I often did things backwards in life. The old Hollywood adage goes that many a starlet—and we can add many a leading man, now that the cat is out of the closet on that—got their film career break by the audition they did on the director's or producer's couch. In my case, however, I got the part before the director had me taking direction under him on his couch.
I had been a child actor on stage and in a few movies before I went off to the university, having chosen to study international relations rather than drama or film making after a less-than-sterling screen test and a somewhat pessimistic assessment of my chances in Hollywood. I did get into male modeling while I was in college, though, and this double backed to a few minor roles on stage and bad movies as the young stud next door. When I got involved in flying supersonic spy jets as a sidestep from a war I didn't really agree with or want to see up front and in person, I was shipped off to Bangkok, Thailand. With that remote posting, I assumed that the film road not taken was now a dead-end to me.
As luck would have it, though, I found it even easier to fall into stage and screen roles when I arrived in Southeast Asia. Many movies were being filmed there, and casting directors relied on local actors for minor or background roles rather than facing the expense of bringing big casts in from the States. Thus it was that shortly before my first tour in Thailand was over, I found myself in some background crowd scenes and minor script editing work on the film, The Deerhunter. I had no idea at the time that this would be an Academy Award contender, or I would have fought my way to the front of set. However, I still must have performed my tasks on the movie reasonably well, because the casting director of that asked me if I'd be interested in taking some time off and being in Hawaii for a couple of weeks and work as an extra in a popular Hawaii-based police detective television show.
Hmmm, the question whether I would like a couple of expense-paid weeks in Hawaii working on a TV production. Not much of a question, right? And this fit right in with my schedule to be transferred back to the States for a short tour in preparation to what would be an even shorter tour flying SR71s out of Okinawa.
So, a few weeks later, in a prolonged stopover in Hawaii en route to a particularly snowy and slushy winter in Washington, D.C., I found myself as tiny swimsuited eye candy at beach bar background scenery for a couple of episodes of a Hawaii police detective show. I might have had a line or two in one of the episodes, but I can't really remember if I did.
This, after already having been cast in a TV production, was where my path crossed with the director destined to couch me under his personal and intense direction. He was a British director who specialized in sophisticated, sparkling-dialogued—and highly successful—spy and amateur detective stories both previously and subsequently to the tropical island interlude; he had been brought in to give the Hawaii show a needed kick in the butt to a more elevated viewer share. He was a handsome, charismatic figure—a good fifteen years older than me—with a spiffy English accent and a quick mind and tongue. He had left his wife back in the UK, and my wife had gone ahead to our Washington assignment. He liked to party and I liked to party, and the whole cast of the television show worked by day and partied at night.
