Urged by his buddies to try acting, Al Thompson auditioned for and was cast in a student film for NYU. Al’s world changed when the director yelled, “Action!” and the thrill of being on a movie set took hold of his soul, changing his life’s direction. His first TV job was a guest spot on 100 Centre Street for famed director/producer Sidney Lumet.
He was cast as Danny Glover’s son in the Academy Award-nominated film The Royal Tenenbaums. He soon found himself flying from New York to North Carolina to shoot that film and A Walk to Remember simultaneously. Al followed those movies with the critically-acclaimed telepicture A Season on the Brink: The Bobby Knight Story, ESPN’s first original movie. Al recently starred opposite Nick Cannon and Steve Harvey in the film Love Don’t Cost a Thing.
Al started writing three years ago. He and his writing partner are shopping around three projects for possible development. Al starts production on his untitled documentary project — marking his directorial debut — in 2006. While in LA, Al keeps his basketball skills tuned by playing in the NBA Entertainment League — a celebrity charity league comprised of players like Justin Timberlake, Ethan Hawke, and Ice Cube. Al is addicted to video games and has lost countless hours to Playstation 2.
The members of Al’s family are his role models. He enjoys spending time with them, knowing they will tell it like it is no matter what. Al’s long-term career goal is to become the best “supporting actor” in the business. No need for superstardom, he wants people to say — when they see his face in a trailer for an upcoming film — “Oh, that guy is in that movie. I love that guy!”
Al resides in Harlem.
Actors are never going to be truly honest about how things started for them, once they hit that celebrity status. It’s always like the cutout design for what you’re supposed to say about how it happened for you. Extra work is looked down upon so much. It’s kind of sad, in a sense. I’ve been in meetings with producers for projects and I haven’t wanted to say stuff like that. You want to tell these producers you’ve got things going and not really talk about doing extra work, when you’re sitting in the room with producers with nominations for Academy Awards looking to put three TV shows on the air. You shape and mold your story to fit what you’re going in for.
When I started acting, I was in school. A couple of buddies of mine were into the theatre and said, “You should try it. It’s fun. There’s girls in the play.” I was like, “I don’t know how you memorize all that stuff. I’m okay, man.” They encouraged me to do anything with the play: “You could do the production class.” This was two credits in high school and it was a pass or fail production class. I definitely needed some credits so I went to the stage production meeting. I volunteered to do lights: “I don’t want to be seen.” They said, “Yeah! You can work the lights.” So, through that I got a chance to see how the rehearsals went down, how the director directed the actors, how wardrobe and costumes were designed. It was pretty amazing to me. I was like a fly on the wall watching this whole process go down and I was getting an automatic A for just working a spotlight, knowing when somebody was going to come out stage left.
Acting seemed to be a lot of work so I thought I’d try modeling, do some print work. When you live in New York, everything is pretty much here. I picked up Back Stage (somebody had told me about it). You know, you find somebody in there and you get ripped off for your pictures and you think these are like the hottest thing on the planet since Wonderbread. You’re like, “Yo, I got comp cards! Look!” And they’re pretty bad. But you go through the whole thing of sending them out all over the world thinking it’s the best thing. Then you get a couple of calls for music videos and you say, “It’s working!” At the time, I was still living at home, so I wasn’t spending any real money. Everybody kept telling me I was more like commercial than fashion. I tried a little commercial print. I did the Kmart where you’re holding a football: “Footballs—on sale!” All that stuff.
Then I thought maybe I would try the acting thing out. So, I got the calls for things like extra work. I never really go into this part of my life because it’s kind of looked down upon, but the first time I was called to be an extra, I was in the shower and my mom was like, “The phone is for you! It’s some casting director!” And I’m all, “Give me the phone! Give me the phone!” It was this guy, Ricardo Bertoni, who would do a lot of extras casting. He said, “We want you to come and be an extra in this movie with spaceships and aliens. You’re going to be running down the street!” He’s giving me this whole animated speech and I’m all excited. He says, “It’s a hundred dollars.” And I said, “A hundred dollars! All right!” Then he asked if I had a car and I said, “My dad has a car.” “Well, you get an extra fifty dollars for the car.” I’m like, “I’m there! This is great!”
