“Now, I
know this is nothing like your usual role – but hey, who wants to be typecast?” My agent, Lawrence, laughed slightly hysterically and I instantly knew that he was up to
something. He was holding the script in his hand, tantalisingly in view but
still out of reach unless I made a grab for it, which, I’m not gonna lie, I
wasn’t above doing...
I looked
at him with my eyebrows raised as he looked back at me with a
look on his face that was a combination of nervous, excited, hopeful and
terrified all rolled into one. He was definitely up to something, I could tell.
I frowned.
Giving in to my less polite side, I leaned across the desk and plucked the
script from his sweaty hand. “What’s that look for?” I asked suspiciously, “You
look like you’re about to give birth to an elephant.”
He laughed
again, and it was still no less hysterical before he swallowed and then spoke,
“Jason Flaherty is reading the other part.” He said, speaking his name
reverently. Uh-oh, someone had a man-crush… “He’s really up-and-coming.”
I nodded.
I already knew who Jason Flaherty was. Anyone who had a brain in their head in
this industry kept their ear to the ground for new talent – and I knew I was a
good actor – the awards I’d accumulated over the past few years were testament
to that, but there was always someone else who would come along that was better
– and he was that guy…
My
girlfriend, Gina, hadn’t stopped going on about him since she and a few of her
girlfriends had gone to see the chick-flick ‘Sunset City’ a couple of months
back. “Yeah, I know who he is. Young kid. Dark red hair and flawless skin,
right?” Unbearably attractive with an
ingenuous appeal. He wasn’t all that young, actually – he just looked it
with his slight frame and wide-eyed innocence.
He nodded,
“I think he’s still in his early twenties, yeah.”
Great. So
now I was going to have to hit the gym like a man possessed for the next couple
of weeks before I was due to film, so I at least had a chance of looking reasonably
decent on the big screen next to him. Not that I too, wasn’t in my early
twenties – although I’d always looked older and I certainly didn’t possess any
sort of innocent air. I could play a guy in his thirties – and I could be cast
as a good or a bad guy. I had that sort of ruggedness about me. Hell, I’d been
shaving since I was thirteen…
