I Play One in Real Life
October 26, 2007
By Simi Horwitz
Stella Doyle, a 20-year veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department before retiring in 2005, says her years on the force gave her the gumption to persevere as an actor. "Cops and actors need dedication," says the former sergeant. "If you're a cop or an actor, you go in there. You don't falter. You don't take rejection as rejection. You don't carry your bad experiences around with you. You move on."
In the recently wrapped Powder Blue, starring Forest Whitaker, "I play an angry woman in a church," Doyle says. "I have four lines, but during those lines — addressed to Forest Whitaker — I move from being angry to shocked to sorrowful. This is the first time I'll receive a credit in a film." That puts Doyle in an enviable position. Actor and ex-cop Dennis Farina notwithstanding, most former police officers who've turned to acting are relegated to background work. Some may get a line or two, but mostly they're on the set to lend authenticity to the production, often functioning as consultants. The same is true for firefighters, nurses, and paramedics.
Many real-life first responders — some retired, some still working — are trying to move from the background to the spotlight as actors, writers, and standup comics. Back Stage spoke with seven of them to find out how their high-risk professions have influenced their acting careers — and, in some cases, the other way around.
A Sense of Perspective
"I was switched at birth and given to a poor family," Doyle quips. "By the time I was 8 or 9, I knew I wanted to perform. But pursuing that as a profession was not economically feasible." Says Joseph Furlong, a special investigator for the New York City Police Department, "I've wanted to act for 10 years. But I have a wife and two kids, so I can't act full time." He adds, "Everyone says I was meant to be in A Bronx Tale." Registered nurse Lisa Rosenberg has a similar story: "My goal was to sing professionally, but when I became a single mom with two kids, I went to nursing school because I had to make a living to support them. I've been a nurse since 1993, but I take acting lessons and singing lessons and perform whenever I can."
Yet none of them voice regret about their career choices, instead saying their professional identities are tied to who they are as people and artists. "Nursing has so much in common with acting," says Rosenberg, who works at Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla, N.Y., and also hosts a public-access talk show. "You need passion and compassion for both. Without those qualities, you shouldn't be in either profession. When you see someone die — when someone is coding and he can't be brought back — you question, What is life about? At the same time you appreciate life that much more. You no longer take life for granted. And you don't sweat the small stuff. If a scene isn't right, you just go in there and do it again."
Standup comic Billy Bingo, a retired Queens, N.Y., firefighter whose real name is William Denis, also sees similarities in his two vocations, suggesting you need a keen sense of comedy to survive as a firefighter. "When you run into a burning building, no one yells, 'You suck!'" he says. "But all the guys are comedians. When a new guy comes in, you hit him with a pail of water. There's lots of tomfoolery to break the monotony and blow off steam. You need that when you face what we face every day. During 9/11, I lost 17 guys who were my friends. On Christmas Eve '97, I pulled a child out of a burning building and did mouth-to-mouth resuscitation with her, and she died anyway. I still wonder if we had arrived earlier or if I had done something different, maybe she'd be alive today. That's going to be with me for the rest of my life."
For Bingo, standup comedy has become an escape from such memories — though, like Rosenberg, he appreciates the sense of perspective the job gave him: "I learned to live for today because I never knew if tomorrow would come." He hadn't thought about performing professionally until his friends took him to a comedy club on his 43rd birthday in 1999. After a post-show chat with some of the comics, he decided to take an eight-week comedy class; by the time it had ended, he was determined to give standup a shot, beginning with open-mike nights and working his way up to slots at Comic Strip Live, the Laugh Factory, and Carolines. "Some of the comics I've worked with think the door is a little more open to me because I've been a firefighter," he says. "And there may be some truth in that, especially if I'm doing charity events, though I still have to go after every opportunity. I hustle, and it's worked."
