A Little History

I've been asked many times: how do you get into acting? How did you break in? To be perfectly honest, I fluked out. An agent saw our high school musical and signed on a friend of mine. I'm not sure if my friend ended up going to any auditions at all, but I'd already done a recurring role in a crappy non-union TV series, so I went down to the agent's office and asked if he would represent me. He told me if something came up in my category he'd give me a call, but that I wasn't "really on his roster". As it turns out, I got an audition. I was so nervous I couldn't speak - I stuttered and stammered my way through like a virgin in a strip bar. Luckily, that was pretty much what they wanted for the character. (Nervous, not virgin.)

I got the gig. We shot on location near Hope, BC, at an old, unfinished railroad tunnel next to a river. They decorated the whole place like a late 19th century coolie camp and everyone was dressed in period attire. At the time I was sitting on an apple box next to a bunch of electrics gear and my gaze followed the cables past the lights to this huge, black camera crane, in the middle of the 1890s! I thought, "This is surreal. I wanna do this for a living." Since then I've been lucky enough to make a living at it (for the most part).

But fluke or not, I've picked up a few things along the way, and these are the things I tell people when they ask those questions. So for everybody out there who doesn't have an actor friend to ask, this page has some general tips and links to resources that I've found essential over the years. For more specific questions, check out the Question & Answer page; you can submit your own query.

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