Interviews
Interview: American Idiot’s Trent Saunders Talks Life on the Road, St. Jimmy and Belting Out Green Day Songs
Trent also talks about how he got the part and audience craziness
Q & A: Anne Heche on Her New Religious-Themed Comedy, ‘Save Me’
Anne also talks about trying to quit acting when she was younger and more!
Q&A: Scott Foley talks ‘The Goodwin Games’ and Why He Loves Working in Television
Scott: “My job as an actor is to find the real moments of the characters”
Click Here For More Interviews!Acting Advice
Fail Boldly
Make the choices that you are scared of. Experiment. Play. Fail!
Keep the Drama on the Stage: How to Get Along with Your Fellow Actors
Ego and competition! 3 Steps to get along with your actor friends
The Actor’s Guide to the Twitter-verse
There’s a right way and a wrong way to tweet. Dallas shares 2 easy tips to help you make the most out of your tweets
Want To Read More Columns? Click Here!
Latest News
Ed Helms on ‘The Hangover’ and ‘The Office’ Ending: “You realize if you stayed on the rollercoaster you’d probably get hurt or sick or something”May 24, 2013 | Leave a Comment
May has been a month of endings for Ed Helms. First came the series finale of The Office, a show he has been starring in since 2007. Then came The Hangover Part III, which is billed as the final movie in the box office hit comedy franchise. He spoke to Moviefone about the end of two eras in his life and why now is the right time for both to conclude.
Helms wasn’t looking for any grand sendoff for his character, Stu, when he signed on for The Hangover Part III. He explains, “If anything, and for Stu in particular, I just wanted a sense of closure for the whole Hangover/Wolf Pack world. And then if I got a few good jokes in along the way, I’d be happy.” Continue »
May 24, 2013 | Leave a Comment
Written by Jamison Haase
“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that don’t work.” – Thomas Edison
Oftentimes, there is a disconnect between what we do as actors and how we were raised. No one wants to put themselves out there in a vulnerable way; we were often taught as children that to stand out is wrong, either by our parents, our peers, or society as a whole. From an early age, many of us were told to behave a certain way, to be like every one else, to be a “nice boy or girl” — ultimately to fit in and play it safe. Add to that our own fears and anxieties about separating ourselves from the pack, either by making a bold stand, voicing our individual opinion, or doing something we consider daring? Suddenly we have every reason seemingly to stay with the herd, to do everything in our power to try to stay safe. Continue »
May 24, 2013 | Leave a Comment
Sometimes it’s hard to separate an actor from his or her characters. For example, many are still surprised when they hear Hugh Laurie speak in his natural English accent because they heard him speak with an American accent for eight seasons on House. That’s not so bad — at least they don’t expect him to answer medical questions, right? Even in that case hopefully all he would have to say is the old “I’m not a doctor but I play one on TV.”
However, the situation could be much, much worse, like in the case of Colombian actor Mauricio Bastidas. Bastidas played a villainous character on the soap opera Tres Milagros (Three Miracles). Continue »
May 24, 2013 | Leave a Comment
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 15:13 — 10.5MB)
Trent Saunders, who is currently playing St. Jimmy in the touring production of Green Day’s American Idiot, has the life.
When I talked to him for this interview, it was the middle of the day in Baltimore, MD (my home state!) and he and his cast mates were set to play laser tag right after he got off the phone. He’s traveled to Europe – where he said he had a blast – is criss-crossing America and best of all, he gets to sing Green Day songs every night. Like I said, he’s livin’ the life.
I saw American Idiot when it was on Broadway and liked it a lot. The set and lighting design was amazing and if you’re a fan of Green Day, you’ll absolutely love it.
I talked to Trent about his life on the road, how he got the part and cell phones in the audiences. I haven’t heard how his laser tag expedition went, but if I do, I’ll let you know.
Green Day’s American Idiot comes to San Diego May 28th-June 2nd, followed by San Jose, CA and Las Vegas, NV. For San Diego tickets, click here. For other tour dates and tickets, click here. Continue »
May 23, 2013 | Leave a Comment
The rabid fans of the once defunct Arrested Development can breathe a sigh of relief when new episodes of the cult classic start airing on Netflix on Sunday. With his other show Onion News Network airing on Amazon, Jeffrey Tambor is becoming a true fan of the Internet age.
