There's a notion out there that getting the agent is the hardest part, that once you get the agent you're on your way. What do you think about that?
I don't support that notion. It's your career - it's not your agent's career! Your agent will make money if you make money, but your agent also has 300 other guys who look just like you. And maybe it's because I'm just too anal, but I mean... I figure, my dad worked every day, I should work every day. There's a sense of responsibility in creating your own future that everyone should have. Whether you're a carpenter or a doctor or in this case an actor, I think actors are in charge as much as they can be of their career. I mean, you can't cast yourself a Spielberg film, but there's a shit load of things you can be doing.

For example?
Well, when I didn't have an agent, I felt like my job was just to keep acting. I didn't have enough money to take an acting class, and I was working in a restaurant making barely enough to pay rent. But I could do a play. That's one way you can keep acting for free without having to pay for class. Granted, you might end up in some shitty plays, but I think you learn as much from something that goes terribly wrong as you do from something that goes incredibly smoothly. And so I just made it my job to stay active in acting when I finished school. Do as many plays as I could, get together and do readings, I did some writing. Nothing that I ever pursued, just scenes, little snippets, but just to stay creative and stay in contact with how people speak and interact and relate. Just try to use my own motivation and my own drive as a human being to keep my acting pursuit alive. Keeping it an active action that is continually moving rather than a stagnant thing that just sits there and grows moss.

You get an agent, and that's a huge hurdle. But once you've got the agent, you can't just sit back and let the agent do all of the work for you because... they're not your parents. They're not gonna hold your hand and walk you through the whole industry. It's going to be you who is out there doing plays, doing a reading of a buddy's screen play and meeting this guy who is also writing... so you collaborate with him, and now that gal you met at some reading is doing another play and some guy you met doing a show wants to use you in a short film... And you just keep bouncing like in bumper pool from thing to thing to thing as you move forward. Because if you're not moving forward, you're moving backwards. If you're standing perfectly still, you're moving backwards. Things are going on around you and everyone is rushing forward and you're basically zooming in the opposite direction if you are not actively pursuing it.

I've had really really good friends who came out of school with me and would send out mailings to agents and wait and wait and wait and wait... and six weeks or seven weeks later, another mailing to agents, and they'd wait and wait and wait. And you know, a couple years of that and I was starting to make a living and they weren't and they would wonder, "What did he do that I didn't do?" And... I didn't wait. That's the only thing I did differently.

I might send out the head shots, but at the same time I'm doing a play or collaborating with buddies making a short film. It's not because someone important saw that play, or.... "and that short film went on to win Sundance!" I continuously stay actively involved in my own career and my own fate. I think if you don't, if you just hand it over to someone else, that's kind of a cop out. Because that then enables you to blame other people if you don't succeed. If you're in charge of your own life, if you're in charge of your own career, then it's like golf. It's you and a stick and a ball and it's your job to get it in the hole. You can't blame the club, and you can't blame the weather, and you can't blame the grass... it's about you and your own skill and your own focus and your drive.

You've just arrived in LA, you don't have an agent, you don't know anyone... what do you do?
I would recommend starting out by getting involved in an acting class, and getting involved in doing theater. And like I said you might land on some real kooks and do some real bad plays, but at least you'll start to feel out the town and the industry. You'll realize, "Okay, that's a bad group of people and I don't want to be involved with that. But these people are kind of interesting and they're going on to do this thing and maybe I'll go over here."

I don't mean signing up for the first class you see, but audit a class. Go look at these classes and see if it relates to you. There's a lot of different styles, there are a lot of different teachers, and a lot of different ways to go about staying involved in the industry. And not everything is going to be right for everyone. I remember an acting teacher in college, he was having us do some exercise and I remember thinking it was moronic. And he could sense that I thought it was moronic and he said, "Just try it. If it doesn't work, don't use it in your process. But if you do five exercises and find one that works, it's worth it."

So I think you have to approach finding an acting class the same way. You have to look, you have to see their style, you have to see their actors, you have to see if you "vibe" with them and their philosophies. If you like it, get involved.

Thing is, you can mail out your pictures to of bunch of agents and managers and... if you're shockingly good looking or you have some incredibly significant characteristic or trait, you know, you're 6'9" or you're 400lbs and a redhead or something like that, they might call you in to meet. Aside from that, you're just one of a thousand that come across their desks that week. The way you're going to actually get someone's attention is to continually put your product out there to be seen. Doing plays, doing showcases... I got signed out of a college showcase. Get involved.

