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Fame & Fortune: Actor-author Ron McLarty
A word from Stephen King launched his
second career
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Bankrate: How did you
get your start in acting?
McLarty: When I got out of the Army, I had my first unpublished
manuscript and I was just waiting for something to do for the three or four weeks
it would take before I got published (laughs). I was as lucky in acting as I was
unlucky as a writer. As a writer, I couldn't get an agent, I couldn't get published
-- it was really a strange thing. But on a day off in the Army, I drove to Washington's
Arena Stage and I didn't know anything about the professional theater and I wanted
to get a job. I had a friend of mine blow up a Polaroid picture he took of me
and I handwrote on the back of it a little resume and they wouldn't accept it;
the woman at the desk thought I was a hick from the sticks. And Alan Snyder, a
very famous director, came out and said, 'What's going on?' and I explained and
he said, 'OK, let me look at it.' And he went in the other room and came back
out and said, 'Here, you can do this,' and he gave me a part in a play. I went
to my general officer and got me discharged three weeks early because there was
nothing they could do with me. That play, "Moon Children," went to Broadway.
My career was really kind of lucky like that and it gave me all the time in the
world to write. My feelings got hurt on the writing end but never from the acting,
so I never tried too hard, because of course if you try to hard the camera picks
it up. You can't get a job if you try too hard. Bankrate:
Did you grow up in a working-class neighborhood? McLarty:
Oh sure. Both my mother and father worked; my mother was a schoolteacher, my father
worked in an oil refinery, unloading oil tankers in East Providence. It was a
very close-knit town. I was a hockey player and a sports guy. It was a real eclectic
childhood, a good one. I went on to college at Rhode Island, and like most guys,
I got lured onto stage by a girl in a show called "The Music Man." Of
course I ended up never even talking to her, but I liked it. I was also the waterfront
director for a Boy Scouts camp and often hosted the Saturday night camp show,
which I enjoyed. That was part of it, too. Bankrate:
Did you have the usual lean years as an actor? McLarty:
Well, this goes back to never really expecting to be a big star, but I cast a
big net, and a lot of my contemporaries didn't to that. I didn't want to wait
on tables, so my first play, the Broadway play, led me to getting an agent in
New York City for legitimate stuff, movies and television, and also a commercial
agent, so I did a lot of commercials. And I built a pretty good voice-over career
and I keep that going. When there were lean times as an actor, when your series
would go down, I always had some good voice-over accounts that would keep the
kids in school. My best advice to anyone who wants to be an actor is: Never look
at that check you're going to get as if you're going to get it on a weekly basis.
Hide that money and keep it for a rainy day. You just have to learn how to manage
it. I didn't have any problem doing commercials or voice-overs or books on tape.
Whatever came my way, I never thought that I was above it. |
