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| Neal McDonough is enjoying more acting, family
life Neal McDonough had his druthers: he could be a winning baseball player or a starving actor. Like any person NOT in his right mind, McDonough picked acting. "I had a choice of going to college for scholarships for baseball or pay my own way through college and be an actor. And I chose the harder one. I could've easily played baseball all my life, but instead I chose the acting thing. My parents were 100 percent behind my decision. I was working my ... off in the summertime to pay for college at Syracuse. Because if I was going to go to college for acting, I wanted to go to the best one. And Syracuse was the best," he says. The youngest of six, McDonough then wangled a position at the august London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts, where they admitted few Americans. But he lasted only six months. He quit, he says, because he didn't like it and because he was confused by the big city life in London. Since his freshman year in high school, when he earned the singular opportunity of playing Snoopy in "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown," McDonough has done what was least expected. "As soon as I started in theater I became a much better athlete, and I was the captain of teams, president of my class and the class clown. I was the most popular guy - and all these things because I finally found something that allowed me to say something and do something and be myself - instead of trying to imitate how my brother, John, would say things. I enjoyed my childhood, but I was just never really dynamite at anything. This allowed me to be really good at something that gave me confidence." He calls on that confidence in his latest role as the leader of a team of medical detectives who pursue devastating mystery microbes on NBC's "Medical Investigation," premiering Sept. 9. Unearthing the cause of unknown afflictions such as Legionnaire's Disease is not only a matter of technology but a race against time - the stuff of surefire drama. "Medical Investigation" settles into its regular office hours on Sept. 10 at 10 p.m. McDonough, 38, who grew up helping with the two motels the family owned in Cape Cod, decided to try his acting chops in L.A. While he was stampeding to every cattle call, he held down a score of odd jobs: selling pens over the phone, working for UPS, plumbing, carpentry, waiting and bartending. "I'd bartend till 3 o'clock in the morning and me and my best friend, Steve, would go and climb the Hollywood sign or we'd do whatever - in the dream that one day we'd make it," he says He spent 10 years trying to get noticed in Los Angeles. Parts in films such as "Star Trek: First Contact" and "Ravenous" didn't do the trick. "They knew I was a talented actor and they'd call me in to do table readings for 'X-Men' when Hugh Jackman couldn't be there to read Wolverine," he recalls. "The same thing happened for four or five different films. If they needed a really good actor they'd call me because I was free and I was good at what I did, and I would say 'yes.' And I loved doing it. I enjoyed myself." Longing for a more stable kind of life, he decided to quit and had returned home to Cape Cod when he got the call to audition for "Band of Brothers." Even though one of the show's producers, Tom Hanks, was there, McDonough determined to conduct the audition his way. "I always think when I audition if I get the part, that's great. 'But today I'm going to be this character.' I work really hard at being that character that day. And today I was going to be that character. I guess I gave my best that day. I got a call the next day saying, 'OK, get ready to go to work.'" It was while they were filming the miniseries in England that he met his wife, Ruve Robertson, a South African working in public relations. He played the memorable first lieutenant Buck Compton in "Band of Brothers" and followed that with a tour-de-force performance as the alcoholic D.A. on NBC's "Boomtown," and a juicy role in "Minority Report." "I had plenty of years of not doing anything and I was still pretty positive and had a great time in my life and enjoyed stuff. Now that I'm working a lot, I'm the same kind of guy and the most important thing in my life isn't my acting," he says, "it's my wife, Ruve, and my life that I have, what God's given to me." August 31, 2004 By LUAINE LEE, Scripps Howard News Service |