BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. _ Actor Aden Young always felt like an outsider. Even when he first encountered acting, he was sure he didn't belong.
Born in Canada, his family moved to Australia when he was 9. "My mother is Australian. She would tell us about Australia. She was drowning in nostalgia," he says at a small table in the middle of a meeting room here.
"My father was an American in Canada, and he didn't have any next-of-kin and we went over (to Australia) for this holiday. My father stayed in Canada to work. We had the time of our life. But he got very ill, and they decided it would be best if we all moved to Australia, and he came out to check it out � of course this was all unbeknownst to us. We were just having a holiday."
The family never went back. It was a shock to Young and his four siblings to learn they wouldn't even return for their things. "I held on to my Canadian identity out of spite," he says, sitting straight in his chair, "because if you don't let me go back I'm not going to let it go. I held on to it, it was a case of, 'You're not going to take that too.'"
Young's sense of alienation has proven perfect for his role as Daniel Holden in "Rectify," entering its fourth and last season on SundanceTV Wednesday.
He plays an ex-con who spent 19 years on Death Row, only to be found innocent and released. How this outcast confronts a world he doesn't comprehend creates the conflict of the series.
"From an early age I had an understanding of what it was to be shuffled out of a place into another place that was not of your choosing," he says. "You can't fight. My brother and I stayed with an aunt who went to work in the morning and left us to wander the streets. It was a different world back then, you could wander the streets," he says.
Young refused to forsake his Canadian heritage and insisted on playing hockey.
"So my father had to get up and drive us to an ice rink in the middle of the summer. It was only when I was about 14 when I started discovering marijuana and football and began to play a lot of sport, it made me feel I was at least part of a team."
But that didn't last, and Young, 43, found acting equally foreign. "I was chasing a girl, chased her to drama school. And it was four hours: singing, dancing, improvisation, and text ...
"I was a big rugby player and had muscles where there shouldn't be muscles yet. I embarrassed myself. I didn't have the right clothes, everyone else was dressed in the right clothes. I literally looked like I'd fallen into a cartoon, and I decided that was it, my dramatic career was at an end. That was a joy, and she wasn't even worth it because there's no way that me being there was going to impress her. So I would find maybe another way to impress her."
When he left the class, he got lost in the building. "I stumbled into the theater and it was from 'Monty Python,' it was truly illuminating. It felt like there was a fanfare. There was a man sweeping on the stage, the houselights were down, but on. All the focus was there: this old man was sweeping the stage, obviously out of place because (the set) was a sitting-room, 1880s drama," he recalls.
"It was absurd. I just saw him, and the story of him, and the absurdity of him being in that place, and I thought, 'If you stayed here you could tell people what you think about the world. Wouldn't that be interesting because you think it's pretty weird, don't you? You've never really fit in, have you? And nobody really understands you, do they? You've always been an outsider. Maybe this would be a way that they would understand what I'm talking about when I said this thing last week. I could just show them.'"
He did show them in films like "Killer Elite," "Black Rose," "I, Frankenstein." The father of two boys, Young married his longtime sweetheart, actress-singer Loene Carmen, two years ago.
The night his first son was born, he'd gone out for one last hurrah when he got the call the baby was coming. He says he tried to sober up by gulping four bananas and six cups of coffee, but in the end, his sister drove them to the hospital.
The birth of his son marked a new beginning, he says. "Everything I did up to that point was perfect, every single breath was taken at the right time, every mistake was made exactly on cue, because without that, he wouldn't have been there. And I recognized that ...
"Some things are out of our control. For a man who's not a Christian, I believe in the way of time and the way of faith and the human being _ so it actually wiped the slate clean. It said, 'No matter what you think you did ever in your life to hurt anyone, it all starts here, because that's perfection right there in front of you.'"
SPOOKY STUFF ON TAP FOR HALLOWEEN
Just in time for Halloween the complete collection of spooky "Twilight Zone" episodes are available on Blu-ray and DVD. The classic show was voted No. 3 by the Writers Guild among the "101 Best Written TV Shows." There's a new generation that hasn't seen Rod Serling's take on the world, a treat it shouldn't be denied. All 156 episodes are included with actors like Art Carney, Burt Reynolds, Robert Redford, William Shatner, and many more. The collection is priced at $80 ...
Saturday the Syfy Channel will unleash "The Night Before Halloween," starring Bailee Madison ("The Good Witch") and Anthony Lemke ("Dark Matter"). A curse is cast upon pranksters who must elude the monster by planting the curse on someone else ... Terror meister John Carpenter will host a two-hour special on the El Rey Network Sunday titled "The People's Network: Horror Edition." The show will feature 10 short horror films by up-and-coming independent filmmakers.
GENERATIONS CLASH IN NEW COMEDY
What would happen if a Gen X guy finds himself suddenly running an office staffed with millennials? That's the premise of CBS' comedy, "The Great Indoors," which stars Joel McHale ("Community") as the "old guy" and premieres Thursday.
It all sprouted from an encounter creator Mike Gibbons had with a millennial. "It really came from me being made fun of by millennials. I was head writer at 'Corden' and just one example is the writers' assistant had ordered lunch for everyone. I went up to him, like, 'Oh, man, I owe you money for lunch.' And I take out my wallet. And he's like, 'Uh.' I'm like, 'Uh? I'm not going to write you a check. I'm going to give you cash.' And he's like 'Uh.' I'm like, 'Cash is "uh?" When did that happen?' And he was just so bummed out I wasn't paying with my phone. He's like, 'Don't you have Venmo?' I'm like 'Ven what?' And it just occurred to me. It's, like, when is 40-something the new 80?"
DAVID E. KELLEY PLEAS HIS CASE
The name David E. Kelley may not be on the tip of your tongue, but if you knew that he created and executive produced such shows as "Ally McBeal," "The Practice," "Boston Legal," "Harry's Law," you'd know he's a dynamic writer, especially in the field of law. Actually he was a Boston lawyer before he became a writer. His new Amazon series, "Goliath," company-written by Jonathan Shapiro, is streaming now and is one of his best with Billy Bob Thornton as a disillusioned lawyer who takes on a monolithic law firm.
"I don't think I've ever sat down and said, 'What's the audience out there, and how do we get them?' And I think it's folly to do that," says Kelley. "The shows that try to do that kind of reveal themselves as leading with their market hats. There's a reason a series shouldn't even come to being unless the creators and the writers and the actors and the production team really have it inside them, that it's a story they want to tell. For me, every series starts with the same thing. It's a scream in your belly. You want to get that scream out. And you craft the beast, and then you cross your fingers, and you hope there's enough people out there that find it compelling. But again, I think it's true folly to sit down and say, 'What is it that people want to watch?' and craft something to feed them, because by the time you get up to speed, those tastes may have changed anyway."
