Just The Facts
Born On: January 29
Hails From: Orland Park, IL
Best Qualities: Humor and honesty ("If you only need
one. I'm humorous about my honesty.")
Worest Quality: Impatient
Cooking Speciality: Grillables
Must-See TV: PASSIONS, FRIENDS, and THE WEST WING ("I'm
and NBC boy.")
Roots For: The Bulls, the BEars and the Dodgers
Last Book Read: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
by Dave Edders
Alma Mater: University of Illnois
"I've never
been really practical. I mean, back when I played baseball in high school,
I just assumed I would play professionally," Justin Hartley (Fox, PASSIONS)
recalls, chuckling softly. "And it didn't happen, obviously. Not by a
long shot." That same approach to life - equal parts confidence, optimism
and naiveté - came into play in college, when the Illinois native decided
to parlay his love of student heater into an acting career in Hollywood. "I
had heard about [the huge unemployment rate for actors], sure. And I didn't
know a soul out there. But I just thought, 'I'm gonna go out there and work
really hard. Surely somebody will see me.'"
And so it was
that Hartley and his college sweetheart, Jill, set off on December 26, 2000
in a big Budget rental truck ("Diesel, no less."), towing behind
them Hartley's battered, bald-tired 1994 Chevy S-10 pickup. Along for the
ride were their cat, Gracie (named for her gracelessness) and their half-beagle,
half-terrier pup, The Gooch (an homage to Arnold's nemesis on DIFF' RENT STROKES).
"It was a sheet of ice all the way out," he recalls. "The truck
broke down twice, and the second time it couldn't be fixed, so we had to drive
the rest of the way in the pick-up and have the truck towed to L. A."
He arrived in the City of Angels with $324 in his pocket, feeling like a
Beverly Hillbilly. "I so wanted to get there at midnight so nobody would
see us. We - me, Jill, the cat, the dog and the litterbox - pulled up in front
of our apartment building in this filthy, dented pickup after it had been
towed for, like, 3,000 miles in diesel fumes. Can you imagine what we must
have looked like? Then the tow truck with that exploded diesel thing pulls
up behind us and parks in the middle of the road, and everyone's looking at
us like, 'Great, here comes the new neighbors.'"
"I basically had no money," he continues, "so I had to find
a job right away to pay the rent. I ended up getting this job and I knew immediately
that it wasn't for me. I was sitting in this windowless cubicle the size of
a kitchen table and it was one of the worst experiences of my life. I became
a defeated person. I had been told I would be closing all these multimillion-dollar
deals and making people happy, but you know what it really was? Telemarketing.
It wasn't just any telemarketing, it was telemarketing for phone service.
I mean, could it be any harder? The people I called would be like, 'I already
have you phone service, you dummy, you called me on it.' And I would think,
'That's true. What am I doing?" Every single day I would wake up and
think, '[Coming to L.A.] was a horrible mistake. This is a living nightmare.'
Every day, I had to talk myself into staying."
Hartley is glad he did. The heinous job and disaster-riddled cross-country
trip (though he used Budget again and reports, "They were really good!")
are now distant memories, as are the growing pains most young performers experience
in Hollywood. "I knew I wanted to act, but I had no idea how to gain
access to that world," he sighs. "I didn't know to read the trade
papers. I didn't know how to find an agent. I had no idea how to get auditions.
I mean, I would have given monologue on street corners if I thought anyone
would listen to them."
Luckily, he soon made friends, through whom he got a manager, an agent and
a test for PASSIONS, though he lost the part. "It was for John,"
Hartley reveals. "They gave it to Jack Krizmanich. But by that time,
I had tuned in to PASSIONS a few times, and I was already hooked, so I kept
watching." He swears that seeing Krizmanich on-screen instead of himself
wasn't painful. "First of all, I met him at the test and he was really
nice. And second, you know, at that time I was not a working actor at all.
I thought 'Obviously, he did stuff in his test that I didn't do,' so I just
watched him and tried to see what he was doing that I wasn't."
The second time around, Hartley was just what PASSIONS wanted. "I was
so excited," he recalls. "I hadn't had that many [acting] jobs in
this town, to tell you the truth. A couple of short films, commercials for
Macy's and Miller Genuine Draft. So this was the first time I've really been
on TV."
He's been recognized
on the street a few times since his December debut, but not enough to be disturbed
by it. "I don't care about being watched by people. I don't really do
anything illegal so let 'em watch. I'll tell you what freaks me out, though,"
Hartley confides. "I wasn't ready for… well, I guess this was kind
of naive, but it just never occurred to me that anybody would say anything
negative about me, you know, about the way I act or look." Long story
short, an Internet posting described him as "Not hot at all." "I'm
the kind of person who can hear 1,000 good things about myself and one bad
thing, and I'll focus on the bad thing. I start getting all sensitive, like,
"These people don't know me, maybe they saw me on a bad day.' But what
it all boils down to," he concludes, "is that it's no big deal.
It's someone's opinion and they're entitled to write it 100 times if they
want. I still feel like this whole entire experience with PASSIONS has been
perfect so far."
And Hartley feels equally
high at home with Gracie, The Gooch and Jill, who is now a nursing student
and gave him an acoustic guitar for his birthday. "I have no idea how
to play it," he says. Then, alluding to his somewhat impractical nature,
he laughs, "I should be a rock star by the end of the week. Or at least
in a couple of months."
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Mercy Reef (2006)
