Well, not at first. At first I didn’t think I had it in me. I’d been back from New York for all of four days, and my brain was still mush. Why had I signed up for this type of workshop so early on a Saturday morning?
Related thought: if I die in my sleep you can actually say that I died doing what I loved.
Ramping up the stakes: while everyone else received lighter sitcom scenes, I was given the closing scene of Interview With The Vampire. I had to play Tom Cruise’s character, now 200 years old, rotting and dying, lamenting his past. I’d never seen the film, and I had fifteen minutes to learn the scene. A big casting director and 22 factors were going to see me really shit the bed.
However, my scene partner was my friend Clayton, and he looked me right in the eye and told me I had this, and we made the most of our fifteen minutes and then I quickly read it over and over and over trying to memorize as much dialogue as possible.
And then our turn came up, and I focused and locked in. And the casting director loved it. I emailed the casting director yesterday, thanking him for challenging me. And he wrote back: “You did the scene beautifully. Thank you. Talk soon.”
Soon is good. I can do soon.
A question I often ask myself is: am I putting enough effort into having a career in the world’s most competitive profession in the world's most competitive market? Kinda, yeah.
