ACTING...A REAL DOG-EAT-DOG JOB

Have you ever wondered how it would feel to become an actor? Well, I can tell you how I felt when I got my first role. I was scared!!! I mean, imagine how you would feel if you had to do anything in front of an audience. Now, you may have had to go up in front of your entire class and read a paragraph from a book. But, let me tell you...doing an entire two-hour long play in front of hundreds of people...strangers...can be very traumatic. Especially when you're only 13...and you're at a point in your life when you fear that your voice is going to crack and change and make you a laughing stock!

Well, thank God that my father, who was a theatre major in college, prepared me long before my theatrical debut. The play...Peter Pan by James M. Barrie. My role...well, none other than the boy who wouldn't grow up himself.

My costume? Well, you're looking at it. My costume was almost like that which was worn by the character in the Walt Disney feature...only my legs were bare and I wore no shoes. The costume and cap were leaf green...you know, like nature. After all, a boy who flies and mingles with fairies should be looking like a piece of nature himself.

But, the most frightening thing that I had to do was have clear wires attached to the back of my costume in order to help me fly across the stage. What would happen if I got sick to my stomach and lost my cookies on opening night? Worse...what would happen if the stagehand pulled the rope too hard and I ended up hitting a wall??? My father told me that when Mary Martin originally played the role sixteen years before I was even born, the stagehand in charge of her "flying" pulled the rope and directed her right into one of the heavy backdrops. She ended up breaking her shoulder and had to go on opening night wearing a cast under her costume. What a bummer!!!

Well, when opening night came for me, I was like a real trouper. I remembered watching a television show in which a girl's brother told her to imagine seeing the audience in their underwear. I decided to try it myself. Guess what? IT WORKED!!! It was hard to feel intimidated by people in their underwear! I didn't forget my lines...I didn't forget my cues. And, when I finished the entire play and came back onstage to take a bow, I was shocked when everybody in the audience rose to their feet, applauding my performance. What a feeling!

My next stage appearance was a part in a musical...The King and I. I was cast in the play as the King of Siam's eldest son, Crown Prince Chulalongkorn (try saying that five times fast). When I came onstage during the March of the Siamese Children, I had to walk stiff and approach my "father" with a proud walk and kowtow before him and bow before "Mrs. Anna" strong enough to demand respect. And, when I backed away from them to rejoin my "brothers and sisters", I had to be led by the actress playing my mother in order to avoid walking over any of them. I felt..."Wow! Musicals are easy!" I just couldn't wait to appear in my next one.

I didn't have long to wait. My next appearance in a musical was not too far along. Actually, the performance was not a musical. It was an opera...a Christmas opera. I had received the title role in Gian Carlo Menotti's Christmas opera Amahl and the Night Visitors and had to keep in time with the flute player so the audience would think I was playing the flute. My third stage appearance was greeted with more applause than ever before...and this was only for a one-night performance!

Boy, was I lucky that my next performance was going to be a talking role only. Why? Because the new year started off for me with my voice cracking and changing from a boy soprano's to a first tenor's. And, as luck would have it, it was to be my last professional performance before I was to start in a new school...a school recommended by my father's second-cousin. A school from which the finest minds graduate to schools of higher learning. The play...On Golden Pond. I was to play the role of "Billy Ray", the somewhat-neglected son of a divorced middle-aged dentist. My father and his girlfriend decided to leave me with her elderly parents. From the moment I first opened my mouth and uttered my first line, people who were already familiar with my acting heard my new voice...that of a fourteen-year-old teenager.

Did my acting "career" stop there? I should say not!!! Even when I was attending the boys' school on Long Island, I managed to try out (and appear in) six plays...as Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Friedrich in The Sound of Music, Romeo in Romeo and Juliet, Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew, Demetrius (the youngest of the slaughtered-then-baked sons of the Visigoth queen) in Titus Andronicus and, last but not least, Leo Hart in Coastal Disturbances...a play which, at the time, was still playing on Broadway with Timothy Daly and Annette Bening. Now, even with my busy schedule of classes, sports and theatre, I still managed to graduate with full honors. Among them...senior class valedictorian, as well as most likely to succeed, most athletic and most talented. I also lettered in soccer, tennis, baseball, diving and gymnastics. Whew!!! What a full book!!!

When I went on to college in central Florida, I also made the most of appearing on stage...when my full schedule permitted. I appeared in plays at both my college and the regional theatre, adding more and more to my repertoire and gaining more scholastic achievements and awards...voted most handsome young man on campus, most perfect body on campus, most handsome artists' nude model (if you can believe that), as well as collegiate letter and medals in the same sports I won them for in the boys' school. But, I kept on acting...and modeling.

So, what was there that was left for me to do?

MODELING...MY FIRST CAREER

What do you think of this photo? That was me, modeling for PCH back in 1995. I was already modeling professionally for nine years, since I was 15.