'A Juggling Act'
A performing career had never occurred to NYPD investigator James Venezia either. "I was approached by a talent manager in a club and told, 'You look like a model and actor,' " he says. "He got me to a photographer, and then he got me background work in Miami Rhapsody and Fair Game." Since then Venezia's worked background on several TV shows and films; he was also a crime-scene coordinator on The Bourne Ultimatum. "I've been taking acting classes, and I'm now thinking of applying to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts," he says. "My hours at the job could be worked around that."
Finding time to act while raising a family and holding down a full-time job is a dilemma familiar to most actors, and public servants are no exception. "It's a juggling act," says John Di Prima — director of facilities, security, and fleet services for New York City's Department of Probation — whose early acting ambitions were placed on hold by the need to make a living. "I try to do most of my acting work on weekends and hope nothing happens at my job during that time. I'm on call 24 hours a day. If, for example, there was a robbery or an explosion on the site, I'd be called." He has managed to find time for classes, small film roles, and background work, but "when I retire," he says, "I'll pursue acting full time."
Doyle has always "dabbled" in the arts, she says. Years ago she had photos taken and tried to find print work in her spare time, but the demands of raising small children made it too difficult. When her kids grew up and her work hours became more flexible, she was able to take classes, audition, and land background jobs on Seinfeld and the film As Good as It Gets, among other projects. In 1997 she got her Screen Actors Guild card. "All of this kept my fires burning," she says. The same is true for Rosenberg, whose nursing duties haven't prevented her from working in independent films and even producing an Off-Broadway show, Ophelia: The Musical!, in 2004. Since then she has remarried and now works on a per diem basis, giving her more freedom to follow her dream.
Yet retirement hasn't been the acting boon that 32-year NYPD veteran Frank Toscano thought it would be. When he was an acting novice — his first break came when he met a producer in a restaurant — he auditioned for roles in Casino, starring Robert De Niro, and City Hall, with Al Pacino, and managed to get callbacks both times. "I didn't know anything about anything," he says. "I didn't know about headshots, résumés, or sides. But since that time, when I've been doing all the things I'm supposed to — I have the headshots and résumé and have taken the acting classes — I haven't come near the opportunities I had when I knew nothing and was still working as a cop."
'On the Job' Training
Yet Toscano's experiences on the job have served him in other ways: "I had an acting teacher say to me, 'Frank, walk around the room and shake your ass.' I did it. I wasn't embarrassed. I said, 'There's nothing that embarrasses me. I don't get flummoxed.' When you've spent as many years as I have dealing with outraged cops and city officials, nothing embarrasses you." Furlong, who is writing a script about drug smuggling in which he hopes to star, concurs: "Because you have to be able to mingle with and talk to people on the job, it gives you an edge when you act. You don't have the same stage fright. You're altogether freer."
Rosenberg also finds her nursing job feeding her acting: "I'm now working on a monologue from Steel Magnolias where M'Lynn Eatenton loses her daughter. I have a daughter, so I can imagine the feelings, but I've also been able to use what I've experienced in the hospital."
Toscano has turned to playwriting as well and is completing a script based on the NYPD's confrontation with the gay community in the wake of the 1969 Stonewall riots and later the AIDS epidemic. "You couldn't have had two groups who hated each other more," he recalls. "Yet things have changed. There were the sensitivity sessions we all had to go to, and then in the '80s the talks given to us by gay men about AIDS. But the turning point was playing softball together at Leroy Street Park and afterwards eating and drinking together at a gay club on Hudson Street. Many of the cops brought their wives and girlfriends. It was a real party. It no longer mattered who was gay or who was the cop. What the play says is if we can get together, then a lot of other groups in conflict can do it too. Also, the play shows cops in a way most people are not familiar with."
Similarly hoping to redefine the image of firefighters, Bingo recently shot a pilot for a reality show called Fire in the Kitchen, a cooking program about firefighters preparing meals for themselves. "You'll see the true brotherhood and camaraderie among firefighters," he says. "You'll also see how much learning goes on at meals. When they sit down to eat, they talk about what they did right at the last fire and what should have been done differently."
