I want to make movies - and I want to portray characters - that make people think. I want to make movies that have a redemptive message. I want to tell good quality stories and take out the derogatory sex, violence and language.
That's the most important thing when you're trying to portray a character for the audience to believe, you have to have the ability to journey in uncomfortable areas in your own personal life - to bring them out and make (the characters) true. Michael Landon is incredible at pulling those (emotions) out of you.
I love taking on challenges. I think one of the funnest things in acting is creating a character - wrapping yourself around a character and bringing him to life. I love a lot of different genres. I'm not a big horror guy by any means but I love the challenge. But the fifties and sixties is where I feel the most comfortable.
We have a slate of four films. From Karen Young - the USA bestselling author - we have Blood Bayou. Again, we're relying on the story to tell itself and the characters tell it and not (relying on) shock value. It's a suspenseful drama...The best way I can describe it is Pelican Brief meets Time to Kill.
I moved to the east coast when everybody else was going to the west coast. I (then) chased it back toward the west coast. I built my career up by doing small roles (which led) to principal roles and getting bumped into main character roles.
When I read it and I realized that Michael Landon, Jr. was the director of it, I thought...this could work out well. This is not gonna be a hard stretch for me to get the character figured out at all. Outside of the billion dollars, I was living his life...chasing money down. It was a lot of fun.
I try to learn something from every character I take on. I try to better myself personally from it and Red allowed me to go ahead and accept what I did. Even though I had passion driving me, I still felt a little guilty that I gave up all the businesses in the pursuit of happiness.
