Jason Beghe was 50 years old before he realized he was a professional actor. The man who plays the tough cop in charge of Chicago’s Intelligence Unit in NBC’s “Chicago P.D.,” thinks life just pushed him in that direction.
“I’d been working my whole life as an actor and I just always thought, ‘What am I going to do when I grow up?’ And then I finally realized, ‘I AM an actor’ because I never quite knew the point of it. I didn’t really have much direction or vision about it,” he says.
“It gave me something to do, and I enjoyed it. I wasn’t embarrassing myself. I liked the free time. Unlike most other actors, they kind of work and the job’s over and they fall into a tailspin because they think, ‘I’ll never work again!’ For me, I’m like, ‘Oh, I have money in the bank. I'm sure something will come along.’ And it always did.”
He says fate always navigated his life. He didn’t intend to travel to Europe in his 20s to become a model, he says. But he was bored with college and says he probably suffered from attention deficit disorder. ‘I couldn’t sit still. I needed to be moving. I was an OK student. If something was interesting, I’d dive into it, but if it wasn’t, I’d be kind of ‘ho-hum.’”
He was surprised when his modeling endeavor took flight. “The reason I was successful at modeling was not because I was cute or anything,” he says, “but I was the first guy to be a real-person model. Instead of standing there like, ‘Do I look great in a sports coat?’ I’d create a situation — like I'm waiting at the bus stop to go to the loony bin to pick up my mother — I’d create a situation. I tried to emulate photographs that were from books like ‘The Family of Man’ rather than from Vogue.”
People kept telling Beghe he should be an actor, so — ho-hum — he figured he’d try it and enrolled in drama school. “I was 23, 24 when I left Europe and did OK in the class and everybody was professional, and I asked them if I could meet their agents. And I signed with an agent and started working.
“So, I never really had the waiting-tables-thing. I took it serious. I was in New York at the time. I’d always been interested in people and — so many people in New York — I tried to duplicate them and understand them and started to be interested, which I think is a good axiom for life: try to be interested rather than interesting.”
It was turmoil in his private life that finally propelled his professional life. “I was in a lawsuit with the Church of Scientology, and they were trying to destroy me,” he says. “So, they trumped up these phony lawsuits and they knew me well enough to know I was just NOT going to capitulate. And one day my wife at the time said, ‘Hey, you know we’re almost out of money,’ which I hadn’t experienced since I was maybe 20 or something.
“So, I thought, ‘I’ve got a family now and a mortgage and blah, blah, blah.’ And I had to focus on responsibilities and money and all this kind of stuff, and what am I going to do here? That made me start working with a little more focus. And there it was.”
There it was all right. He figured a TV series might serve him well. “Even then I was thinking my ideal thing would be to be No. 8 on the call-sheet, and I’d work two days a week. If you really set your mind to something, generally you’ll get something. When I started to focus on things, I started working more consistently. I was kind of consumed with the lawsuits for a couple of years, then I was like, ‘Oh, my God, we’re out of money!’ Then I got a little movie and did ‘Californication’ for a couple of seasons. It was just focusing on the work. I always loved acting and took it seriously but hadn’t invested my personal life into it.”
That’s when producer Dick Wolf of “Law & Order” fame cast Beghe as Hank Voight in episodes of “Chicago Fire.” “Apparently the story is they had the character of Voight for ‘Chicago Fire.’ It was a brand-new show and hadn’t aired yet, and NBC apparently had wanted me to do this other show. But Dick being Dick stamped his foot. And I ended up doing ‘Chicago Fire’ and the rest is history.” Once more fate had intervened. Beghe went from “Fire” episodes to starring in “P.D.”
Divorced, he and his 14-year-old son live in Chicago now. His older son is attending college in Oregon. “My life kind of happened to me,” says the 61-year-old actor. “My favorite quote is from Picasso when he painted the painting ‘Guernica,’ somebody asked him, ‘How do you plan a painting like that?’ Apparently, Picasso answered: ‘I paint the picture to find out what it looks like.’ I think I’ve kind of led my life like that. Sometimes you toss a canvas in the trash for sure but just go with what you've got and play that hand. Sometimes you're bluffing and sometimes you've got all aces. It’s just a game to play.”
