GREGORY SMITH:   The Seeker centers around this young boy, Will Stanton, who's a 13-year-old kid who kind of finds himself in the middle of the battle between good and evil.   And in this case, light and the dark.  I play Max, who's the oldest brother of the clan.  The family's pretty important, because Will is the youngest of a big family.  So I come back in the beginning of the movie from college under somewhat auspicious circumstances.  And you come to find out that my character has been kicked out of college, and he's feeling a little insecure about that.   And the dark senses that insecurity, and sort of tempts me and seduces me, and gets me to take a brief foray into the dark side.

 

 

GREGORY SMITH:   No, I'd never heard of the book before this.  But my little brother, who's an actor as well, found out I was going to do this, and he was like, "Oh, man!  Dude!  I loved that book!  I'll be your little brother in the movie, too!  It'll be awesome."  He went and auditioned to be the next one down the line in the family, but the director said, "He wasn't quite right.  He wasn't quite alpha male enough." 

 

But he said, "Alpha male!  I'll show them alpha male!"  So he came out to visit when I was in Romania filming, and comes to set one day.  I said, "Hey, I'll introduce you to the director.  He really likes you on Big Love."  He said, "Oh, cool!  Now he'll see who's the real alpha male."

 

We walk on set.  It's a set with two stories, and there's a big staircase.  And I say, "Hey, David, this is my brother, Doug (the director).  Doug, this is David."  Doug says, "Oh, hey, how's it going?"  Trips on his pant leg, and falls all the way down the stairs. 

 

 

GREGORY SMITH:   Oh, he's also so confident, and very comfortable.  We were just all laughing, and he said, "Shut up, it's not funny."  But it was the perfect way to tie together that experience.  Anyway, I didn't know the books, but Doug was a big fan of them, and he said this was one of his favorite books growing up.

 

 

GREGORY SMITH:   I did a movie called Closing the Ring, that was directed by Lord Richard Attenborough.  (You have to say "Lord".)  That was a pretty big movie.  Not quite as big as this.  This one's a little bigger, I think. 

 

 

GREGORY SMITH:   No, I didn't really think about it.  I did a lot of bigger movies before I did Everwood.  You know, Everwood was this four-year period of my life where more people were aware of what I was doing, but what I was doing didn't really change.  It was a little bit more out there, for everybody else, so it might seem like it.  But really, I've just been learning and doing and figuring things out, and progressing on the same slope, since I was four years old.  And that was a point of heightened scrutiny, and now I'm doing the same things. 

 

It's all so ingrained into my life, or soul, or whatever, that I don't really feel pressure.   The time I feel pressure is if I'm ever in an audition room.  Then, that's the point of proving myself.  I'm actually used to being on sets, so when I get into an audition room, I don't know what to do.  But once I'm in a set, and I don't feel like anybody's waiting for me to mess up or fail, then something clicks in, and I'm just on autopilot.

 

 

GREGORY SMITH:   Yeah.  I never even thought of that, and I don't know if it would work for me even if I did! 

 

 

GREGORY SMITH:   Ian McShane, Christopher Eccleston.  He's great.  I didn't work with them so much.  I got on really great with Chris, though.  If I would ever fly away for the weekend, a lot of times we'd see each other on the plane and talk.  I had one scene with him, but most of my stuff was really with the family.  John Benjamin Hickey played the father, who's from New York. 

 

 

GREGORY SMITH:   He's a great actor.  We went to Istanbul together.  It's just an overall -- when you're with people that you respect and challenge you, it's always good to be surrounded by that.  

 

 

GREGORY SMITH:   It's different for every role.   But I always try to find some sort of small motor skill, some physical thing that I wouldn't do in my life, but that this character would do.  It just becomes a little bit of a doorway.  In this, there were a couple of references to Max playing with a butterfly knife.  So I went and bought a fake butterfly knife – a properly-weighted one, from a stunt shop.  And then for a month or so any time I was home or doing anything on the computer, I was always spinning a butterfly knife on one hand, and I got really, really good. 

 

I did a movie called American Outlaws, a couple of years ago.  It was a western, with Colin Farrell.  For that, it was gunslinging.  So I got a properly-weighted dummy gun, and by the end, I was a very proficient gunslinger.  So I always try to find something like that.

 

If it's something period – the '40s, the '70s – I'll always get a ton of music, books, or films.  Both made not in the era but about the era, or I'll get a list of the top ten books from that month in 1979, just so I can know what people were reading around then, and surround myself with all that kind of stuff.  But again, it's different for every project.  I always try to find these little hooks or doorways that can help me latch on to something like that. 

