NEW YORK (AP) ¿ For someone who plays a pitch-perfect drunk, Jim Norton turns out to be surprisingly temperate.

The actor, one of the stars in Conor McPherson's "The Seafarer'', is a relative latecomer to tipple, having grown up as boy in Dublin pledging to abstain from alcohol.

"I didn't drink at all ¿ ever ¿ until I was 27, which is very unusual for an Irishman," he says during an interview in his dressing room at the Booth Theatre before a preview of the play.

The way Norton's abstinence ended is equally unusual ¿ on doctor's orders. The actor, exhausted by juggling plays, films and radio, asked his physician for relief.

"My doctor said, 'I don't want to give any kind of drug to try to calm you down. Try a bottle of Guinness'," Norton, 69, recalls with a laugh. So he dutifully went to a pub and ordered a pint. "It tasted awful but after a while, I got the taste for it. I kind of found that with a ham sandwich it tastes very nice."

Norton, who now only drinks wine with dinner and the occasional pint of Guinness when he's back home, draws on his trips to the pub for "The Seafarer''.

"I saw stuff that you wouldn't see in 'The Decameron'," he says. "I saw people crawl around on the floor ¿ I've seen what drink can do to people. How they can become incredibly alive and brilliant and articulate and sing songs. But I've seen the other side as well."

Norton navigates both when playing Richard Harkin, an irascible and charming drunk who has recently become blind ¿ not surprisingly the result of an accident lubricated by booze.

His Richard is an infuriating mix of raw vulnerability and proud defiance, a man as likely to offer a stranger a large glass of whiskey as he is to suddenly leap from his seat and chase winos in the street with his cane.

"His whole defense mechanism is down ¿ he's like a child. He has no inhibitions about hurting and yet really all he wants is to be loved and to be understood," Norton says.

Though Norton isn't a household name in America, the character actor has worked steadily for decades on stages and sound stages.

He popped up in "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets'', in a tour of "The Pillowman" and even "Star Trek: The Next Generation" as Albert Einstein. His latest play is set on Christmas Eve. Richard's brother and a few friends have arrived at Richard's threadbare Dublin home to share a little joy ¿ the liquid kind, of course. A mysterious and sinister stranger has also arrived, wanting more than Christmas cheer.

It's Norton's fifth time in a McPherson play, following "The Weir" on Broadway in 1999, "Port Authority" in Dublin and London, "Come on Over" at the 2001 Dublin Theatre Festival and "Dublin Carol" for the Atlantic Theater Company in 2003.

"I admire him tremendously," says Norton of McPherson. "I think he's a genius. A critic in London once said he was an 'Irish recording angel', which is a great way to put it.

"All of his plays, it seems to me, are about loss and redemption. But along the way you get great entertainment, wonderful writing. He writes every day prose that's raised to a nearly poetic level without you being aware or it being pretentious."

For his part, McPherson says he feels very lucky to have Norton so interested in his work. "I always say to Jim when we're working together, 'Jesus Jim, where would I be without you?"' McPherson says.

"He gives 100 percent. If he feels in any way that he didn't do his best in any particular performance, he gets a bit downhearted about it in a way that I would even be like, 'Jesus, Jim. Don't. Get over it. There's tomorrow night!"'

Besides Norton, the Broadway company of "The Seafarer" features Ciaran Hinds, Conleth Hill, Sean Mahon and David Morse. Hill and Norton both appeared in an earlier London production, for which Norton received a Laurence Olivier Award.

To get into character, Norton consulted a gerontologist, read academic papers and consulted with staffers at the Royal National Institute of Blind People, where he records audiobooks.

"I spent a couple of weeks walking around at home with my eyes closed. My wife went crazy. I knocked down a couple of family heirlooms," he says. "I watched 'Scent of a Woman', of course, because Al Pacino, who is the greatest actor on the planet, played blind."

On stage, he has eschewed blackout contact lenses or dark glasses for fear the audience won't see his eyes or see them streaming with tears. Instead, he's trained himself not to look at his fellow actors or any of the props. His eyes settle on an undetermined space.

"Basically, what I do is I defocus," he says. "The consequence of that is that when I come on for the curtain call, David always grabs my arm and people think its affection ¿ and it is, because I've great respect for David ¿ but I literally cannot see. One night in London I almost fell into the audience because my balance was so off."

Norton was born into a working class family on Dublin's South side, starting his career in radio at age ten and moving on to the Royal National Theatre, films and TV.

Besides "Seafarer'', Norton will next appear in the film "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas'', due out at Christmas, and narrates a new audiobook by Irene Nemirovsky.

"I just love doing different things. In January next year, I will be 70. I will have been doing this for 50 years. So it's all about survival and doing something that you love," he says.