I grew up in Staten Island, NY, the youngest of four boys. Staten Island, for the uninitiated, boasts more mafia whackings per capita than any other region in the US.* Though both of my parents were teachers, I was never great in school. I did however win the science fair in sixth grade for my project “The Effects Of Gel Electrophoresis On Turkey Blood Proteins.” Needless to say… I had help. My brother Andy, a ridiculously exceptional student, worked at a private research lab at the time. He also won the science fair that year. He cured cancer. No… but, he was experimenting with cancer medications on mice – in high school! My brothers Brian and Danny are probably best known for ghost writing most of the songs on Billy Joel’s “Glass Houses.” At least that’s what they had me believe until I was fourteen. They also taught me how to hip-check someone into a parked car during roller hockey. Unfortunately, I was more often the hip-check-ee.
I started my love affair with the theater in high school. I starred in a sophomore production of “Once Upon A Mattress.” It was a musical, and I really shined. And by shined, I mean sucked. But I loved it, especially being a part of the drama club, and being around all those girls in tights. Of course, I too had to wear tights, which made it difficult to stay cool with the guys on the football team, but as I came to learn, if it’s a choice between hanging with the football team or cute girls in tights, well…
I went to a year of college at CSI. The College of Staten Island, not the forensics themed crime show on TV. Not that the show isn't educational, but to my knowledge CBS does not yet offer degrees to viewers. If they did, I would already hold a doctorate in The Price Is Right. Anyway, other than doing some college plays which I enjoyed, I don’t remember much aside from one odd incident… One day on my way to class I ran into my brother Dan walking through the hall. I asked him what he was doing there, noticing he had some text books under his arm. He told me he was on his way to class and wanted to know what I was doing there. Somehow we were both enrolled in the same school, without the other knowing. Okay, we didn’t hang out together all the time, he was four years older (still is), but we lived together! It was weird! Right? That is weird, isn’t it?
Around this time I became obsessed with movies from the seventies, particularly those starring Dustin Hoffman, Al Pacino, Robert DeNiro, and Meryl Streep. The list is actually longer, but we don’t have all day. I started watching films like The Graduate, Dog Day Afternoon, Taxi Driver, and Kramer Vs. Kramer. That list is way longer, but let’s move on. The incredible acting in those films blew me away, and I began taking my own craft much more seriously. For one thing, I started saying stuff like “craft.”
Enter, AADA. The American Academy of Dramatic Arts. I transferred out of CSI and immersed myself in acting. I studied movement, voice, speech, fencing, girls in tights, theater history, Shakespeare, and all those embarrassing relaxation techniques like stretching your tongue over your head while reciting Proust. The New York campus is actually a big beautiful mansion on Madison Avenue, which was originally some kind of men’s club. I had a work study job down in the prop pool, aptly named after its having been an actual in-ground pool in the basement, which now housed gazillions of props. I once saw a cockroach down there the size of F. Murray Abraham. Mabye it was F. Murray, but I’ll never know. When I tried to squish him he ran into Blanche’s suitcase from “A Streetcar Named Desire” and disappeared. AADA was a lot of fun, and I learned a tremendous amount about the craft, but the thing I remember best is that it was impossible to walk through the student lounge without someone giving you a back rub. Ahhh. Acting school.
After graduation I auditioned to study under Uta Hagen, the renowned stage actress and acting teacher, whose text book “Respect For Acting” was pretty much the bible at AADA. I was accepted into her class, and the next four years were the most enlightening and creatively gratifying of my life. I could go on at length about Ms. Hagen’s genius, but there are many websites, books, articles, etc. that already do this better than I could. Think Yoda for the acting world. She passed away in 2004.
Cut to my day job at Jim Hanley’s Universe, NYC’s coolest underground comic book store. Okay, it wasn’t all underground stuff; they carried Marvel and DC titles, too, but for coolness’ sake, let’s stick with underground. As day jobs go, it was pretty ideal. There was no food involved and no heavy lifting. Every once in a while there’d be a signing for Stan Lee or some other comics icon, and fans would line up around the block for a mint condition signed first edition whatever-it-was. One time I accidentally got a piece of tape stuck on a kid’s signed Spiderman comic, and he broke into a sweat and nearly passed out. These were hard core fans. Many of them spoke fluent Klingon.
I was auditioning this whole time and finally landed my first professional role as The Woodsman in a children’s theater production of “Little Red Riding Hood” in the West Village. I didn’t recall a woodsman character in the fairy tale, but it counted towards my Actor’s Equity card so I didn’t make waves. At the end of every show the cast would come out and greet the kids in the audience. Sometimes kids would ask for an autograph. It was my first taste of celebrity. Granted it was a fan base that took naps after Sesame Street, but hey, you gotta start somewhere, right?
Eventually I left the comic store in favor of a less fun, better paying job as a corporate temp. Needless to say, this was somewhat of a dark time for me. The worst part about it was having to change out of my suit and tie into audition clothes, invariably in some cramped public bathroom, my bare socks touching public restroom germs while I tried to tie my shoes without letting the laces fall into the toilet. Let’s move on.
At this point I was doing lots of off-off-off (to the tenth power of off) Broadway plays, and had somehow managed to parlay the temp thing into a computer consulting thing. I’ve always been good with technical stuff (I constructed this website!) and was able to make twice as much mula writing Excel macros for stressed out Wall Street traders while working less hours, which meant less time protecting my socks from germs. One of the off-off-off…zzzz…off, off-Broadway plays landed me a talent agent who started sending me on more high profile auditions and…
Bam! I landed a lead role on a new sitcom for FOX! Sadly, it wasn’t picked up for broadcast, but I made enough dough to pay off my student loan and it secured me a place with the exclusive CED Talent Agency on Park Ave., which led to my getting cast in a whole mess of TV commercials. I’ve been in over thirty national commercials (the ones on my commercial reel on the video page of this site are just a smidgeon of the commercial work I’ve done.) I was able to quit my stressed-out-macro-writing-for-Wall-Street-traders job, and focus exclusively on acting and auditioning. In 1999 I landed a role in Barry Levinson’s feature film “Liberty Heights” and have been working in TV and film… well, I wouldn’t say consistently, but working enough to keep my socks clean, ever since.
