Kerwin's blond, well-proportioned good looks have served him on the big screen, particularly in support of strong leading ladies. He was Sally Field's charmingly errant husband in Martin Ritt's "Murphy's Law" (1985), Sissy Spacek's stable but unexciting fiance in "Hard Promises" and Michelle Pfeiffer's domineering husband in "Love Field" (both 1992). Yet Kerwin has sought to take chances with his "white boy" looks, often appearing in "stretching" roles in theater as well as turns in such films as "King Kong Lives" (1986), as a mercenary transporting a female beast, and "Torch Song Trilogy" (1988), in which he essayed the confused, bisexual married lover of Harvey Fierstein. After appearing as another law officer in "Gold Diggers: The Secret of Bear Mountain" (1995), Kerwin went on to support Robin Williams in Francis Ford Coppola's "Jack" (scheduled for release in 1996), about a boy who begins to mature and grow at an alarming rate.