Tuesday, July 20, 1993

Today was seemingly just another day at the slicer, but ended up being somewhat of a turning point in my life. I have always listened to a lot of AM Talk radio. On this particular day the host was interviewing a state politician. Somehow they got on the subject of his son who is an actor. They were saying that he had a part in a Sissy Spacek movie, sounds good to me. For whatever reason, they mentioned who the young actor was represented by. I wrote it down and said to myself "I have to call them, TODAY!!!!!!" I looked it up in the phonebook and 20 minutes later I found the courage to cold call.

A very distinguished sounding man answered the phone. I asked how I could find out about auditions for movies or commercials. He replied "If you are not a professional you wouldn't know". Not what I wanted to hear, but it kinda made sense. We continued to make small talk and were about to end the conversation when somehow, in a very natural way, it came up that I was Black. HUH??????? When he found that out, he immediately set up an appointment for me to come in and read. He didn't think I sounded "Black", whatever that means. He said the agency needed black actors who weren't too ethnic sounding. Okay??? The appointment was set for 3 weeks later.