Let’s get this out of the way: Ralph Macchio doesn’t mind being forever Danny.

It was 1984 when Mr. Macchio, 22 but babyfaced, nuzzled his way into teen dreams as Danny LaRusso, the martial arts cutie-pie in the movie “The Karate Kid.” It was a role, opposite Pat Morita as Danny’s beloved mentor, Mr. Miyagi, that made Mr. Macchio a star and cemented his perch in the pantheon of ’80s heartthrobs.

Today, Mr. Macchio looks so much younger than 54 it’s like the ’80s never ended. Those puppy dog eyes that once turned his Tiger Beat covers into teenage wallpaper, the softly cocky Long Island cadence — still there. Ignore a few wrinkles, and out pops Johnny Cade, the pouty bad boy he played in the 1983 film “The Outsiders.”

It’s fitting, then, that for his latest project Mr. Macchio stars in a melancholy memory play, set in 1979, about a man grappling to understand what his past means to his present. In “A Room of My Own,” Charles Messina’s semi-autobiographical comedy, which is to open on Feb. 25, Mr. Macchio plays Carl Morelli, a writer who narrates his own coming-of-age story about growing up in an Italian-American family in a cramped Greenwich Village studio apartment.

“Persona-wise, I represent a lot of people’s childhoods,” Mr. Macchio said during an interview at the June Havoc Theater, where the Abingdon Theater Company production will open. “That’s why I feel I’m the guy to play this part. Even though this is not necessarily the biggest stretch, it is a good fit, and there are challenges. It just seems right at this point in my life.”