So, this was my first time doing extra work and this was Independence Day. So, I go down there and there’s thousands of people there on this Sunday. They said, “Are you SAG or non-SAG?” And I’m like, “I don’t even know what SAG is!” And they said, “Okay, you’re not SAG then.” I said, “Fine.” I checked in and they put me in this room with all these people and I was just chilling. Then they came to get us to the set and I couldn’t even tell where the cameras were. Then they said, “That’s lunch. Go over there and eat.” And I saw this table of food. I said, “Oh my God!” They had such great food and it seemed like they never ran out. I couldn’t believe it! I said, “If this is what acting is about, I’m in! I didn’t even do anything. It’s Sunday. I’m getting a hundred and fifty dollars. I can’t believe this! It’s beautiful here!”
Later on in life I learned that that was an eighty million dollar budget movie and all that stuff. But I was so overwhelmed I was like, “I could do this every day!” Later, once I did it a couple of other times, I met a lot of people. Everybody’s trying to do the same thing and as time goes on people are going to be weeded out that really want to be actors and the quote-unquote career extras. It was such a cool New York type of family where everybody was willing to help other people. “Law & Order is looking for people for Tuesday. You should call right now. Do you have a police uniform? You can get more money.” Everybody was like a real community of extras helping people.
Eventually everybody ends up getting into the union. Then you learn so much more about SAG. SAG isn’t just about eating first. People think that! People think, “They eat first. They get more money.” Once you read the handbooks that your union gives you, you understand being eligible to get pension and health benefits and dental and eye care. You learn your rights so that producers can’t take advantage of you on set. It’s pretty amazing. You’re in a real union. But a lot of actors coming up don’t know that.
Why did you choose to focus on learning the SAG rules?
The number one thing was just the respect of my peers. Other people I met that I respected were in the union, I wanted them to look at me as a guy who is really serious about being in this union, not just eating first and getting paid more. The biggest thing in this business overall is educating yourself, reading as many books as you can. The unfortunate thing in this business is that there are so many rumors and so much hearsay. Especially in the stupid magazines, you see, “This person was working at Pink’s Hot Dogs on La Brea and he got discovered and he’s in the new Denzel movie.” But people who really know this dude know that he had a couple of lines on Moesha in ’94 and that he did not just get picked up by doing this. This is something that the publicity department at Warner Bros. creates to put press behind this kid in his first movie, being in this project that they create. But people don’t know to look into that. They read that and think it’s that easy and they could do the same thing.
Dave Chappelle is an “up-and-coming actor” and he says, “Yeah, I’ve been ‘up-and-coming’ for fifteen years.” People don’t really understand that. So, there are so many false things people hear about, “All I got to do is this or that and I can be union.” They don’t know what a waiver is or what a must-join is. So many rumors float around about how to get into the union that are incorrect. One of the major things for me was educating myself overall, knowing what I’m talking about, and not looking like a fool talking about something that’s not true.
What was your first paid gig?
One of the first things I did as far as acting on camera was a film at the New York Film Academy. Somebody called me and said, “They’re filming some stuff downstairs. You should come down.” So, I came downstairs and brought my comp card that I thought was hot like Wonderbread. That was one of my first experiences actually being on camera and acting. But the filmmaker never really finished the project. Then there was a film at NYU called In Transit that an undergrad student was doing. That was the first thing I ever did acting wise that got finished and I actually got the tape of it. It took them like two years to finish it but it was a great experience to finally be able to act and have a role.
Since I was in the position of still living at home and not really having bills and stuff like that, I was able to look at NYU and the films they do there. I looked at the fact that Spike Lee graduated from NYU, Scorsese, Oliver Stone, all of these great directors went there and I started to think that maybe the people who are at NYU right now are the future of directing, writing, and producing, just like I’m the future of acting. NYU is the top program here in New York and of course Columbia only has the grad program. Then there’s USC and UCLA. But I was in New York.
