BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. _ Irish actor Brendan Gleeson spent nearly 14 years deciding to be an actor. He was never sure he could cut it and didn't begin until he was 34.
"I was sure I wouldn't have been that sort of person," he says in a meeting room here. "I wasn't aggressive and proactive, except when I was teaching school, for example. I'd put on plays, and I'd bring them off because I found, well that's what I SHOULD be doing. But with regard to my own stuff, I didn't believe I'd have that self-motivation."
Gleeson, best known for "In Bruges," "Troy," "Cold Mountain," and as Mad-Eye Moody in the "Harry Potter" films, is testing his mettle again in AT&T's original series, "Mr. Mercedes" airing on the Audience Network.
Gleeson plays a retired police detective who is tormented by an anonymous serial killer in the spooky series based on Stephen King's trilogy. Gleeson says he was seduced by "Mr. Mercedes."
"It was really about the writing, the casting, and about how vital it was going to be," says Gleeson, stroking his gold-and-white beard. "The integrity it had for a start, but also how much vitality and vigor it had and how much attention to detail. I was really surprised by it. Once it took off, I knew I was in good hands."
Not finding "good hands" was an abiding fear for Gleeson, who spent 10 years teaching English and Gaelic. "I did a lot of little bits and bobs trying to find a place in the world, I suppose. I hated working in offices, the confinement of it. I was working at the airport in a cargo transfer customs thing. And I found it very exciting and new and bright for about three months.
"And then I got double the wages to go into this health board, and I was thinking, 'This is great. I'll work here for a couple of months and then I'll go back to college.' I ended up staying two and a half years. And I remember feeling I was dying slowly. I just couldn't live with it. It was so soul destroying. So I went back to college."
He was older than the other students and had to readjust to poverty again. That didn't sit well. "Then I began acting and saying, 'Oh, this is something I can do.' But there was a time there I didn't know what the hell I was going to do. That was about a good 10 years I didn't know what the hell I was going to do."
His wife encouraged him to try performing full time. But even then, he started slowly. "I'd met these guys in college and they started a theater company that began to address theater in the suburbs and write about subjects in the suburbs, the people at home. There was a lot written about the city center, a lot written about the country, but actually most people live in the suburbs ...
"So we put on a lot of shows and got a bigger and bigger audience all through the '80s. And we started going into the mainstream theaters, went into the Olympia and filled it for 10 weeks. So it became obvious that something was going right. I got nominated then for a theater award even though I wasn't full time. And I began to think, 'What do you need to know? At what point are you going to take it on?'"
But Gleeson was still apprehensive. "I had a very odd notion of what the world (of acting) was about, really. There's a lot more idealism and a lot more positivity in it than I gave it credit for, I think. I kinda felt I was suspicious of it; that I would have to do things I didn't want to do in order to make a living," he says in his Irish brogue.
"And I never wanted to do that. It was kind of too precious. I liked to be able to keep it at arm's length where I could do whatever I wanted on my own time. But it became obvious to give it a proper shot, I needed to commit to it."
Finally he did commit and has been working steadily ever since. He and his wife of 35 years reared four sons, two of whom are actors.
Gleeson thinks he hasn't changed since he fabricated trendy leather goods for hippies and languished away in business offices. "I'm essentially the same person if I'm honest," he says.
"I've tried to keep the child alive, really. And this is a good business to be able to keep the child alive in. And that has to do with curiosity, maintaining curiosity throughout the world. But also it's a disappointment. There are times when you don't see the world as a particularly attractive place. But for the most part, I think I've been lucky enough to keep curiosity in place and to keep a sense of joy there."
'HAWAII FIVE-O' ALUMNI MOVE ON
Fans are disappointed that Daniel Dae Kim and Grace Park won't be back on the sandy shores of "Hawaii Five-0" this fall. But Kelly Kahl, president of CBS Entertainment, says that the network did its best to meet their salary demands.
"We love both those actors and did not want to lose them. We made very, very strong attempts to keep them and offered them a lot of money to stick around," she says.
"We wanted them to stick around. It's kind of an unfortunate by-product of having a successful, long running show, that sometimes you lose cast members. We didn't want it to happen, but it's happened on 'CSI.' It's happened on 'Grey's Anatomy,' 'Law & Order: SVU.' Pretty much any network who's had a successful, long running show, at some point there's some cast turnover. We didn't want it to happen. We tried our darnedest to keep them."
While Park's comedy, "Public Schooled" is in post-production, Kim has moved up to producer status on ABC's new series "The Good Doctor," premiering Sept. 25.
"It started as a Korean series, and I loved the message of it, and it was a very familiar genre to American audiences in that it's a medical show," says Kim.
"And I thought it would be really a good opportunity to make it in America. And so that was the impetus for me to try and bring it over." The story is about a young, autistic physician and the scripts are in the capable hands of David Shore, most famous for creating another unusual doctor in "House."
ABC'S NEW SPIN ON 'AMERICAN IDOL'
On Thursday the "American Idol" audition buses will launch from Walt Disney World, Disney Springs, and from Portland in search of new talent. The show will be returning in the fall, this time landing on ABC.
Channing Dungey, president of ABC Entertainment, says, "If you look at the social media on 'American Idol,' the fans have been clamoring for it to come back since the day that it went away. So we feel like they are very much excited and ready for the new iteration of this. That said, this is going to be ABC's version of 'American Idol,' and we are really looking forward to being able to put, sort of, our special stamp and imprimatur on that."
The network has hired Katy Perry as one of the new judges. And while Dungey won't talk salary, she says, "We do feel like we hit the jackpot with Katy. She is an enormous star. She has great presence. She is a songwriter. She understands talent, and to have somebody like her on our panel as one of our judges is fantastic ... This is a business. So we need to make sure that we make the right decision so that the show can actually be financially valuable because my hope is that 'American Idol' is going to have a home on our schedule for quite some time to come."
WAYANS' COMEDY PARALLELS LIFE
Marlon Wayans, one of the hilarious Wayans brothers, arrives on NBC Wednesday with his new family sitcom, "Marlon." Most worthy comedy is based on real life and "Marlon" is no different. "Yeah, this is me," he says. "It's like someone put an IV into my vein and took everything and put it on the screen. It's literally based on my life, my relationship with my kids, my relationship with their mom. I am over the top. Here's how over the top I am as a parent. I'm loving, right? But sometimes inappropriate. My kids were asked in an interview they said, 'Hey, one word to describe your father.' And my kids looked at each other, and they said, 'Inappropriate.'"
