The UPS and USPS postman arrived almost back to back. I have a lot of packages to open tomorrow.
And today, my favorite Irish actor, Karl Harpur, got married! I needed an actor for EILEEN and by great luck I sat next to a Dubliner on my flight to record it who said "My best friend's an actor." By the time I had arrived at my hotel, Karl had emailed me and I signed him sight unseen. Turns out, he had worked on RIVERDANCE with my Irish producers, and I was lucky to get him for both EILEEN and DEAREST ENEMY. He's currently in Dublin working in pantomime for Christmas before he and his wife head to LA, where he's trying to break into TV and film. He's one of the best.
What luck finding him as you did.
It was so weird. The Irish producers claimed they didn't know any actors, and I was really worried about casting the roles from the chorus, as the Man from Philadelphia suggested. Sometime after the flight began, the young man in the window seat asked me if i lived in Dublin, and i told him it was my first trip and i was going to record a show from 1917. We were talking about the project, and i mentioned that I had no idea what to do about these two villains and that I needed to find an actor. The young man had introduced himself - David Hanlon - and he said, my best friend's an actor; he wants to get to LA and try to make it in TV and films; his cousin's doing well there. I gave David my email and told him to have Karl contact me if he were interested. I said goodbye to David at the baggage claim, tok a taxi to my hotel, unpacked, opened my laptop, and there was an email from Karl. Then, it turned out he and his brother had both been in RIVERDANCE with my producers. and Karl came in, met with me to hear what the two roles entailed and said yes.
His cousin grew up in America and has been a successful model and actor, Colin Egglesfield. He's got a semi-regular role on RIZZOLI AND ISLES. In 2012, when we were recording DEAREST ENEMY, Karl asked Judy, the record producer, and me for reference letters; he'd applied for his work visa, and it was almost a year later and it hadn't come through. He thought our references as American recording artists who had employed him as an actor might be helpful. About two weeks later his visa came through.