 

And I have no training.  I never took an acting class, or anything in my life.  I don't know if this stuff is through osmosis, seeing other people do it. 

 

I did this movie called Nearing Grace, which is a great movie coming out on DVD next month.  I love it, and my character was in every scene of the movie.  I thought, "This is cool, such a good script."  But when I got there, I thought, "Oh, shit!  I'm in every scene!  And there's no car chases or things blowing up.  If this movie's not interesting, it's because I didn't give an interesting performance."

 

So I went and watched a bunch of movies that were told through one person's point of view, to see if they were interesting or not.  And if they were, why.  And if they weren't, why.  And what has to happen.  I thought, "I've got to figure this out – I start it two weeks!"  I've been thinking about a lot of things.  I'd been dressing like I thought that character would for months, and I'd been listening to books and all that for months.  But until I got there and it was real, I hadn't thought about the actual implications about having a film squarely on your shoulders.

 

 

GREGORY SMITH:   No, because that's something that I've always paid a ton of attention to.  That was something that I learned on Everwood.   There's 22 episodes in a television season.   Each script is a mini-arc, and each season is a broad arc.  And the entire series is a really broad arc.  So in a film, you have one arc that you need to think about.  And in a TV show, there's three. 

 

So you become aware of that.  And also, if you get a script for an episode and you don't like it, you may want to call the writers and say, "I don't really like this."  You created the character, and they're writing new material.  But if you say, "This doesn't really make sense for this character," the five writers on the other end of the phone call, who just spent their entire weekend working on it, will want you to back it up!

 

 

GREGORY SMITH:   Yeah.  You could make the phone call, but you had to be able to back it up.  The first time I made the phone call I was pretty young.  I said, "Something doesn't feel right.  I can tell when I read it."  "What doesn't feel right?"  "Something."  "What?"  It didn't go very well. 

 

So that's not enough.  Now, I have to understand why, and break it down, create a reason, and then call back.  "Hey, guys.  I got the new script, and there's something that doesn't quite feel right.  It's this moment here.  Because this would mean that, and that would mean that, which would subvert this," et cetera.

 

 

 

GREGORY SMITH:   Just trial by fire, on a TV show.  Every week you're getting a new thing.  If you want to have any say, you've just got to figure it out.  I'm actually really bad – I've never read a book on acting or screenwriting, or anything like that.  But I feel like I have a pretty good grasp on it. 

 

Everwood for me was four years.  It was like university.  Also, I always carry a camera with me now.  I was just working with an actor named Colm Fiore, and he taught me to do this.  I carry a camera along with me, just to look through.  I learn, "Okay, I've got my camera right now, and it's on a 50 millimeter lens, or a 100 millimeter lens.  If I look at that glass over there, and the frame's going to be like this."  Now I'm on set, and it's basically the same technology. 

 

 

GREGORY SMITH:   Yeah.  I walk on set, go to my mark.  "What are you guys on there, 100 millimeters?  Oh, okay."  I know what I need to do to express emotions, depending on the framing.  So I really learned the fundamentals on Everwood.  It's on your shoulders, you figure it out.  You can go with it and have fun and never really get much out of it, or you can really try to make it work for you.  

 

 

GREGORY SMITH:   Our household!  Yeah!  That's funny.  My Dad was gone a lot on business, and my Mom got me and my brother into it pretty early.  We both started going on auditions regularly when my brother was two and I was four.  In Toronto.  It was something fun for my Mom to do with us, that was putting a little money away for college.  Getting some cool baby photos, or some funny takes.  It established a little healthy sibling rivalry.  Many times the final callback would be between and my brother, and we'd battle it out in the parking lot.

 

But that was what it was.  All through elementary school, it was just an excuse to miss school and to have something cool for show and tell.  It was something that my Mom could do with us, and keep things entertaining while my Dad was out of town.

 

 

GREGORY SMITH:   We went to LA when I was 11 and my brother was 9.  Even then it was like, "Oh, sweet, we're going to Los Angeles for three months, and hang out at the Oakwood apartments?  Cool!"  Do you know the Oakwoods?

 

 

GREGORY SMITH:   But once school became more intense and you couldn't just leave for three months, you learn that you're either going to have to go in this direction, to school with all your friends, or you're going to have to go this direction.  Then it was kind of like, "Oh.  You can't have your cake and eat it too."

