YOUNG AND RESTLESS

It seems that October 1st is upon us, which means my favorite time of year has snuck up on me, once again. However, as the holiday season picks up and my beloved cooler, scarf-wearing weather moves in, the acting and audition front often begins to slow down, cooling off a bit itself.

Honestly, I had another blog written and ready to post about the slowness on the acting front for me this year, and how I have always had a bit of an odd personal superstition where I don’t like to tell others about auditions or talk about acting opportunities until something certain develops from them. Of Course, certainty and this industry rarely go hand in hand. Strange as it may sound, I almost feel as though it is bad luck to say anything about auditions, either before or after they have happened.

In my original blog, I explained how blogging each week makes that superstition somewhat hard to follow, especially since I am “The Actor” on this wonderful and inventive FIB site. I questioned if my blogging weekly could be the reason my year as an actor had been so slow? Well, the fact is that it would be rather silly if I thought it did, especially knowing that it is due to this fabulous outlet on the World Wide Web that I have obtained some of the opportunities I have had this year. It would have been far slower had I not been doing what I love to do so much, which is to express myself through writing, in this case, blogging, alongside my fellow Film Industry Bloggers.

That said, things suddenly changed, and the blog I had written for this week is now filed under “not used.”

On Monday afternoon I received calls from my agent and manager saying I had been booked for the CBS soap opera “The Young and the Restless.” Consistent with my practice of not mentioning auditions until the outcome is known, I can now report that last week I had gone in to read for the show. A casting director for whom I had read 3 years earlier, at an “NCIS” audition and callback, had called me in. Although I didn’t book the NCIS job, it turns out she is now casting “Y&R,” remembered me, and had me come in to audition for it. This time they liked me, but not for the role I read. They hired me for a different part, that of the new assistant at “Y&R’s” “Restless Style Magazine.”

To make a long blogging story short, which, at this point, is pretty much too late to do, and keeping in mind that I had not mentioned this audition in any of my blogs or to anyone, the unfolding of these events stays in line with my superstition to say nothing about my auditions until their results are known. No one, that is, aside from my parents, who send me a cute and colorful “Break-A-Leg” message before each and every audition.

This leads me to two important things to remember as an actor. One, your current situation can turn on a dime, as they say, and it can happen with only one audition. Two, you have to do your best at each and every audition, always remembering that, although you might not be right for one role, you never know when a casting director or other person at the audition might remember you and have you back later for another role, for which you might be more suited.

In my case it happened to be THREE years later for “The Young and the Restless,” which also happens to have been the favorite soap opera of my really good friend Jen and me since we were 14. Incidentally, we started watching because of Michael Damian, who played Danny Romalotti, on the show. I personally fell in “love” with him when he was playing Joseph in “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” on Broadway, in NYC. I had to know who he was, found out he was on “Y&R,” and so the watching began…Jen still records it daily!

I will write more on all of this in next week’s blog and my coming full circle where the show is concerned. ‘Till then, I am off to attend the Stars for Stars red carpet charity event in Hollywood and to prepare for my temporary move to Genoa City, where I get to be young and restless!

“You don’t just luck into things…you build step by step.” – Barbara Bush