Kato Kaelin in Vegas doing what he’d prefer to be famous for — acting

By Jerry Fink

Wednesday, April 1, 2009 | 2 a.m.

Kato Kaelin knows he’ll forever be tied to O.J. Simpson.

“It’s a double-edged sword,” says Kaelin, who has stretched his 15 minutes of fame into 15 years. He’s in Las Vegas as a celebrity cast member of “Tony and Tina’s Wedding” at Planet Hollywood. “I have name recognition because of that, but I’m also a curiosity.”

In case you are too young or were living under a rock in the mid-’90s:

Kaelin was Simpson’s house guest in 1994 when the former football star was charged with killing his wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Goldman. Kaelin testified at the 1995 murder trial, when Simpson was found not guilty, and at his civil trial in 1996, when Simpson was found liable for wrongful death.

“My life stopped during the trial,” says Kaelin, who’s now 50. “I was an actor long before I ever met O.J.

“Back in 1986 I had my first national commercial for Coca-Cola. I’ve had my Screen Actors Guild card for 22 years. I went to the Acting Academy for seven years. I’ve been an actor my whole life. All this was going on before O.J. happened — and if it had never happened, I would still be pursuing the same career.”

A week before the killings, Kaelin says, he had tested for a part in the film “Dumb and Dumber,” the comedy starring Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels.

After the trials Kaelin went on a speaking tour and appeared in several TV reality shows and films. For the past five years he has worked for National Lampoon in Los Angeles developing projects.

“I work on lots of films, attaching directors to scripts. I get to put myself into a lot of movies,” he says.

His latest effort is a stage production called “The Weenie Manologues,” a comedy written by Murray Langston, better known as the Unknown Comic who appeared with a paper sack over his head.

“It’s the male version of the ‘Vagina Monologues,’ ” Kaelin says. It has a cast of three men and a woman. “In October we did the play for 18 days in Hawaii. It did very well.”

In “Tony and Tina’s Wedding,” he plays a wedding crasher. “My character was Tony’s house guest for five years,” he says. “I slept on the couch.”

While he’s here, he says, he’s having discussions about bringing “Manologues” to Vegas. If those talks are successful, Kaelin may be crashing in Vegas for a while.

Simpson is a guest of the state of Nevada. Last year he was convicted of criminal conspiracy, kidnapping, assault and robbery following a run-in with memorabilia dealers at Palace Station. He was sentenced to a nine-to-33-year term and is imprisoned at the Lovelock Correctional Center in Northern Nevada.

But don’t expect Kaelin to drop in on visitors day.

“The last time I talked to him was at the civil trial in 1996,” Kaelin says.