My dad's more three-dimensional than Opie Taylor or Richie Cunningham. He even has a temper! He's a real person. But some people are disappointed by that.
You need to not be able to do anything else, to be in this business. If you have other options, in those unemployed moments, those other options will take precedent. From a directorial standpoint, I think it's really Freudian, the amount of trust I have in filmmakers because I have such a trusting relationship with my dad.
I started taping my dad's auditions when I was 11, when he was auditioning actors for one of his movies. I would see, over and over again, that there wasn't just one actor for the role. It was really clear that there were a lot of people who could play a character really well, and it would always come down to something kind of weird and non-obvious as to why a person was cast. If you're not right, you're not right, but that's okay.
I feel like I almost didn't grow up in the business, because my parents worked so hard at sheltering us from that. I was raised in Connecticut. And I honestly wasn't aware that my dad was a celebrity until I moved to Los Angeles a year ago.