“I am the Internet guy,” he said in an interview with The New York Times. “But the reason the Onion News Empire was such an easy decision to make is I so trust that side of the fence now. It’s a little like being Off Broadway—that sort of excitement of not knowing what it is going to be. The fervency of it all.” Continue »
May 23, 2013 | Leave a Comment
In the end, Smash is, at best, an imperfect television series. It took an interesting industry — the behind-the-scenes creation of Broadway productions — and incredibly talented singers, like Megan Hilty, yet somehow failed to make it interesting to general audiences or even Broadway diehards. That is the main reason why Smash is wrapping up its run at the end of this season (only the show’s second). Hilty, who played the often mean Broadway hopeful Ivy Lynn, spoke to iDesign about the end of the series
Hilty expresses hope that fans of the show will be satisfied by the series finale — though it wasn’t entirely written that way. She says, “We have the greatest fans of the show and they’re very, very loyal, but I hope that the season finale is satisfying for people. I feel like it will be because they kind wrote it just in case it didn’t get renewed, that it would wrap everything up. I think people will be pleased with it. It won’t be like ‘what would have happened?’” Continue »
May 23, 2013 | Leave a Comment
In case you haven’t been paying attention to the media over the last two years, the cult favorite Fox television comedy Arrested Development, which ran from 2003-2006, is being revived for new episodes on the streaming service NetFlix. While the entire original cast that made up the dysfunctional Bluth family and creator Mitch Hurwitz have returned to the series, being that the revival is more of a one-time “event” than an ongoing series the stars of the show had an unusal arrangement in terms of how much they were paid per episode. Entertainment Weekly published an article about how much the stars of the series would be getting for coming back for another go-around.
As part of the revival, each of the show’s stars was promised at least one starring episode, which factored in how much that person was paid. The actors were paid $125,000 for each “starring” episode and $50,000 for any episode in which their characters had more than 90 seconds of airtime. Any episode which features less than 90 seconds of their particular character netted them $10,000, and a clips of old footage in episodes would net them an extra $1000. Continue »
May 23, 2013 | Leave a Comment
Silas Weir Mitchell, who plays Big Bad Wolf Monroe on NBC’s Grimm, isn’t getting too caught up in the ratings hype regarding his successful show.
“I think it’s literally the fact that I am susceptible to the power of suggestion…to the point where [suggestion] became my career,” he said in an interview with The Los Angeles Times. “That’s what actors do. They avail themselves to an imaginary event to the point where that imaginary event becomes real, which is really just the power of suggestion.”
It may sound like Mitchell is getting sucked into the supernatural drama that Grimm represents. The series takes place in a hidden world where fairy tale characters come to life. “We’re all very invested in the imaginary world that we’re in,” he admitted. “Everybody knows that we have this weird little world that we want to enrich.” Continue »
May 22, 2013 | Leave a Comment
The television drama Ironside, which was about wheelchair-bound detective Robert T. Ironside, ran for eight seasons in the 1960s and 1970s and starred able bodied actor Raymond Burr. NBC has decided to revive the series for the upcoming television series with one major change: Ironside will be played by an African American actor, Blair Underwood. What hasn’t changed? Like Burr, Underwood is not disabled. The decision to not cast a disabled actor in the role has made many disabled actors unhappy.
Kurt Yaeger, a one-legged actor on Sons of Anarchy is one of the loudest voices against the casting. He points out, “This would be like being in the ’50s and having a white guy do blackface, at this point. You need to start having disabled people playing disabled characters. Period.” Continue »
May 22, 2013 | Leave a Comment
Tony Goldwyn has tons of female fans lusting after his character, President Fitzgerald Grant, on ABC’s much buzzed about Scandal. But his wife isn’t one of them.
“It’s a problem,” he joked while appearing on Bravo’s Watch What Happens Live. “The honest answer is, my wife doesn’t watch it. She watched the pilot and thought it was great, but yeah…I don’t encourage it.”
His acting also goes unappreciated by his two daughters. “My two girls think it’s hilarious,” he said, as reported by The New York Daily News. “Disgusting and hilarious. So they send me all kinds of rude texts.” His 18-year-old once sent him a text saying “Excuse me?!” after he tells off Kerry Washington’s character after having sex with her. Continue »