William Petersen returns to 'CSI' format
He’s ba-a-a-ack! William Petersen is back as the forensic whiz we remember from the long-running series, “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation” which began airing on CBS 20 years ago.
The new iteration, “CSI: Vegas,” premieres on the network Wednesday and not only includes Petersen from the original cast but Jorja Fox as Sara Sidle, Wallace Langham as David Hodges and Paul Guilfoyle pops in for guest appearances.
“I actually didn't watch the show that much when I was shooting the show, except at the very beginning to see what we had,” recalls Petersen.
“It was unexpected to be asked to start a new version of this. And I sort of jumped at it,” he says, “because of the idea of revisiting (my character) Grissom ... and Jorja's character, Sara, and to see who we are now. It's a different world than it was 20 years ago. The idea of being able to come back into the land of science I thought was really a great opportunity,” he says.
“It's different because it's 20 years later. And it's different because it's all new people, too. And that's all been great and exciting. And so, it's a real thrill to be able to do this with everybody again.”
When he first began playing Grissom, he sported a different mindset, says Petersen, 68. “I never liked science. I didn't like it in school. I didn't like it — I just didn't understand it. It, sort of, worked the other side of my brain, which is pretty empty. And once I started this, I became fascinated by it. And I learned so much just through the process of daily dealing with tech advisers and the real scientists that we get to interact with. And I've become more like Grissom, in that I appreciate the things that he appreciates. And I think Grissom's a little like me, in that I'd like to be off on a boat somewhere. Which is where Grissom ended up for a long time until this point.”
Comedy is another British import
It’s long been a practice of TV execs when they’re out of ideas to borrow from the Brits. Shows like “All in the Family,” “Two’s Company, “Sanford and Son,” “Veep” and, of course, “The Office,” all began with a British accent.
The latest to trek across the pond is “Ghosts,” which premieres on CBS Thursday. It’s about a couple who find themselves ensconced in a haunted mansion, populated by a gaggle of colorful ghosts.
Rose McIver plays the family member who can actually see the specters. The actress has enjoyed roles in fantasy films before like “iZombie,” “Power Rangers R.P.M.” and four “Hercules” projects.
“I grew up in New Zealand doing bit parts on all the shows that came out to New Zealand,” she says. “So, we call ourselves the ‘sword and sandals country.’ We have ‘Hercules,’ ‘Xena,’ we have ‘Lord of the Rings.’
“I think I always grew up with an appreciation that as an actor you get this chance to go into this other world, whatever that might mean.
“As much as I have been able to hopefully play some grounded versions, and some more heightened or stylized things, I kind of feel like it's the best part of the job, is being able to get in and dress up and become something that isn't just YOU every day,” she says.
“So, the escapism that comes in a show like this, and the humor particularly right now — I just feel like something that I want to put on at the end of the day is something that makes me laugh and something that kind of is a great escape from whatever the day may have been.”
Sandra Oh lands on 'The Chair'
Fans were eager to see what Sandra Oh would choose following her triumph as the plucky operative in “Killing Eve.” (There will be a Season 4). One of the series she picked is “The Chair,” streaming now on Netflix.
Oh plays the young chairwoman of the English department at an ivy-covered university who is beset with problems, not only as the mother of a willful child, but as the interlocutor to a chorus of restive professors.
With a great plot and a circle of marvelous actors like Bob Balaban, Holland Taylor and David Morse, the show fails because the filmmakers simply forgot the limitations of their technology.
They don’t realize that not everyone is viewing “The Chair” on a 60-inch TV and constantly place plot lines on the tiny face of cellphones, which prove illegible.
Oh’s father on the series speaks only Korean, yet the subtitles to their conversations whip by faster than a speed-reader can digest them.
While “The Chair” is dappled with literary references — a joy to any English major — one wonders how many viewers really care about quotes from T.S. Eliot.
Streamers like Amazon Prime, Netflix and Peacock are free of the standardized limitations of network television, but they are often still beginners when it comes to communicating clearly with an audience.
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