What ended up happening was I did a film at Columbia which was a graduate film called Muse 6. This girl named Sarah Rogacki directed it. And I did another film at NYU, an undergrad film directed by Pete Chatmon called 3D. We shot both these things. In 3D I played this character whose girlfriend in the movie was Kerry Washington. She’s a really good up-and-coming actress. Come December, the girl who directed the Columbia film called me. She’s like, “Are you ready to go to Utah?” I’m like, “What the hell is in Utah?” Our film got into Sundance 2001. This is pretty cool. Then the NYU director calls me up and goes, “Al, you ready to go to Utah?” All of a sudden, out of nowhere, I have two short films that I’m the lead in at the Sundance Film Festival.
A buddy of mine had just moved out to LA and he said, “Come out to LA, we’ll drive to Utah!” We don’t even know where we’re staying. “We can sleep in the car if it gets that bad,” we’re saying. I had been to film festivals that lasted four or five days before but Sundance is like a two-week film festival. Since I was there for two weeks, these student filmmakers had to go back to New York and they started asking me to get up and introduce their films before their screenings in that second week when they were back at school. Everybody wants to know why you’re there when you’re at Sundance. I can’t imagine going when you don’t have anything going on because it would get so annoying with everybody asking what you’re there for. It was really cool. The film screens and I go up to the front there at the Egyptian and I’m talking about Muse 6 being a period piece and then the film starts. Well, after that, people knew who I was so they were coming up to me and I was getting bombarded. It was so crazy! With 3D, Kerry Washington also had two films in Sundance. So we were both in the thick of the craziness from all the buzz.
How did you get your first manager?
I had an agent before Sundance, but no manager or anything. But after that, managers were calling like crazy. I went back to LA and had all these meetings with managers. I liked this one company and a week after signing with them they got me a meeting with Adam Shankman, who was casting his film with Mandy Moore, A Walk to Remember. They flew me out to North Carolina to meet with him. I met with him and they offered me the role. I went from Sundance to co-starring in this film with Shane West and Mandy Moore. Literally a week later, I went in and met with Wes Anderson for The Royal Tenenbaums. They said, “We’d love for you to be a part of the film.” This was all like in two weeks after Sundance. Everything just kind of started happening so fast. I was still on point and on the right page to understand what was going on. It wasn’t like I was so overwhelmed that I couldn’t control anything. Everything happened at the right time—and it wasn’t the first year I was working—so that was good.
What do you consider your first break?
Even before all of the studio films started happening, I was really involved at NYU. I got cool with a lot of the students at NYU and I sat in on classes. People started to think I went to NYU. It was hilarious. People would call me the “Mayor of NYU,” “Governor of NYU,” “Denzel of NYU.” These were my nicknames. It was really cool. Everybody there has to finish a film to graduate so all these people would start asking me to be in their films. I would try to do something different in each of these films. I would do something different than what I might normally be cast as. That helped me a lot. There are times, when you’re a black actor, that you play the stereotypes of playing this role, that role, sticking this store up or whatever. Just because I grew up around that and I know what that is to play a role like that, it doesn’t mean that I have to perceive myself that way or go on an audition grabbing my crotch. There will be casting directors who will say, “Well, we don’t know if Al can play this role. He’s such a nice guy and he speaks English so well. We don’t know if this will work.” I know these characters. I’ve seen these characters. I can do this, but I might have a hard time.
Sidney Lumet did so many great movies. He gave me an opportunity when he did 100 Centre Street. I got to play this crazy character robbing a store. It was a great opportunity for me to play extreme. Usually, black guys don’t want to do that. They don’t want to play basketball in a movie or stick a store up. I needed to do that once or twice because I wasn’t getting cast like that. In ninety percent of the work I was doing, I was the only black guy. It’s fine, but you like to do different things. I didn’t want to get stereotyped as the token black guy in the teen movies. The tape from 100 Centre Street opened up a lot of doors for me because they wouldn’t see me for Oz before that or a lot of things where there were extreme characters like that.
When you start to do things and you’re really in the public eye for having work all over the place, you never really know who is going to see your work or who is going to be interested in you. That’s what happened with Grand Theft Auto: They sought me out a little bit. They knew I had worked on a video game prior to that—a football game for Acclaim. So they wanted to bring me in for this cop character. I played this motorcycle cop that was on steroids, real crazy. It was wild. I was excited about that. Everything evolves into something else. The video games are becoming big with the voiceovers now and they’re making so much more money off of it now. It’s another outlet. I remember when nobody was doing animation. Back in the day, there were no celebrities in music videos. Now they’re doing them like they’re movies and they have actual scenes in them.
