Day Five -- Monday, April 24 People say it's harder to play a one- or two-line character than it is to be a lead. This week is living proof of that. When you create a regular character on a show, you bring a little bit of your own life to the part. You make it "real." You fill it with your own emotions and history. However you want to describe it, you are actually creating something that comes from within you. That's simply not so with the, pardon the expression, bit-parts. It's about serving the scene. It's about creating just the right sound or tone or attitude so that the other people in the scene, those people making characters "from within," can make the scene work for them.

And who decides just what tone or attitude is the right one for the scene? Not me, I'm afraid. It was another day of the director trying to pound a performance out of me that represents his take on the scene. There's no collaboration, believe me. In fact, at one point today after he told me to sit back so I wouldn't block the camera two days from now, he also made me take off my baseball cap. I'm not sure what kind of power trip that was supposed to be, but I felt like a 10 year-old coming late to the dinner table. So I took my hat off and sat back and read the lines the way he wanted and I made my money and I went home.

Harder than being a lead? Yes. More fun? No.

Go on to Day 6.

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