Keep It Smooth by Cameron Daddo

Author:Cameron Daddo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pantera Press Pty Limited
Published: 2024-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

California: There’s Gold in Them THAR Hills!

The Hollywood phase of my career got off to a flying start, thanks once again to Barbara Leane. Several months before we departed, Barbara took a business trip to Los Angeles, armed with a VHS tape of a compilation of my work. She showed it to highly respected US manager Hank McCann and asked whether he thought I’d make it there. His answer was yes.

Hank McCann proceeded to open doors to top-tier acting agencies and helped me find representation, which is a notoriously difficult step. Landing an agent is key: without one, Hollywood casting agents won’t look at you. Within my first three months in LA, I managed to shoot a couple of gigs and secured the obligatory Screen Actors Guild union card, which is essential to work as an actor in the USA. Along with that, a social security card, Californian driver’s licence and a US credit card, and we were officially on the grid.

I counted myself especially lucky to have Hank in my corner. He was old school, loved the history of Hollywood and insisted that I get to know it too. In the decade or so that we worked together – through the ’90s and into the noughties – Hank would often take Ali and me out to lunch, and he fast became part of our family. Further, he was dogged about my potential and wouldn’t let me consider work that he deemed a sideways move. Everything had to be leading to the next, better, higher profile gig.

Any actor or artist trying to make it in Hollywood finds out about the LA pilot season. This is a frenzied period, running from late January through till April, when TV networks create their new shows for the coming year. Actors from all over the world descend on Hollywood for a shot at these. It’s mayhem for agents, managers, casting directors and actors alike. At the peak of my involvement with pilot season, I’d sometimes go on a dozen auditions a week, which meant a lot of reading and fast character development. It was next to impossible to learn the lines, so each meeting was like a cold read. If you made it to the next level, you were expected to be better acquainted with the lines.

By April, if you haven’t got a role, you pretty much have to wait till next year. Towards the end of the 1994 pilot season, though I’d had some close calls on well-written jobs, nothing had materialised. When the script arrived for Models Inc – a spin-off of Melrose Place – it struck me as pretty schlocky but there wasn’t much else happening: the big fish had mostly been caught.

Ali and Hank convinced me. This was the new show of Aaron Spelling, King of Television. ‘Of course you’re going in!’ So, I went to the audition with zero expectations and not really wanting it. Judgemental? Yes, guilty as charged.

We’ve heard all sorts of stories where actors go into a room not wanting the gig, or acting like they don’t want the gig, then landing it.

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