PASADENA, Calif. _ Though she's been acting almost all her life, Bailee Madison says she never said she wanted to be an actress. "It just happened," she says over breakfast at a hotel restaurant here.
It happened very early in her life, too. While most youngsters perform for auditions, Bailee was still in her stroller when she became part of a commercial her mom was shooting. "Apparently I used to unbuckle myself from the stroller and try and crash their auditions," she laughs.
She was all of 5 when her older sister was auditioning for the movie "Lonelyhearts." "I was in the waiting room with mom waiting for her to get out and ride back down to Florida, and they came out and saw me and said, 'Does she act?'
"They were, like, 'I don't know.' They said, 'We have a role for that age and haven't been able to find someone right for it, would she want to try it?' They asked me and I said, 'Yeah. Let's try it!'
"So I went in there and ended up booking that film and got a self-tape randomly for a movie called 'Bridge to Terabithia.' And put myself on tape for that, was flown out to L.A. _ I was on the verge of 6 _ and then booked that movie."
It escalated from there with Bailee experiencing a relentless on-the-job childhood. Now at 19, she's is costarring on the Hallmark Channel's long popular series "Good Witch," which returns to the network on July 28. "There's never been a time when I thought I don't love this," she nods.
"I love my job and now that's a very special thing for me to have so early on in my life � basically my whole life. I think the idea that you can make someone feel something that comes with music, movies, TV, that's an escape for so many people _ someone going through a breakup, they put on their favorite show. That's such an amazing thing to be possibly a small part of the reason behind someone feeling a little bit better, getting through something," says Madison, who's wearing a bare-shouldered, brown sheath dress.
Her sister, Kaitlin, is 13 years older than she and a trusted confidante, she says.
"I think I connect easier with people that are older. Maybe that has something to do with my siblings being so old ... It's been such a blessing because my life has been so NOT normal," she says.
"It's MY normal, but not normal. So I think when normal like 19 on the verge of 20 hits, they've already been through it. So to have their opinions has been such a life saver for me."
She says she never wanted to quit. "There was one moment in my life where I was like I don't know if I can do this anymore, but it had nothing to do with acting. It was a personal thing that happened' It was a loss to someone who was close to me and I was kind of like 11, which is the crazy part because I got involved with Hallmark and Hallmark was my first audition back from that. I was crying in the parking lot. Being like, 'I can't.' 'OK, I'm just going to go do this,' crying on the way back. I thought it was the worst audition I'd ever had and ended up booking that.
That was a movie for Hallmark and Madison was 11. She ended up filming two of those before the part of Grace on "Good Witch" arrived when she was 15. She won't say what the loss was, only "it was someone close to me who exited my life."
She turns 20 in October and admits that this has been a pivotal year for her. "I think this last opening of the year was one of my hardest in the most beautiful way," she says.
"Things shifted and changed quickly and made me sit down and evaluate what brought me joy, what I want to do, what different passions I have outside of things. That's a hard thing to accept once you're in your comfort zone. It's hard to step out of that box," she says.
She confesses she has a new boyfriend. "I told myself at the beginning of the year I am done with guys for a while this is not ... then I was like, 'No, can't say no to this one!' I'm in a very happy place right now. I wish could talk about it."
Later she does talk a little about it. He's a British musician with a three-man band and Madison is making the trek across the pond as often as work permits.
"I always used to feel guilty for doing things that were just for fun," she says, "taking four days off to go fly somewhere for a personal reason. I was, 'You know what? You're young. Life is short. You deserve to go spend four days and go do something that fulfills your heart and you should because once that's fulfilled, your work will be fulfilled even more.'"
ACTOR TOUCHED BY GRANDFATHER
"Saving Private Ryan" was a pivotal movie for many people in many ways. For actor Mike Vogel it was an awakening. "I remember being with my grandfather before he passed away in a screening of 'Saving Private Ryan' and I watched him bob and weave in his seat in a visceral reaction that he had to something.
"Those feelings had been buried since 1944, 1945 and watching that happen, it did something where I said, 'I have to be part of that.' I didn't realize that really my whole life was kind of taking me in that direction," he says.
"We're born with incredible imaginations and incredible story-telling capabilities, and as we get older into adulthood, we unlearn those things. And I've often heard acting described as a lot more of unlearning _ uncovering all the stuff that was already there that you've covered up."
Vogel's uncovering some of that stuff in the Netflix thriller "Secret Obsession," with Dennis Haysbert and Brenda Song. He plays the husband of a woman who is suffering from amnesia after a brutal attack. Haysbert portrays the cop investigating the case, and Vogel may be more instrumental in the attack than people think. The film begins streaming globally Thursday.
'SUITS' PRESSES ON WITH FINAL SEASON
The law firm tries to pick up the pieces as "Suits" buttons up its ninth and last season on USA starting Wednesday. Gabriel Macht plays Harvey, who begins to realize what is important to him.
Macht's father, Stephen, is a very accomplished actor also and has appeared on "Suits" several times. Gabriel says acting was not his folks' first choice for him.
"My parents would have encouraged me more to become a doctor or a lawyer. I can safely say now I've played a doctor and a lawyer on television," he says.
"But seeing the ups and downs of a career in Hollywood helped me in many ways to see it � it's like the stock market. There are times when you're successful, and there is tons of failure. And to see that growing up was really the best sort of model to see that careers � 1% of careers knock it out of the park every single time," he says.
"And even those people have failures and misses and all that stuff. So it was good to learn that at an early age. I knew what was coming. I knew there would be times I'd work a lot and times not."
LEA THOMPSON HOSTS FILM MARATHON
Next Monday and for one week, actress Lea Thompson will be hosting the movies of the '80s on HDNET MOVIES. Films like "St. Elmo's Fire," "Stripes," "Repo Man," "Christine," "Some Kind of Wonderful" will be the subject of Thompson's memory and analysis as the marathon continues through July 27 beginning each day at 8 p.m. (E).
Thompson tells me she remembers when she first started making those movies. "When I think of my 20s, and I was a movie star doing movie after movie, and movies coming out and doing publicity, and in my 30s when I was doing 'Caroline in the City' and the pressure of all the awards shows and the dresses and the publicity and how mean everybody is.
"I was just always NERVOUS. And it's not always as pleasant as people think it is. Also it's a short ride. I had the wisdom even at that point to know it wasn't real; that it wasn't because I was so fabulously special that I was doing all this stuff. It was because I was young and pretty and talented, but I knew it was not necessarily me. I was a piece snapped into a business machine. I knew that. It's ridiculous to feel ashamed about not having a huge career because no one does."
