Bob Clendenin immigrated to Australia with his parents in the early ’70s but returned to the United States to attend Cornell University where he barely earned a BSc in Engineering in 1986. Knowing the world would be safer if he were not designing bridges, Bob went on to Penn State where he received an MFA in Acting. After several years in regional theatre, he came to LA in 1992.
The fish didn’t bite immediately and Bob survived with one job teaching an SAT-prep class and another job that involved wearing a hairnet. This went on far too long, but after a long series of demeaning auditions for horrible projects, Bob booked a demeaning role in a horrible project and his career was off and running. Since then, he has done over seventy television guest appearances and a dozen studio films. He has done numerous commercials (most memorably a Carfax ad where he was teaching a dog to drive) and has had recurring roles on The Practice; Caroline in the City; Ally McBeal; Popular; That ’70s Show; Felicity; Good Morning, Miami; Scrubs; and Rodney.
Bob is very proud to have been a co-founder of Circle X Theatre Company. He continues to serve on their board of directors. He lives in Burbank with his wife, son, and a pug named Helmut. More information and his complete television and film credits are available at https://imdb.com/name/nm0003928.
Probably not ’til college. I went to Cornell in the Engineering department because I’ve always been very analytical. That informs my acting, and sometimes not in a good way. I was loading up on math and science to become an engineer, but something wasn’t grabbing me. I fell into just auditioning for a local, almost campus version of, community theatre. But the people were so cool and I really, really enjoyed what I started to learn in the process. There was something about an artistic pursuit that was so antithetical to what I’d been doing as an engineer, that I started to really dig it. So, I auditioned for a couple of plays that were actually legitimate campus productions at the Theatre Cornell and there was a guy there named David Feldshuh who had just taken the artistic directorship of the theatre. He’s Tovah Feldshuh’s brother and he wrote Miss Evers’ Boys. He’s a phenomenal guy. He’s a trauma surgeon and a Pulitzer Prize-nominated playwright. When you’re nineteen and you see somebody like that—well, it really lit a fire under me. He directed A Midsummer Night’s Dream and cast me as one of the mechanicals and it was one of the most glorious experiences.
Plus, the actors knew how to party too. The engineers did not. I tested them both, and the engineers were losing badly. So, I stayed in the Engineering program—I graduated with a Bachelor of Science—but I was getting more and more involved in theatre and spending more and more time at the Theatre department. It was sort of out of deference to my father, who was spending a lot of money on tuition, and to have something that looked like a career when I left college that I stayed in the program. But I never ended up working as an engineer.
I went immediately into a grad program in acting at Penn State. I had no real actor training because my options were so limited in undergrad, in terms of electives, so I was pretty raw when I got there. It was a really good program for me, and it offered an assistantship, so I didn’t have to look to my parents to fund what could be a lark. It was a three-year program. I loved it. I think I learned a great deal and left it being a pretty competent stage actor. I did a little regional theatre for about two years, got my Equity card in a god-awful children’s show, and then realized that I didn’t have it in me to be a gypsy and do the regional theatre thing. As appealing as it was and as much as I liked being in a show, to be scrambling to find a show to enter after this one closes and know you’re moving from Kansas City to Milwaukee—that just wasn’t appealing to me.
What made you choose Los Angeles?
I knew I had to go to either New York or LA. I didn’t really have connections in either place, but I knew that I had no chance at musical theatre because I do no singing and my dancing’s not pretty either. I thought, given that, why not go to LA? I knew that musical theatre was a real focus of people that were going to New York. This would’ve been ’90, ’91 and there were still a lot of real heavy musicals there. I also had never felt particularly comfortable in New York. There’s something claustrophobic about it that some people really love and I don’t. I’m tense there. But you see it in LA and you see it in New York: people who are not content living where they’re living, regardless of how their careers are going. And that sort of discomfort is going to inform how you pursue your career, how you are in an audition room, how you are on a set. We’ve all met the really miserable actors who can’t understand why they’re not getting cast, but I know after talking with them for three minutes that they’re bringing an energy into the room that just sucks the life out of people. Living where you don’t want to live will contribute to that. So, I chose LA. I had one friend from undergrad that was here and had an apartment so I was able to crash with him a little bit ’til I got on my feet and found a place.