When you have a good friend who has an agent and you're doing a play with that person, that agent is likely to come see you in the play and then maybe you can get a meeting out of it. I met with a bunch of people who didn't sign me, but I learned a lot from those meetings. I say continually stay active... if you just arrived in town start checking out classes. If you know anybody in town, find out who they're with, find out if you can audit a class there. Just sort of start to get references from people you trust, people you meet as you begin work. I mean, there's no shortage of actors out here. You're going to meet some the second your big toe hits Southern California soil. So just start trying to get a sense of the town, because if you just get your apartment and your restaurant job and start sending out manilla envelopes... you'll be back on the bus to Birmingham in a matter of weeks.

Have you ever refused work?
Yeah, but very very rarely. I've turned down a couple of things. But very small... a couple of small parts on sitcoms that I thought were horrifically unfunny. At a certain point I would just rather not eat than do the horrifically unfunny comedy. But that's only a handful of times. Especially coming up, you want to say yes.

I always love it when people ask, "Are you more TV, or are you looking to do movies?" And I'm like, hey man... anything for union pay! I mean, how can you structure your career that way? That's like majoring in political science and and having someone ask you "Now, are you going be President, or just ambassador?" I was not a very choosy guy and only started to be choosy in the last couple years because I feel like now I can be. You can learn a lot working on a bad play, I also think sometimes working with an asshole director on a shitty project can be as informative as working with a genius. Besides, you're gonna have to build your resume, your arsenal of experience somehow. So if you say "I'm not gonna do soaps and I'm not going to do sitcoms... and I only want to play the hero in films... I don't want to do TV, that's below me..."

Well, okay. You'll be a hoot to work with.

Did I hear this right? Did you do Saved by the Bell?
No, I wasn't on Saved by the Bell... I was on the short-lived Saturday morning show, Running the Halls. We got crushed by the Bell Mothership. They didn't want another show like that on their radar screen that wasn't written and produced by Peter Engels. So we got the boot.

But that was a great job. That was actually the job that got me out of the restaurant industry. So it's near and dear to my heart, that job.

What's the boldest thing you've ever done in pursuit of a job?
The most bold thing I've ever done, which may not seem that bold, but I remember being very very very nervous about it was, there was a director who had seen me in a play in college. After the show he came up to me and told me he thought it was fantastic, just great, and he hoped he would work with me one day. Well, shit! I'm in a college play and this guy actually makes movies. So I was very excited.

And the boldest thing I ever did was force that guy to keep in touch with me. So when I would see in the trades that he was going to do something, I would actually call him at his house and tell him that I knew he was doing this project and was there anything I could audition for. Which, maybe on paper doesn't look like much, but... man was I nervous before picking up that phone!

Because that's exactly the sort of annoyingly "actory" kind of move that seemed to fly in the face of my hyper conservative approach to the entire industry. But at the same time he said that he liked me, he said he wanted to work with me, I needed to work, he was working... it seemed like a logical call to make. And... I have still never worked with the man. But, he hasn't had me arrested for stalking either. I mean, we still keep in touch. But 10 years later we still haven't worked together. I don't know what that means.

Your show, the Agency, was just cancelled after last season.
Yes. Thanks for bringing that up.

Given the transient nature of the business, what do you do when you're working to prepare for the inevitability that soon you may not be working?
I don't really worry about the fact that the job is going to end until it actually ends. I can't really say that I am concerned about not working when I'm working. I think one small element that people often dismiss is the fact is that when you're working you can often make a nice chunk of change. And you start thinking, "Hey, I have a nice chunk of change!" And you can mis-spend if you're not careful, and find yourself in those lean times of not working and suddenly that windfall has gone by the wayside and you are... "up shit creek", as one is wont to say.

I think I try to sort of balance financial stability with, I mean... you try to keep it in check and not spend too much. I'm not a coke whore, for example. I try not to go out and do crazy things with the cash so that in lean times I don't have to panic about it. I can focus more on the process of getting the next job.

For most actors, auditioning is like a job. I mean, it's like going to work. That's your job interview and someone's going to hire you based on that work. And if an actor goes out and gets shit-faced drunk and shows up hung over and it's like, "Dude... I partied so hard last night I didn't even look at the sides! What's the part?"... Well, it's hard to be sympathetic for them when they don't work, because that's your job. Your job is to audition to the best of your abilities so you can get the job. So even when I'm not "working" on a specific project I'm still working. I've got auditions, and then I've got readings or run-throughs and... back at the thing! I'm still on the clock. So, I don't really look at it so much as "working" or "not working"... I just look at it as sometimes I'm getting paid, sometimes I'm not

And what will you do now?
Back to the grindstone... going in, talking to the agents, talking to the managers, seeing what's going on. I try to stay involved with what they're doing. Not that I don't trust them, but it's my career. I want to know what's going on, what's up. I want to know what's in the pipeline, what am I going to go in on, what are they not willing to see me for and why, and how can we change that. That kind of thing. Try to keep my hand in there. I like to be as involved as I can be without becoming a nuisance. So I just get back on that horse and ride it until I get to the next job.

