It wasn’t for lack of effort, and in the end it was out of my hands.
The role was for a series regular on “The Young and The Restless”. A charming villain. I was excited as hell for a chance at this career-changer, and I wanted it, badly enough to really bust my ass.
I was working in the valley all week, but really wanted to run the scenes with my friend Ariel, so I drove to his house during standstill rush-hour traffic two nights in a row to work on them. It took me two hours to get there each night. It sucked shit.
Ariel was fighting a bad cold, but he’s the most outgoing friend. We ran it again and again. There was so much dialogue, it took me both days to memorize it. The picture above is a screen shot from Ariel’s house. We record everything and prepare for anything.
I walked into the audition room entirely ready. And I hit it out of the park. You always know when you do. I saw it in the eyes of the casting associate as she read the scene opposite me – this guy gets it. And the big casting director told me on the way out of the door, twice: “Matt that was really good. REALLY good.”
But the show decided it wanted this bad guy to have an accent – someone legitimately European. So they went a different way.
All I can do is my job. And I’m so thrilled with my performance in the audition. The casting directors will remember me, and I’ll be back in there again, and I’ll be just as prepared and confident as I was last week.
Here’s what I love most about acting: it’s one of the few professions that offers you a chance to be great. I would have killed to get that role, but even if I didn’t, I was great in that audition room. It’s the highest of highs. I was that villain. And that day, I was that actor.
