, Arthur said, ‘You know, I don’t believe in coincidences.’ And he said ‘This all began, for me, the night I met you at the Tonys.’”

   At 90, Mr. Laurents is one of the hottest writers and directors in theater today. He’s directing the acclaimed revival of West Side Story on Broadway now, which follows his revival of Gypsy, another Broadway smash that finished its run earlier this year. Mr. Laurents wrote the librettos for both of those classics as well as plays like Home of the Brave and A Clearing in the Woods. His screenplay work ranges from Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope (1948) to The Way We Were (1973).

   The new play marks the ninth collaboration between Mr. Laurents and Mr. Saint at George Street. Their work together also includes the new revival of West Side Story, on which Mr. Saint is the associate director.

   New Year’s Eve follows Gil and Isabel (Mr. Carradine and Ms. Thomas), a married, powerful theater couple. He’s a successful writer, she’s an actress. Their daughter, Sam, is also an actress and is on the brink of success. Sam is played by Natasha Gregson Wagner, the daughter of Robert Wagner and Natalie Wood, quite a coincidence since Ms. Wood starred in the film version of West Side Story.

   ”The first part of the play is all champagne and celebration,” Mr. Carradine says. “These people will uncork the (champagne) for any excuse. Like what they drink, they effervesce. There’s that kind of wonderful, sparkling surface to them.”

   Underneath, though, everything isn’t as it appears. “We have, I think as a couple and individually, we both have a remarkable capacity to be completely oblivious to other people’s pain,” Mr. Carradine says of his and Ms. Thomas’ characters. And it’s safe to say that Gil and Isabel’s marriage is somewhat complicated.

   ”It’s all about — Arthur would be the first one to tell you — it’s all about sex,” Mr. Carradine says. “Who needs what from whom? And what sort of arrangement is this that we all have in this family.”

   Mr. Carradine says the tone of that opening champagne-filled scene, which he calls the Noel Coward part, soon changes, so that the underlying truth of these people’s lives are exposed.

   ”What I responded to when I read this was it’s so emotionally honest,” he says. “Arthur really understands human nature, it seems to me. The nature of relationships and the dynamic of personality and wants and needs and insecurities. I found the play really compelling, and I found it seemed true to me.”

   Mr. Carradine’s family is full of actors. His father John had roles in legendary movies like Stagecoach and The Grapes of Wrath, and even played Dracula in some of the later Universal monster movies. His brothers, David and Robert, are actors, as is his daughter.

   As a youngster, he was drawn more to music and art than acting. “From my earliest conscious memory, I had artistic tendencies,” he says. “Music, drawing, painting, I had a facility for it, it was just part of me. Ultimately I suppose performing in a way (was as well), although that wasn’t my first instinct. I wasn’t particularly garrulous or outgoing in that way.”

   He planned on studying forestry in college. “I just wanted to be outdoors and I wanted to have my guitar and I wanted to sing and write and watch for fires,” he says, laughing. “It was a very adolescent notion of a life.” He signed up for an agriculture program at a Colorado college, but when he learned that involved taking lots of biology classes, he switched to English and drama.

   A role in the original Broadway run of Hair was his big break.

   ”I can’t imagine a more wonderful way to begin a career than that,” he says. “I was part of a group of people, my peers, we were a part of something that captured a moment in time so perfectly. We were on the crest of a social wave of change and what we thought was an awakening. In retrospect, it was not really an awakening I suppose, it was a slight disturbance in the sleep pattern.”

   Working in the legendary musical led to film work, mostly notably with director Robert Altman in McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Thieves Like Us and Nashville. He won an Oscar for that last one — not for his performance as the womanizing country singer Tom Frank but for writing the song “I’m Easy.”

   Of the Oscars, he laments that it pits actors against one another and “is based on stuff that doesn’t mean anything.” But he says winning one was fabulous and that it remains a great memory. It just needs a little perspective.

   ”What it meant was that at that moment in time, I had written a song that touched people,” he says. “And they responded to that, and voted for me. It’s crazy. But it’s wonderful.”

New Year’s Eve is at George Street Playhouse, 9 Livingston Ave., New Brunswick, April 14-May 10. Performances: Tues.-Wed., Fri.-Sat. 8 p.m., Sun. 2 p.m. Additional performances: April 16, 30, 8 p.m., April 23, 2 p.m., May 7 2, 8 p.m. Additional 7 p.m. performances, April 19, May 3. Tickets cost $28-$64; 732-246-7717; www.gsponline.org