Still Growing: An Autobiography (6 page)

No matter how challenging their direction, I did my best to please.

On my sixth audition I suddenly felt terribly shy. The waiting room insanity had gotten to me.

Instead of calling us in privately, the casting director brought us into the room by groups of four. They lined us up and we each gave our name and information before spitting out the scripted line. As each boy spoke, one after the other, I got more and more nervous.

When it was my turn I was so embarrassed standing in front of these other people, so afraid that I wouldn’t do a good job, that I turned my back to the camera and started to cry. All I could think was,
I can’t do this
.

Mom remembers that they sent all the other kids out and then the casting director took me aside to play catch for a few moments before giving me the opportunity to try again.

I did it without a problem and got my first callback. (The studios always have at least one callback so the people who weren’t there during the first round can see how the kids perform a second or third time.) Then one afternoon I was sitting at our table doing homework when Mom answered the phone. She sounded like she was excited and trying not to be. She hung up and came running over to me. “Ooohhh, honey! You got it, you got it!”

I tried to pretend I was excited, too—but I really didn’t know what I was in for.

Though auditions had become an ordinary part of life, being on a set was all very new. Mom and I were tentative about where to go, where to sit, what to say, who to talk to. But it was so exciting and the crew bent over backward for the actors—even kid actors. I thought this was really
strange, because I was accustomed to sitting at the little kids’ table of life. Someone explained that the commercial couldn’t be made without the actors. They were the ones who were selling the product for the sponsor. The crew kept an upbeat attitude so the actors would be more relaxed and more likely to do a good job.

Bonnie, the casting director, helped a lot. She came to greet us as soon as she saw us wandering around, lost and confused.

“Kirk!” she said, reaching to shake my hand. “It’s so nice to see you again.” She then reached for my mother’s hand. “You must be Mom. I’m Bonnie.”

“Barbara,” Mom said, looking almost as excited as I was.

Since the shoot was in Griffith Park, the area had trucks and cables scattered everywhere.

“Follow me,” Bonnie said. “I’ll take you to the Honeywagon.”

“Uh,” I said, “I thought this was a commercial for Count Chocula, not honey.”

Bonnie smiled. “That’s what we call the dressing room trailer.”

She took us to a trailer big enough to require towing by a semi. It had stalls along the length of it. I stared in awe at the doors, each one with a name on it. Mom took a picture with me standing next to my name, even though it was only written in black marker on masking tape. I felt very important and was both eager and frightened for the real thing to begin.

“You can leave your things in here. It’s yours for the next two days.”

The dressing room had a bench seat on one wall. Across from that was a desk with a well-lit mirror, a place where I could hang my clothes, and a bathroom.

“I’ll show you how to find Craft Services now,” Bonnie said. I wondered why there would be a table for arts and crafts on a movie set. Weren’t we here to act?

I quickly caught on to the lingo. Craft Services was the food area spread out beneath a huge California oak tree. Bagels, donuts, rolls, croissants, loaves of white and wheat bread, a variety of muffins and sweet rolls—it was carb heaven. Topping that was the table of endless candy, as if the world’s finest trick-or-treater had been robbed. “It’s free, have whatever you want,” Bonnie shrugged.

I couldn’t believe it. I snagged a bagel and smeared it with cream cheese. It was my first of many, many years of free bagels. (To this day I won’t pay for bagels or cream cheese—not when I can score them for free on film sets.)

“We’ll start you in school first, Kirk,” Bonnie said, beckoning me to follow her to a table underneath another oak tree. Starting my day with school interfered with my crack at the candy table, but at least it would be a shortened day of education. This commercial shoot was going to keep me legitimately out of school for
two days
, quite the adventure! California law required only three hours a day with the tutor. Mom had gotten homework assignments from my real schoolteachers for them to use.

“Hi, Kirk, I’m Pamela. I’ll be your teacher for today. What grade are you in?”

Pamela was responsible for more than making sure I got my papers done. She had the responsibility of protecting me on the set, making sure the studios were following child labor laws.

“Why don’t you begin with this math? I’ll be right here if you have any questions,” she said.

Not much later, a man came to get me. “We’re all set up for you, Kirk. Ready?”

I nodded, my eyes like saucers with anticipation. The saucers got even bigger when I saw the Panavision cameras with the big black lenses, giant wheels of film tape behind, each one resting on dolly tracks. I followed the man through a flurry of activity, fascinated with the 50 people running around moving cables and lights. The sound guy held a boom mike with a gray furry cover that resembled a dead possum.

I had been told they would use stand-ins to do my part while I was in school, so the crew could determine the light and camera positions. It was very strange to see an adult about my height and coloring—he wasn’t a kid; he was a Little Person. I found out later they used Little People a lot because, as adults, they could work long adult hours. At least I now knew what my face would look like with a five o’clock shadow.

For the rest of the day the same things repeated over and over. I did a take until the director said, “Cut.” When adjustments were going to
take longer than 20 minutes, they brought the Little Person back in and he took my place while I went back to school.

By the end of the day, I was hooked.
This was great!
I wanted to do more of it. I thought I must be pretty hot stuff to be getting all that red carpet treatment—my own private teacher, a dressing room, endless candy. And all the people were falling all over themselves for me. It was a huge ego boost.

After we gathered my things and fell into the car, exhausted, I turned to Mom and said, “Can we do this again?”

She smiled and tousled my hair. “Sure, Kirk.”