Also, I took a really hard look at what I thought my strengths were, as an actor. I don’t think I would’ve had much longevity in regional theatre. When I compared myself to other actors in my graduate program who I felt were just kick-ass actors, I didn’t think I had a shadow of what they had, in terms of approaching a stage role and crafting a character. I felt my strength lay in the fact that I’ve got a really weird look that’s very, very identifiable and I’ve got pretty good comic timing. A lot of people—in the program and outside—had encouraged me with, “Hey, y’know, you might want to consider TV or film. That might be a better medium for you.” I don’t have a particularly strong voice, from a stage actor’s perspective. I’ve got a good character voice, for TV and film, but it’s very different from what you hear when you hear somebody who’s been doing the Guthrie for twenty years, where it’s like the room vibrates. So, there was a little bit of self-searching there.
What was your first paid gig?
I think it was probably Utah Shakespearean Festival. I’d been paid for regional theatre, doing summer stock stuff while I was still in school, but this was right after I left and there was a company feeling about being at a festival like that. You’ve got thirty actors who are all right at the end of their programs or fresh out, staying in an apartment complex, rehearsing three shows during the course of the day until you get ’em all up, and there’s a feeling that: “Oh, this is a job.” You get a paycheck every two weeks. That was the first time I think it dawned on me that maybe this was a career I was starting.
Was your family supportive?
My father passed away about ten years ago and it was when I had just made the move to LA. So, he had no knowledge of what was going to happen for me, TV and film-wise. Even up until that point, my parents had been really supportive and I think really excited. They had come to school and seen some productions. When they realized that I wasn’t bad, that I was okay at it, and that other people thought I was okay at it, they couldn’t have been more proud. They were still cautious in the sense of not wanting me to be fifty years old and asking if they could front me a couple hundred for rent. But they were never heavy-handed. I just knew they were concerned—and they would’ve bailed me out if I had been in a jam and I knew that.
What do you consider your first break?
I don’t think I’ve ever had a big break because to me a big break is when you become known as: “The guy from the Budweiser ad.” Even with all the TV and film I’ve done, I don’t think that people go, “Oh, that’s the guy from…” whatever. Some people know me from That ’70s Show, some people saw me in Dude, Where’s My Car? But I don’t get, “You’re the guy from that.” I never felt, in those terms, that I’ve had a big break that launched other jobs.
That said, my first job here got me Taft-Hartleyed and ostensibly helped get a better agent. I’d done a mass agent mailing when I got here—I wasn’t in the union, I didn’t have an agent. The only one that nibbled was this agency in Oceanside, California, which is about halfway between here and San Diego. This agent’s gig was, she would represent some LA actors as local hires for the San Diego market. Back then, there were a bunch of Stu Segall things like Silk Stalkings and the show Renegade, which was just starting. She would send her actors from LA down to San Diego, pretending they were local hires, so the producers didn’t need to pay per diems or travel or lodging or whatever. She called me pretty quickly after signing me and said, “Would you drive down for this audition for the pilot for Renegade?” I did. I got in the car, drove two-and-a-half hours. I was a prison warden that said, “Inmate 456, get up.” And he said something smart and I said, “Shut up, Hog. Back in your cell.” So, two lines, right? I drove two-and-a-half hours just for the casting director and I did, “Shut up, Hog.” He said, “Ooh, that was good! Can you come back tomorrow?” So, I said, “Sure!” I was kind of excited because this was all so new to me. I don’t think I’d even auditioned before for TV. So, I drove home, drove back the next day, and this time the room had four people in it. “Shut up, Hog.” “Ah, that’s great!” I drove home, got the call: “They’d like to hire you. They’re willing to Taft-Hartley you into the union. You just need to show up in San Diego, get yourself a hotel, and stay for the one day of shooting.” And that was it. I don’t think that was a gig that would actually count as something that was going to open doors. It was a crappy show on Channel 13, but that started the ball rolling. I was now a union actor. I kind of had representation. I didn’t want to be doing the San Diego thing all the time, but beggars can’t be choosers. I stayed with that agent for another year maybe and then moved on to better representation and more jobs.