Accuracy in the depiction of their professions is a common concern. Di Prima, for example, is bothered by crime dramas on which "everybody seems to be the boss. In real life only a handful of bosses run a precinct. And often the uniforms don't make sense. Each stripe on the left sleeve signifies five years of service. On some of the programs, you'll see a lieutenant or chief with one stripe." Though Venezia says police protocol is portrayed fairly accurately, he feels that TV shows and films don't capture the real danger of an officer's life. "You'll still see a cop coming to a suspect's door, standing in front of the door, and knocking," he says. "In fact, the cop's body would be pressed up against the side wall and only his arm would be extended in front of the door to knock."
Rosenberg says she's "surprised at how realistic medical scenes are on television and movies." But "there was one hospital scene in a major movie — I don't want to say which one — where a ventilator was put down the throat of a patient, and she was talking away. That was not realistic."
Sense Memory
While their job experiences serve their acting, sometimes the process also works in reverse. "My senses jump to another level," says Rosenberg of thinking like an actor while working as a nurse. "I'm able to do what I do but watch myself doing it simultaneously. Even if a patient is dying, I'm able to examine how I'm feeling, how I'm breathing, what my stomach is doing. When I talk to the patient, I'm able to listen to my voice and see what's happening vocally. This has become my craft." Rather than getting in the way of patient care, "if anything, it has helped me with patient care," she says. "Being a nurse is very hard, at times depressing. I'm at risk too. All you have to do is stick your finger with an infected needle and you can contract hepatitis or AIDS. Acting — and thinking like an actor — has helped prevent burnout. It's helped give me longevity on the job."
Di Prima also reports that his acting training has given him a sixth sense: "A lot of the probationers, who have to come in weekly, have chips on their shoulders. Often they're evasive, especially if they've violated their probation, like leaving their knives outside with the hot-dog vendor. We have to have eyes in the back of our heads and be aware of this kind of thing. But we can't treat them as criminals. Acting has helped me experience what they're experiencing and see the world from their viewpoint. I believe I approach them now with more compassion and understanding."
When Worlds Collide
Di Prima has received lots of support from his colleagues. So have Rosenberg and Bingo, though Bingo reports a smidgen of good-humored derision. But Venezia and Furlong have kept quiet about their acting ambitions, and Doyle thinks that's a good idea. "I was made fun of," she says. "My cop friends didn't take me seriously. When I had my headshots out, they said things like, 'Think you're going to get an Academy Award?' The men are especially critical. The women officers may be a little better, but they're not supportive either."
Doyle was further startled by some of the stereotyping she encountered in the industry. Like many in her situation, she frequently auditions to play police officers, only to be faced with directors who say they don't want female cops in their films or insist she's "too pretty to play a cop," Doyle says. "A policeman in a film can be as handsome as James Bond or a fat, doughnut-eating cop. But a female officer has to be plain. Even the young women playing cops, they're thin as models but they're plain."
On the flip side, Doyle has found herself embraced by her acting teachers and fellow students. They're fascinated by her background, though at first she was reluctant to reveal it: "Look, I'm a middle-aged woman, and here I was with all these young acting students, some of whom may have experimented with drugs and booze. I'm certainly not going to tell them I'm a cop. But once the instructors found out what I did, they'd announce it to the class. 'This is Stella. She used to be a cop,' and the acting students accepted it. They think it's cool. The first question they'd ask is, 'Have you ever shot anyone?' And I tell them, 'I came close once when someone was holding a gun on me. But I was able to talk him into dropping the gun.' But what they really thought was cool was my working as an undercover prostitute."
Doyle marvels at how far she's come, from playing a prostitute on the street to acting with Forest Whitaker in a film: "What was especially exciting is that we were the only two characters in that scene." She's now allowing herself to feel a bit optimistic, hoping more opportunities come her way, specifically the chance to show her comic side. "I do have one," she says. "Most police do. It's such an intense environment. The comedy is a release."