‘I thought people who wanted to be actors were silly’

Lance Reddick talks about working his way up to White House Down. By Luaine Lee

Though he always felt something was pushing him toward acting, Lance Reddick ignored it. His dad was an attorney, and Lance was on his way to becoming a classical music composer. Then something went awry.

“I always knew I had a thing when it came to acting but never took it seriously. I just thought people who wanted to be actors were silly,” he says, in the sunny patio restaurant of a hotel here in Pasadena, California.

It may have been silly, but Reddick has managed to parlay that tom-foolery into a full blown career with memorable performances in TV shows like Oz, Fringe, Lost and The Wire and his new movie, White House Down, due June 28.

For a guy who was too shy to even consider performing, he somehow beat the odds. He studied music composition at the prestigious Eastman School of Music, the piano his instrument. “Because my parents wanted to give me what they didn’t have, I grew up around a bunch of affluent white kids,” says Reddick.

“So everybody’s parents were lawyers and doctors, bankers and architects. I didn’t really get it. Now I do.” He developed his first taste for music at an Episcopal elementary school when he started singing with the choir. “A lot of black people grow up singing gospel music. I grew up singing Gregorian chants and 16th century motets,” he grins.

Still, he left Eastman before he graduated. “I realised I was in denial and I really wanted to be a rock star,” he says.

“So I got married straight out of school, moved to Boston because my wife at the time was from there. Two years later my daughter was born. And I found myself working three jobs, seven days a week.”

He still wasn’t sure what he wanted to do. But an excruciating back injury changed all that. “I was lifting a big bundle of newspapers, but it wasn’t the lifting itself, it was the exhaustion. I’d come from a double shift of waiting tables to a double shift of delivering newspapers and I delivered the Wall Street Journal in downtown Boston ... I just cranked it up for about 24 hours, and I was just exhausted and something went,” he says.

“At the time I was used to working on adrenaline and I worked out every day — even with all I had going on. So when I was in pain or exhausted I just ignored it and kept going.”

Two weeks later he awoke unable to get out of bed. Fourteen days of bed rest forced him to re-evaluate his life.

“It sounds crazy but I thought, ‘Well, I know the recording studio I’m working with is taking me for a ride. It’s time for me to admit that to myself. So let me start from scratch. I can sing and I can act. So let me try to act ...’ I went on a couple of musical theatre auditions and realised that wasn’t me, so I started going on straight auditions and getting cast and getting cast and getting cast.”

Reddick thinks his period with est (Erhard Seminars Training) — especially a workshop on communication — lent him the ability to ace those early auditions. “I led seminars for about two years when I was in college. My participation had a profound effect on my acting later, and my ability as a seminar leader allowed me to fill in the gaps in my training that I didn’t have in auditioning,” he explains.

“Because I was used to figuring out how to read a room and being myself in front of people — even though I hadn’t really studied auditioning — I was able to audition well and that made a big difference ... When I did est and that was over — I didn’t want to think it — but I was thinking, ‘What the heck was that? I want my money back.’ All these people were, like, ‘Wow.’ I didn’t get it. But there was something there that I was curious about, so I kept participating,” he says, sipping a glass of water.

“I was different when I came out of the workshop. I’m shy, an introvert. I was so withdrawn, so self-conscious, but when I came out I was ‘Whoa!’ Suddenly all this stuff I’d been suppressing since I was 7, I let go of.”

Though at one time he was co-starring in three shows at once, it wasn’t always so easy. Married with a daughter, 24, and a son, 19, he and his first wife split in ‘97. (He has since remarried).

“She made three times the money I did,” he recalls. “God rest her soul, she passed away a couple years ago, but she was a brilliant artist, really talented. We didn’t make it, but she was a great lady,” he sighs.

“Six months after she left I got The Siege and I was ducking the landlord. And I had the kids every other week, so I was borrowing money to buy groceries. I got The Siege then I got I Dreamed of Africa then went to the Guthrie and got to play Marc Antony (in Julius Caesar.)

“I came back home to New York and didn’t work for six months. For somebody who’s always doing a side job or has a trust fund or savings, it’s one thing. But I didn’t ... The only reason I didn’t quit was I didn’t have any alternatives. What was I going to do, wait tables? The only way to get out of the situation I was in was to make it.” – MCT