By Ray Richmond and Matthew Belloni
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Gone are the days when being a leading man on television meant being the most likable guy onscreen.
TV actors now get to show their skills with dark, complex characters -- even on broadcast network shows. The Hollywood Reporter gathered six fine examples of TV's new actor elite -- Simon Baker (CBS' "The Mentalist"), Bryan Cranston (AMC's "Breaking Bad"), Laurence Fishburne (CBS' "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation"), Michael C. Hall (Showtime's "Dexter"), Denis Leary (FX's "Rescue Me") and Bill Paxton (HBO's "Big Love") -- to discuss the grind of series work and the good fun in playing bad guys.
THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER: YOU ARE ALL THE LEADS ON HOURLONG SHOWS. WHAT IS THE TOLL ON YOUR LIVES?
Bill Paxton: I drive from my house to make the call on Monday morning and I'm lucky to see my house before 2 o'clock in the morning on Friday night. It's a monastic kind of existence. I just stay in a hotel out there (in Santa Clarita, Calif.). I feel like a weird monk. The hardest thing is to go from such an intense work situation to just all of a sudden, that's it.
Bryan Cranston: What you'll find (on) all of these shows, we're all working 12 to 13 to 14 hours a day. If you can do a 12-hour day, you can go home and be with your family.
Simon Baker: Twelve hours, you can have an existence.
Denis Leary: On "Rescue Me," we do four-, six-, eight-, 10-hour days. When (showrunner) Peter (Tolan) is directing, we do six-hour days sometimes.
Laurence Fishburne: How is that possible?
Leary: Because these actors have been there from the beginning. They are all really good at their characters and they're fantastic with each other.
Baker: You just did five (seasons). We're a first-year show, so part of the struggle is constantly trying to find the tone within the writers' room (and with directors). Director A may be a fantastic director but doesn't necessarily get the tone. We like to try to do a little bit of mucking around.
THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER: DO YOU GUYS HAVE A LOT OF FREEDOM TO SHAPE THE DIALOGUE OF YOUR CHARACTERS?
Fishburne: We've got a collaborative thing going on at "CSI." There is always a writer on set. You can always say, "I think we need to tweak this."
Michael C. Hall: When new people come in, if they only know me from the show they're like, "I'm afraid you might kill me." So they are a lot more open to my suggestions. (Laughter) And I don't sway them from thinking that. But I try to honor what the writers write. And my job, first and foremost, is to try to make work what I see there. With the voiceover element, I probably have more to say.
THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER: DENIS, YOU ARE SORT OF A HERO TO THE FIREFIGHTER COMMUNITY, EVEN THOUGH YOUR CHARACTER IS AN INSANE PERSON. WHAT'S THAT ABOUT?
Leary: There are plenty of firefighters who don't like what we portray. My character is based on two guys -- one of them is a technical adviser on the show -- and the crew is based on a particular crew. They all know almost every single fire, event, is taken from stuff from those guys. We wanted to do a school bus fire and I called Terry Quinn, our technical adviser, and he said: "I'm at one now, I'll call you back." So that's where we get the fires. Even this year, we have a thing where one of the younger firefighters opens a bar with another firefighter, which actually comes from this crew. Their goal was to meet chicks. (Laughing) So there are chiefs that wouldn't want us to tell this stuff, but that's where the best stuff is. Continued...
Source: Reuters
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