Confessions of a utility actor

I'm not a star. I'm not even a "name." I'm just a workaday actor trying to make a living. And after 20 years of waiting for that big break, I'm ready to move on.

By Peter Birkenhead

Read more: House, Arts & Entertainment, Actors, Arts & Entertainment Features

March 25, 2006 | When I tell people I'm an actor, the second thing they ask is always, "What's so-and-so like?" So I keep a mental card catalog of pithy responses designed to strike just the right balance between regular-guy humility and possible access to medical records. George Clooney is a hugger. Portia DeRossi smells really good. And Patrick Dempsey is very skinny. This Tuesday night I'm on an episode of "House," and sooner or later I know I'll be at a party telling someone that Hugh Laurie rides a motorcycle to work.

But to get to that second question I have to answer the first -- "What shows have you been on?"-- which is usually asked as if I'm on trial for impersonating an actor. I don't know what makes people so junkyard-dog proprietary about television shows and their favorite stars. Maybe it's the intimacy of the TV-watching experience -- after all, we usually do it at home, alone, on couches. We think of actors as people we see every night in our living rooms, like old friends we just haven't gotten around to meeting yet. So if we don't know who someone is, how can he be an actor?

The answer: with a very thick skin.

I am not one of those "old friend" actors. I'm not a star -- I'm not even a "name." But I'm not an extra either. Actors like me occupy the space in people's minds reserved for utility infielders, station wagons and pizza places. For most people, actors are divided into two groups: Martin Sheen and furniture. You're part of the pantheon or part of the scenery.

When I was young I studied with Uta Hagen, who wrote the seminal actor's handbook "Respect for Acting." And that's what my friends and I wanted back then: respect, for acting. That and girls. We very much wanted our work to be well thought of, admired, but we also wanted to be famous. Not too famous. Just enough to get sex, but not stalked. Theater famous.

Mostly we just wanted to act. I know that may be hard to believe, but when you do it semi-right, acting is actually about getting away from your ego. It's like riding a rocket away from your ego and becoming weightless. And the two things you're incapable of when you're floating up there are thinking and caring what other people think. Any actor who has ever taken even a few baby steps in the direction of that stupid delight knows how close to perfection it feels -- and also how much sex and respect it gets you afterward.

When I left New York eight years ago, I'd been doing pretty well -- a couple of yearlong runs in the Broadway shows "Brighton Beach Memoirs" and "Broadway Bound," a few national tours, a bunch of regional theater. I had a decent if hardly spectacular career going -- I usually got good reviews, and casting directors were sometimes flattering -- but after I had been in Los Angeles for a couple of weeks, I was pretty sure I would eventually have a theater named after me. That's because, on more than one occasion, casting directors had pulled their glasses off very dramatically and said to me, "You are a great actor." Exactly like that. Not "You're a great actor," with the contraction, but "You are a great actor." All five words, spoken slowly. I was shocked. I was used to auditioning in big rehearsal studios in New York, where I had to project to be heard by the people at the other end of the room, but in L.A. I was suddenly auditioning in tiny, little well-appointed offices, with upholstered furniture, and I was still giving theater-size performances, full of life-and-death intensity and semaphore-like body language. Yet I was getting this very dramatic praise.

So I started to believe it. I am a great actor. I stared at the ceiling at night and rehearsed the avuncular speeches I would make to students accepting the Peter Birkenhead Scholarship at Juilliard. And then, after a third week passed and I hadn't signed an actual contract, I started to realize that, in Hollywood-speak, "You are a great actor" loosely translates to "You're an actor."

The thing you want to hear at an audition is silence -- the sound of people quietly smiling. This means, Hey, we're gonna see you next week; no need to blow smoke in case you become famous; you're getting the job and that's flattery enough. Over the next few months, I learned how to stop playing to the balcony and start playing to the couch -- and I started to hear a lot more encouraging silence. I was getting the hang of Hollywood.

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