 

My brother quit for ten or 12 years, and just got back into the business in the last few years.  For me, I thought, "I just want to be with my friends and hang out."  And so I quit too, right after The Patriot.  I thought, "That was really cool, a good way to go out, but I'm done."  I went back to school.  But within a couple of months, I was jonesing.  I got back into it.  And I realized then that I was just really lucky that I found it so early.  It's the same thing that a lot of people find their whole lives.  And I've been even more lucky, that I've been able to have some success at it.

 

 

GREGORY SMITH:   I think our family-- my brother and I particularly-- got really, really lucky.  No matter what, there is an unimaginable amount of luck involved in working in the business.  The stars just have to align so many times.  The fact that my brother and I have both come out of it as reasonably well-adjusted people with jobs is kind of phenomenal.   And most of the people that we were living at the Oakwoods with-- a couple of them have become very successful.  But for a lot of people, it has not gone as well for them. 

 

So, it's not a light decision to make.  I don't know if I would necessarily recommend it to parents, or to kids.  Like I said, I think we got lucky, and we're in the minority.  I just probably wouldn't recommend it to that many people.  I wouldn't change anything for the world for me!  It's just that I realized, growing up, how lucky we got.

 

 

GREGORY SMITH:   I just went in and read.

 

 

GREGORY SMITH:   No, the first audition wasn't that good!  Mickey Liddell was the co-creator, and he had seen a movie I did when I was 13 or 14.  I think a company that he owned had bought the US distribution rights for that movie, and it was something that I really liked a lot.  He knew me from that.

 

He told me later, if he hadn't known me from that movie, he wouldn't have brought me back after my first audition.  But he said, "I remembered you from that movie, and so I knew that you could be really good."  They had me come back, and they gave me some notes and worked with me a little bit.

 

It takes a long time for something to really – I can't just look at some lines and read them well.  I have to go through several layers, to make them fit.  Each audition, I got a little bit stronger.  I had three meetings with him, and then one with his partner, Greg Berlanti.  Each time, I was getting it a little bit more, and I was a little more comfortable and embodying the character a little bit more.  Then I had to go to the studio and the network.

 

By the time I came around to the network, I was in the zone. 

 

 

GREGORY SMITH:   And that's the luck.  You know what I mean?  If Mickey hadn't seen that movie and remembered me, then we never would have gone any further. 

 

I was pretty awkward around then.  Seventeen or eighteen.  I'm still pretty awkward now, but I was even more awkward.  Face was broken out, bad haircut.  And it was the lead role on a WB show.  The WB had a certain aesthetic they liked to stick to, which I didn't fit into at all.  The WB saw my studio test, before I was going to go in to see the network.  They called my manager to say, "He's great, we love him, but he's not the kind of guy to play the lead on a WB show." 

 

That got me pissed!  Then I was the underdog.  So Greg Berlanti and Mickey Liddell, before my final big audition, had me meet them at their offices with a suitcase full of my clothes.   They picked an outfit for me.  And then Mickey did my hair!  They made me look as nice as possible.

 

I did a really good job at that audition.  I knew when I did it, it was intense.  After I left, I guess Greg Berlanti turned to the people at the network and said, "I won't make the show without Gregory Smith," and they said, "Okay."

 

Those were the stars aligning—Mickey saw me in the movie, and Greg Berlanti agreed and they helped me out.  And for him to make that kind of declaration, that's all of the things it took to get that job.  It makes me wonder if it will ever happen again!

 

 

GREGORY SMITH:   Ninety hours!  Yeah, it was a pretty good show.

 

 

GREGORY SMITH:   Yeah, but I don't think my master plan is that much different than anybody else's.  Just conquer the world.

 

 

GREGORY SMITH:   Yeah.  It's not that interesting, because it's just like everybody else's.  Just, to keep working in cool locations with great actors.   Should I ever find a story that I want to tell – that's my ultimate goal.  To be able to take a story through every step of the process, to the screen, in whatever capability I deem fit. 

 

 

GREGORY SMITH:  My Mom was always good at instilling in me and my brother, "Yeah, we're doing this, and you're going day to day on these auditions," and that's sort of the journey.  But I always kept my eyes on the prize.  I was always working towards something.  So it's kind of the opposite of, "The journey is the destination." 

 

There was always the light at the end of the tunnel that we were moving towards, and that kept me from going astray.  It kept me from getting involved in the wrong things, or getting depressed or distracted.  Whether it's drugs, or whatever.  It was like, "I'm working towards something, so that's all cool, but I'm going this way."

 

So I would just say, know what you want.  Know what you're moving towards.  And always keep one eye on it.  Have fun and do your thing, but make sure you're very clear about what you're working toward.