grow up on crafts services, private tutors and limos at their service.
“I think all of it has to do with parenting and
keeping your kid grounded, keeping them in the real world and don’t let
them get caught up in it,” the slender Mazzello says, seated on the
sunny balcony of a hotel here.
“I always lived in upstate
in a small town. And I never moved out to L.A. and did the ‘pilot
season’ thing. I never immersed myself in it. I would do the job then I
would go back home and live a regular life. I would be playing in the
leaves and kickball with my friends, and I just had a very normal life.
So I felt like I got to live two lives. I got to go out and do these
amazing things, go to these exotic locations and have all this fun and
then go home and also be a normal kid. I think that balance is what
made me always love it.”
Mazzello, who appeared in films like “Radio Flyer,”
“Presumed Innocent” and “Shadowlands,” is probably best known as the
kid who was zapped off the fence in “Jurassic Park.”
But the days of gangly youth are gone for Mazzello, who becomes a man as
Like the earlier “Band of Brothers,” this 10-part
series examines World War II and the exorbitant price it extracted from
our young. Produced by the team that made “Band of Brothers,” “The
Pacific” deals mainly with the Marine battles of the Pacific Isles like
Peleliu, Guadalcanal,
“It has changed my life again because I’ve
transitioned from being a child actor to being an adult actor and it’s
opened up a whole new world for me,” he says.
A foot-long resume may have gotten him in the door,
but Mazzello says auditioning for “The Pacific” was the most arduous
he’s ever endured. “I auditioned six times. It was the usual way, I
went to a casting director and I think she liked me right off the bat,
then the next audition was in front of one of the producers, then
another for another producer and another.”
He tried out for three different parts. “Finally the fifth audition I find out, ‘You’re going to audition for (producer)
But another producer,
couldn’t be there, and Mazzello had to try again for him. “I felt like
I’d already been to boot camp. I started auditioning in October and it
ended finally in April.”
Growing up, he had learned patience from his
parents, who run a dance studio, and not everything depended on whether
he got the part. “When I was in high school my acting career took a
back seat for me. I didn’t even have an agent for three years. I just
took some time away from it. Again, it’s a credit to my parents who
raised me to feel like all these other things were just as important.
So I never got that engrossed in the whole ‘scene.’
“SATs, and the prom and girls and getting into college — that all meant a lot to me so I focused on that. I went to
for film school, so it was still related but not acting, it was
directing and such. I learned about the other side of the camera and as
I was doing it I was thinking, ‘You know, I don’t think I’m done with
it yet, with acting.’ It was something I always loved and made the
decision: I’ve got to give this my whole heart now instead of just a
half or a third of it.”
But it wasn’t so easy slipping back into the groove.
“When I was a kid I was doing movie after movie. And when I came back,
people said, ‘Oh,
said, ‘No, not exactly. I’m 23.’ I had to definitely re-invent myself a
little bit and let people see me as an adult. I could still get into
all the rooms I needed to get into because of my resume, but I had to
still do it the old-fashioned way.”
Mazzello met his sweetheart,
at film school and the two of them have just finished a script
together. He would like to direct some day and has been inspired by
some of the directors he’s worked with like
“When we did ‘Jurassic Park,’ there was a hurricane in
alive, he decided he was going to film the hurricane. So he went
outside and got some shots of the hurricane approaching. That moment
was where I knew not only did I want to be an actor but I probably
wanted to be a director too, which set me on a course to go to college
to learn about that because that kind of dedication is just remarkable.”
—
Singer-songwriter
house. My mother would blast the ‘Texaco Opera Theater’ every Saturday
through the house. I still don’t really understand opera, but — but I
love it. I love hearing it.”
—
When “Parenthood” gets under way this week on
underwent surgery for removal of a breast tumor last summer. Graham,
who starred as the goofy mom in “Gilmore Girls,” plays a slightly
frazzled mother in this show.
Originally Graham didn’t seem like “actor” material,
she says. “I was shy but masked it. I was always perceived to be
tougher than I was. I had a sarcastic sense of humor. I remember at
summer camp them thinking I was sassy or fresh — my father used that
word that nobody ever uses anymore. But it was really my sense of
humor, but people didn’t take it the right way … But I was awkward.
Was always self-conscious and didn’t feel comfortable and wasn’t one of
those girls you see at school who’s confident. I was on drill team one
year, was in student government, but never identified myself as
‘pretty.’ It was not the first thing I thought of.”
—
“Rules of Engagement” returns to
four children, but it wasn’t always that way. “There were some lean
times and the one positive thing about having these major
responsibilities, children, family, mortgage payment, is that it does
make you focus on work,” he says.
“Because early on everything was pretty easy and
lax. And it wasn’t that I was doing well as an actor, it was that I
knew what I had to do to pay for my rent and live in my apartment
across the street from the beach with my buddy. And I knew what would
pay for food and beer and rent and that was maybe knocking out a couple
of commercials a year. And it wasn’t until I was 25 or 26 where I had
to get serious about my occupation and that’s why I had to really get
serious and say, ‘I’m an actor.'”
—
(c) 2010, McClatchy-Tribune News Service.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
