Fame &
Fortune: Mike Farrell of 'M*A*S*H' He puts his career where his heart is By Jay MacDonald,
Bankrate.com
Bankrate: Were you star struck handing Jack Benny his weekly groceries?
Farrell: Oh, indeed.
My older sister brought movie magazines into the house, my dad worked at times
as a carpenter at the movie studios, and in grammar school, one of my classmates
was Natalie Wood, then known as Natasha Gurdin. Yes, Hollywood was everywhere,
and it was also part of my fantasy in terms of a bigger, better, more important
life than the one I was living. I say, kind of jokingly, that when you grow up
in the lumber town, you go to work in the mill. I went to grammar school with
Natalie Wood and to junior high school with Rick and Dave Nelson, so it was a
reality around us.
Bankrate: Did
you feel that acting would be a good career move initially?
Farrell:
It's always hard to forget your childhood fantasies,
and it was one that was a burning desire on my
part. But I was a terribly shy kid and never spoke
of it to anyone until after I graduated and got
out of the service. There was always this notion
in the back of my head that somebody was going
to tap me on the shoulder and say, "Hey,
you're just what we're looking for!" I thought
that I wouldn't have to put any effort into it
-- that it would just sort of happen. A friend
who was going about it correctly finally shamed
me into going to his actor's workshop with him
and that was really the beginning of my appropriate
pursuit of a career.
Bankrate:
You had the typical actor's salad years, presumably.
Farrell:
Exactly right. It's an incredibly competitive
business, with people coming from all over the
world to Hollywood for films and television. When
I got into the actual process, there were people
all around me who were beautiful, seductive, charismatic
and others who were weird and sort of kinky, but
all hopeful, all with the same dream. I was on
stage every time I had the opportunity and finally
got some breaks in plays and a couple of jobs
in television. Pretty soon, you're doing a "Hey,
he went that away" kind of role, because
some people thought I looked good in a uniform.
As you work your way up, people get to know you
and realize you don't fall dead in a faint in
front of a camera, and trust you to do a little
larger role.
Bankrate: How big
was landing "M*A*S*H" for you?
Farrell:
Oh, it was huge. I had been doing fine, I had
done two prime time television series, I was under
contract to Universal Studios and making a living
as an actor, but there was always this sense,
in television, that I didn't really want to do
a lot of the goofy things that were being done
in television. I held out "M*A*S*H,"
both the movie and the TV show, as examples of
what one could do, a show with a group of really
highly skilled people doing what I think is important
work, both from the perspective of good entertainment
and an important social message. And I just thought,
how lucky can you be to be able to do something
like that? Then when the opportunity came to meet
the people and be considered for the role they
were creating (in the show's fourth season) with
the possibility of Wayne Rogers leaving, I became
just as nervous as a cat, even though I had been
around for a pretty long time. Suddenly this prospect
of doing something that I had so admired, I was
struck dumb, and just managed somehow to make
my way through the process and got very, very
lucky.