What do you love about acting?
I like the process. I really really really like the process of making a play, of making a film, of making TV. Because it's like a bunch of egos bumping into each other like atoms and readying themselves for a big explosion. It's the world's greatest team sport. Because there are so many layers, so many of which you'll never see. It's so many artists doing so many things to try to make something great. Writers, editors, actors, hair people, costumers, designers, make up artists... When you're not involved in the industry you think, "There's the director and he hires the people and the producer gets the money and the BOOM! We make movies." And it's so not that way at all. It's so many of people coming together to work very hard on sometimes a very small piece of a very large pie. And that's really what I like about the process the most. I love being part of a larger machine where ideally the machine's entire goal is to make a great project.

And individually, on an artistic level, I like acting because I like the chance to be able to interpret writing and bring my vision and my life to that piece of the project. I like to take what I've created and what I've rehearsed and I like to "play tennis" with other people who have also been doing their own homework in another part of town... you get on a set and you start throwing your crap and then they have to sort of swat it back and you have to swat theirs and so... as planned and rehearsed as you can be, it's still going to be completely off the wall and frenetic and unique. There's no way you can predict what someone else is going to do. And I like that X factor in the process.

What do you dislike?
I dislike actors. That's my least favorite part of the industry. I like people who act... but I hate "Actors". I'm a huge people person and I love hanging out with people... my friends, my buddies, my wife. And some of those people work in the computer industry, some people are musicians, and some of those people act. And I love those people who are "people who act".

I do not like "Actors" who have to sort of do what they think "Actors" do, and have to sort of create the ego and make it all about themselves and have a myopic view. I think the title, "Actor" has a lot of bad connotations that come with it. And I think the reason it has those bad connotations is because actors have spent years and years and years and years trying to build those things up. Historically, you always hear about the egos of the actors. The whims and wills of "quirky" people. In my experience, you have a lot of great people who love to do it and come together. And you have a few people who are self-centered jerks. And it's those self-centered jerks who garner the most attention and then give the profession a bad name. So I'm not a big fan of those types of actors.

I find when I finish a job that I have more friends in the camera department and the post production department than I do with the "talent". I think if you go into a project and you want to act because it's going to make you famous or because it's going to make you rich, you're bringing all this other baggage to the project that isn't necessary and is actually a hindrance to the process. Because you're so vulnerable, you're so naked out there when you're doing it that you need to know that you can trust the people around you. And to put your stuff out there only to be bitch-slapped by someone who doesn't have enough Dr. Pepper in their trailer... it makes you want to stab out their eyes with hot pokers. That's not why most of us are out here doing this.

LA is generally described as cut-throat. How do you deal with the competition?
I'm only competing with myself. I've always looked at acting like golf, it's me versus my last game. So I don't really care if there's other players on the course. They're not going to hurt my score or help my score. I focus on my skill, on my craftsmanship, my career, and try to control as much of it's outcome as I can. Yeah, you go into an audition and there's 40 other guys in the waiting room, yeah... it's like, "Wow. There's 40 guys in this room."

But at the same time, somebody's going to get the job. It's not your job to guess who it might be, it's your job to go in there and zone in on what you've been asked to do, and then walk away. Because it's out of your hands at that point. So I just really try to not view it as a competition. I mean, I'm competitive with myself... if I don't do 110 percent on the set, then nobody's more P.O.'d than me. But it's not me versus the other guy who is taller and better looking than I am. That's his deck of cards and I got mine.

What do you hope for your future?
I'm enjoying adapting to living here. I think for a long time I treated living here like the world's longest business trip. I was here for ten years and still sharing an apartment with a buddy and putting a lot of elements of life on hold so that I could stay focused. It paid off, but at the same time... I think it may have been a little bit of overkill. I mean, you can also get married, you can also live life at the same time you're pursuing an acting career.

The thing I'm striving for most now is balance. Is my career exactly where I want it to be? No! I still have to move that ball forward. But I'm moving that ball forward while also moving the other parts of my life forward. I just got married... I'm enjoying being a home owner, I'm learning how to use a hammer and a saw and doing stuff around the house. I want to find balance in my passion for my work and my passions for other elements that have nothing to do with work.

The people I admire most in life, not just actors, the ones I view as being the happiest, are the people that seem to have the most balance in their life. Bad things happen, good things happen, but as long as you're striving to keep everything in balance, it seems like that's the best thing you can do.

-K.W.

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