My father was the epitome of a real stage-parent, pushing me towards modeling. He had brought me (and a photo album) to a modeling agency, hoping that they would accept me. What kept them from taking me on? I was 13, standing five-feet-two inches tall and weighing ninety-five pounds, extremely photogenic...and very handsome (if I do say so myself). So, what was the problem???

"There's no doubt that he makes love to the camera and the camera loves him", said one of the agents. "But, he's too thin!"

"I'll tell you what", replied the other agent. "We'll keep his file open for four months. Get him beefed up and broadened out. If, at the end of four months, you can put, say, thirty pounds of muscle on him...then he just might have a good career ahead of him".

At the time, what they were requesting sounded hopeless. I mean...how could a normal kid like me put on thirty pounds of muscle and broaden myself out in four months? But, leave it up to my dad to come up with an answer.

"We'll just get you a trainer and a nutritionist", he said.

So started my personal odyssey. Dad got me a trainer-nutritionist who put me on a strict regimen. My day started out with a pure protein shake followed by a breakfast which consisted of a medium, trimmed, medium-done steak, two scrambled eggs, unbuttered toast and a tall glass of orange juice. Then, it was on with the shorts and sneakers and running a total of two miles (extending it to five miles each day), working out in the gym with exercises (squat thrusts, push-ups, sit-ups, bends, etc.) and into the pool and doing ten laps (extending it to twenty each day, working my way up for thirty or more). And that was all before lunch!!! For lunch...another protein shake, followed by another trimmed, medium-done steak, salad with fat-free dressing and a tall glass of whole milk. You have to remember...I was building myself up, trying to put more meat on my bones. After lunch, it was a one-hour rest...then the weights. Curls, dead lifts...every exercise imaginable to build up muscles in my arms and legs...and more exercises targeted towards my abdomen. After a full day of exercise, running, swimming and weight-training, a good dinner sounded great. Another trimmed, medium-done steak (smaller than those I had for breakfast and lunch), salad with fat-free dressing and a glass of whole milk, finishing off with a small raisin bran cake topped with fruit for dessert. Then, a little television and off to bed to get a full eight hours of sleep. That was how it was...three days a week, ultimately working up to four days. It was pure torture!

Then, came the big day. After four months, my dad and I went back to the modeling agency. Luckily, I had the good sense to put on a bathing suit under my street clothes because the two agents asked me to strip down. Down went the pants and off went the shirts. The two agents couldn't believe their eyes! What stood before them was no longer the gawky five-foot-two-inch, ninety-five pound boy they saw four months earlier...but a five-foot-five inch, one hundred thirty-five pound teenager...complete with six-pack abs and a twenty-seven inch waist...and sporting a Speedo bathing suit! Out came the contracts! My start as a model seemed assured. But, also came a new regimen...one of maintaining a proper weight. I now had to make certain that I watched what I ate. Fats were out! No more ice cream, candies, sodas...everything that a normal, red-blooded American kid loved. I now had a career to think of...one that required total discipline of both my body and mind.

Of course, I still had to go to school. To avoid temptations, my dad enrolled me in a private boys' school in New York...one that saw to it that the human body remained a perfect work of art. Proper nutrition at all three meals, plenty of homework and sleep...and lots of exercise. I not only took part in gym classes...but got started in sports as well. Soccer, tennis, lacrosse, baseball...anything to keep myself in shape.

But, the calls were not coming in. At least, not as fast as I had hoped. Then, one day, I was called to the house phone. It appeared the agency had a job for me. I had to take a train the next morning (a Saturday morning, naturally) and go to the agency's midtown Manhattan office.

What a sight welcomed me as soon as I entered the office! I thought I was going to be doing this photo shoot alone. But, there were five other models there...two older men and three women, one, roughly 18 or 19, in an advanced state of pregnancy. When it came time to prepare for the shoot, I was given some clothing to change into...a long-sleeved designer shirt, designer shorts, sandals, kerchief and a hat. Now, dressed like that in any air-conditioned office would have made one uncomfortable...and I was no exception. So, I rolled the sleeves up to just below my elbows and opened the front down to the center of my chest.

"Put those sleeves back the way they were and button up that shirt!" snapped the photographer.

As I beginning to do as the photographer ordered, a second man swatted him across the back of his head with a rolled-up magazine.

"That boy is making a statement with my designs, not yours!" the man yelled in a thick European accent. "You put that shirt back the way you want, uomino".

Cowed by the designer, the photographer went to work snapping picture after picture, going through ten rolls of film, until quitting time...at seven o'clock in the evening! Man, I knew that modeling was going to be tough work...but I never thought it was going to be an all-day affair!

But, the thought of posing for a camera all day long took a back seat...especially when I received my paycheck. How much did I make on my first shoot? Would you believe $50,000? Yet, only two years later...I would be paid almost ten times as much to pose nude.

And, who, you might ask, were the designer and the very pregnant model? They were none other than the Gianni Versace and Anna Nicole Smith!

By the way, I still model today...whenever time permits, of course.