So you never know where it’s going to go. You create those relationships and people want to work with you. Whether you’re a student filmmaker or a professional in the industry, people always want to work with people that, number one, they’re going to be comfortable with; number two, that are going to show up on time; and number three, that aren’t going to complain or get on their nerves. Just being prepared, knowing your lines, knowing what’s going on—whether it’s a student film that you’re doing for free or the project is something you’re getting paid for or it’s a commercial for McDonald’s—those are the three things that you have to do. And the biggest thing is to just be a cool person and not get on the director’s nerves. Knowing the chain of command on the set is important. If you have a problem or something, you go to the producer. The director doesn’t have time for that. The producer can help you if you didn’t get your per diem, whatever. A lot of that I learned on the job during the NYU films. NYU was my training ground and my base for many things, just being on the set. I learned a lot actually doing stuff, especially the terminology. From “checking the gate” to “turning around” to “last looks,” all the terminology you will probably not learn in an acting class, you know, when they’re screaming this out, what it means.
What made you choose New York?
What I love about New York is that it’s such a small community. You think it’s big, but really it’s not. Everybody knows each other through someone here. I’m an independent actor. I respect the independent film filmmaker and I respect independent film. I was pretty much raised where there is no trailer and there is no holding area. I think those things totally prepare you for the bigger things. When you and the other star actor are in a situation where it’s cold and you’ve just got to wait because there’s a hair in the gate and that person’s complaining, you’re just chilling. When I began to work with other actors who did TV shows, I would see the difference. These younger actors—thirty and younger—would complain, complain, complain. That stuff will catch up with them later. There are actors people won’t work with again because the producer knows, “Hey, that kid was a pain in the ass. He will have nothing to do with the sequel.”
Anyway, I’m such a New Yorker at heart. I’ve done movies in LA and been there for three months to do stuff, but it’s such a major difference. Everybody always complains all day about LA. You can talk about LA for hours, whether it’s the driving and the traffic or whatever. LA is the type of place where it’s hard to establish a network of supportive friends. People are really out for self. It’s hard to establish a network of friends who aren’t in the business because you’re surrounded by the business in LA. I can’t deal with it twenty-four hours a day. It gets really ridiculous out there. But, people go to weather and they think they can make it. If you go out to LA with credits and a reel and an agent and a manager, you can make it. If you have all that, by all means, go out there. But bottom line, you have to work twice as hard when you’re in LA. You can’t just do a couple of rounds and drop headshots off and all the little things that we can do in New York. You can’t get on the studio lots in LA like you can get into casting offices here in New York. You really have to prove yourself a lot more in LA and separate yourself out a bit more.
Who are your favorite actors?
I don’t really have any particular favorite actors. All the black guys go, “Denzel! Denzel!” I like to kind of be different. For me, overall, I don’t want to be a movie star or a mega-star. I just want to work on quality projects and have some consistency with that. If Tom Cruise is doing a movie, if he’s wondering, “Who’s going to make me look good in this movie—not outshine me but do good work—so maybe we can get nominated for an award? Al Thompson!” I want to be that top co-star guy where people in the street might not know my name. They can’t figure out where they know me from and then two blocks later it hits them, “That’s that guy from such-and-such.” People like John C. Reilly or Philip Seymour Hoffman, those guys are top actors that top directors want to have in their movies. They know they’re going to ace the role and be a great contribution to the film. That’s where I want to roll. Once you’re a lead in movies, it becomes a whole other ballgame. Fun is usually not included in that. It’s more of a numbers game about what the movie did at the box office. It can break you as an actor. A lot of people are in this business for the wrong reason. If you want to be a movie star, that’s a tough one. You say it, but when it happens, is it what you wanted? I would rather just have my sanity and have my privacy, be able to eat chicken and waffles with nobody bothering me. I think that is more sacred to me than anything.
This interview was conducted on December 20, 2004, and it originally appeared in Acting Qs: Conversations with Working Actors by Bonnie Gillespie and Blake Robbins, available at Amazon.