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Dullea played Commander Dave Bowman in Stanley Kubrick's seminal 1968 film "2001: A Space Odyssey," which rocketed the sci-fi cinematic genre from grade B to big-budget blockbuster status (a small step for genius Kubrick, a giant leap for mankind) and paved the way for fan-favorite directors like George Lucas and Steven Spielberg to do their snazzy special-effects things.

Without Kubrick's mind-bendingly poetic "2001," there may never have been a more prosaic high-tech crowd-pleaser like "Star Wars." And although without Dullea, there would likely still have been a "2001" -- it was not what you'd call an actor's movie -- it surely would not have been quite the same film. His all-American, blandly handsome visage brought the dazzlingly beautiful, enormously enigmatic film a hint of humanity.

Glimpsed through the glaring glass of his space helmet, Dullea's was the face that launched a thousand trips. His was the eyeball of many colors. His was the irregular breath to which countless audience members paced their own, journeying through cinematic space on their personal magic carpet rides. An entire generation toked up or turned on and spaced out to the score and psychedelic imagery of the film that traced man's technologically propelled trajectory from ape to space and brought the world HAL, the calm-voiced killer computer.

"2001" was so closely associated with drugs, some critics who panned the film for being too obscure or just plain boring on first look went back stoned, reconsidered and gave it raves. Notable among them was Andrew Sarris of the Village Voice, whose opinion flipped from dismissive to favorable after viewing it, he wrote, "under the influence of a smoked substance ... somewhat stronger and more authentic than oregano."

In some theaters, audience members lay down on the floor in front of the front row of seats to let the colors and images wash over them (too blissed out, no doubt, to let a little popcorn and stickiness bum their highs). And it wasn't just the youthful counterculture getting hip to Kubrick's scene. "'Space Odyssey' is poetry. It asks for groovin', not understanding," wrote William Kloman in the New York Times. And Louise Sweeney of the Christian Scientist Monitor weighed in, "'2001' is the ultimate trip" -- a quote that was featured prominently in ads for the film.

Although "2001" is still widely hailed as one of the best films of all time, the halcyon days of mainstream drug-taking at the movies has long since passed. (What, no one told you?) And so, you might imagine, has Dullea's moment in the ultra-bright starlight. After all, his chiseled features haven't graced the big screen in nearly a decade. And most of those "Star Wars" kids have never heard of him.

But, despite his waning name recognition, Keir Dullea, now 63, is still around, still practicing his craft and doing just fine, thank you. A New York-trained stage actor with "probably 30 plays" under his belt before he took his first film role in 1961 (playing a juvenile delinquent in "The Hoodlum Priest"), he has, he says, returned to "where my roots were originally."

Before working with Kubrick, Dullea had also appeared in the original version of "The Thin Red Line" (1964), received critical acclaim and a Golden Globe Award for his sensitive portrayal of a disturbed teenager in the indie film "David and Lisa" (1963) and starred alongside Laurence Olivier in Otto Preminger's "Bunny Lake Is Missing" (1965). Kubrick offered him the role of Bowman based solely on his work in those three films; the two first met on the set of "2001" in London.

"I was overwhelmed to have been cast in a Stanley Kubrick film," Dullea recalls now from his home in New York. "A Stanley Kubrick film, even that long ago, was really something." But he says he had no idea of the "mindblowing" success the film would enjoy, nor of its incredible staying power. "It's sort of like if the model for the Mona Lisa could have known that she'd be hanging in the Louvre for hundreds of years," he says.

But what do you know of Mona Lisa's modeling career after Leonardo Da Vinci painted her half-smiling portrait? As for Dullea's career, he says appearing in the Kubrick film "didn't have a negative effect. It didn't really have a huge effect."

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