After Count Chocula I felt I could do this well. I quickly became more confident in my auditions. I received callbacks most of the time, booking a commercial every third or fourth interview, resulting in a total of 30 or 40 commercials throughout my early acting years. My sister Melissa auditioned off and on for years, and though she was very talented, she landed only one commercial and a few series pilots. (She eventually quit because she hated to be on camera.) I knew some kids went on auditions for years and never got a job.

I don’t know what I did differently than other kids, but it always seemed to go well with me inside the audition room.

In spite of all the jobs I landed, I never got used to auditions. I hated the entire process.

When I got a message in class that Mom was there to get me or when I saw the VW bug waiting outside in the pick-up lane, I thought,
Oh, no, I hate this. I don’t want to do it anymore. Why can’t I be like every other kid and stay in school, or go home to play with my friends?
I slowed my pace,
slumped my shoulders and dropped my head. Everything about me sagged, making me resemble a thin, scrappy Eeyore.

Mom was always chipper, attempting to zap some life into me. “Hi, honey! How was your school day?”

I either shrugged or grunted. I didn’t want to talk to her.

“Why don’t we stop at McDonald’s? We’ll get you some ice cream, or a Happy Meal with a toy inside. Whatever you want.”

“Mooooom, I’m too old to care about toys,” I’d whine. A few moments went by. “What do you think the toy is?”

She didn’t fool me. I knew she was trying to cheer me up. I accepted the food and the toy, but I held on to my bad mood like a winter cold. I liked being a grump and had no desire to snap out of it. I didn’t want to give in.

And I
really
didn’t want to put on the stupid, ugly clothes she always brought. She learned very early that kids who are the most successful in auditions had the same look all the time. They had to look like their head shots. And if it was a callback, they needed to look exactly as they did in the first audition. So every time I auditioned I had to wear the same dorky outfit. It became my uniform. I cannot express how much I loathed that red-and-tan striped IZOD sitting on a hanger in the rear window just waiting to be put on and
tucked inside
my jeans. Was there anything worse?

Oh, yes.

Not only did I have to tuck that shirt into a pair of stiff Toughskin jeans, I had to cinch the whole thing with a belt. And then when we got to the studio, Mom whipped out her brush and started in on my bowl-cut hair, brushing it to be smooth and stick straight. “Come on, Mom,” I’d protest. “I’m 10!”

“Oh, stop it. Your friends aren’t even here.”

She had a point. Still, I didn’t want the security guard, the janitor or even the Arrowhead water delivery guy seeing my hair brushed by my mother.

We went into the audition building and immediately started rehearsing lines. Mom was always so eager, and that drove me nuts. “Let’s practice the lines. You do this part and I’ll do that,” she’d chirp. When I didn’t go for it, she’d say, “Okay, sweetheart, after the audition,
where would you like to go to lunch?”

I’d heave a big sigh and say, “McDonald’s. I’ve been thinking about a Big Mac all day.”

I never told her, but I was self-conscious about practicing with her. I was afraid that she would make fun of me, or that I’d get it wrong in her eyes. Either of those would make it harder for me to deliver the line on camera.

I dreaded auditions where I had to sing. There was no advance warning about these musical commercials. I stepped through the magic door and after I said my line, the director, shrouded in black, called out, “Hey. We’d like you to sing something. Pick whatever you want.”

Great
.

So there in front of a camera I’d have to come up with some little ditty on my own, or they might ask me to sing “Happy Birthday.” I hated it.

The other tough thing was if I had to cry on cue. Commercials didn’t generally call for crying, but often auditions for movies and TV shows did. Those were very uncomfortable. How can you cry with all those people looking at you? I’m sure that, somewhere on the other side of town, Tracey Gold had no problem with it. But I hated tearing up for strangers.

As the years went on, things got worse. Or rather,
I
got worse. I learned that the cure for the boredom and depression of having to audition was to fall asleep quickly. That was also my way of getting back at Mom because I knew she wanted to talk. I put my head back on that seat and went right to sleep. An hour later, just as Mom was parking, I’d wake up, stretch and get out of the car—all without talking to her.

As I walked into the audition room I was so groggy. She’d look at me and say, “Do you even want to do this?”

I shrugged a wordless answer. I didn’t have the courage to tell my mom I didn’t want to go anymore. My parents had always said, “You don’t look like you’re enjoying this. If you don’t want to do this, just tell us. You can leave at any time.”

“No, it’s okay,” I’d say and slip away to hide out in my bedroom.

I didn’t feel like Mom was forcing me to continue. I simply didn’t have the nerve to stop. It’s like a kid in gymnastics who’s doing really
well and everyone is telling him, “You’ve got a gift. You’ve got talent.” And when he’s there, he does a good job and it feels good. It’s complicated—half of him wants to continue and half wants to quit.

Mom only saw the grumpy, groggy kid in the waiting room. What she didn’t know was that I knew I could turn on the exact personality I needed, perking up the moment I went through the magic door to the audition room. In some ways, I wanted her to think I was blowing it miserably in there.

I never showed Mom that part of me. I knew what she wanted—and I was determined not to give it to her. I knew she wanted me to talk to her. I knew she wanted me to show her what I was going to do. I knew she wanted to know the reaction of the casting director. She was always so anxious after it was over: “So? How did it go? What’d they say?”

Most of the time I didn’t even look at her. Occasionally I threw her a bone and say flatly, “I dunno. They said, ‘Thanks, fine, good.’ ”

Sometimes I put on the shy act instead. It was my way of selfishly doing what I wanted and showing my parents I was in charge by not talking—exactly what some married couples do.
If I don’t talk, then I win. I’ve got the power!