What are your thoughts about agency mailings?
I tried to be smart about my mailings. All the books I had read said, “Take a little bit of the ‘mass’ out of the ‘mass mailing’ thing. Be selective. Don’t send to everybody at once. Don’t send to William Morris, ICM, or UTA.” I got the agency book and pulled out who the more boutique-y agents were, who looked for character people who weren’t necessarily gorgeous, that kind of thing. I did a little research and narrowed it down to maybe somewhere between thirty and fifty people. Did all the things right: cover letter, picture, my resume with all the regional stuff. And I think on my first mailing, nothing bit. It’s frustrating when that happens. Making some kind of personal connection will help. If you can get somebody to see the 99-seat show you’re doing, your letter is then, “Thank you for coming to…” whatever. Anything that separates you from the pack.
Of course, now people have become so desperate to separate themselves from the pack that you’ve got people doing arts and crafts on their envelopes. They tack those mailings up on the wall so they can have a laugh in the office. Now, there is an actor I know who did have a gimmick work. He had become so disgusted with the industry that he literally had his boxes packed. He said, “I’m going to take one last shot.” He got a friend of his to do his headshot and shoot the back of his head. Blew it up. All it was was hair and ears. Sent it out and I think he got three responses: “This guy is crazy enough to do that, I’m just curious to meet him.” Whether any of those panned out into anything, I don’t know.
What do you wish someone had told you at the beginning of your career?
There’s a lot that I wish I knew before I got out here, in terms of the difference: how different this world was than what I’d been trained for, as a stage actor. We had a really crappy Acting for the Camera class. I would laugh now at some of the misinformation that was given to us. There’s nothing that I didn’t learn on my own in about two years, but it would’ve been nice to have a little bit more of a heads up about some of the differences. Everyone was just so quick to tell me how bad the statistics are. So, I knew that. I don’t know that there was much else I needed—or particularly wanted—to know.
I could’ve saved myself some heartache by knowing that you have to let things go. What we learn, as regional theatre actors, is that we’re blank slates. We take on these characters, we do this research, we start to develop these characters. Producers in LA are terrified of actors. They don’t understand the process of acting and they don’t want to be reminded that they’re looking at an actor. What they want is to see the real deal. That gives them comfort that, if they hire you, you’re not going to be a headache. If you go in there and do your, “I need to take a moment so I can do my warm-up and focus,” they’re running for the hills! They think, “What if we’re on a set and we’ve got five minutes before we go into Golden Time or a meal penalty and this guy needs to do his warm-up? I need to know that you can produce, on the spot, the same way every time, and then that’s one thing that I can check off my list of potential headaches.” They don’t want to see actors because they don’t understand actors. This is one of the things that resonates: View it from the other side. Know that the most important thing to them is that they’ve got a checklist of a hundred things that they need to accomplish. Don’t be the one that’s going to be a problem. Once you start thinking of it in those terms, it can start to inform how you enter the audition room, what you present to the people when you walk in, and how you can help them achieve that goal.
When you’re a regional theatre performer, you get the role and you work with the director for three to six weeks, making choices: Try it this way, try it that way. But on-camera is absolutely result-oriented. When you go into the audition room, what you’re showing them is what you’re going to do on set in two weeks. That’s part of the thing that leads me to say that it’s not ultimately rewarding—or can be a little less rewarding—because that process part is taken out. If you get the role, you show up and do what you did at the audition. At a guest-star level, when you’re not a name, there’s not room for you to do a whole lot of experimenting. They want to see, in the audition, what you’re going to do on the day of the shoot.
What is your favorite thing about being an actor?
Right now, my favorite thing is the lifestyle it affords. I make a lot more money than I deserve and I don’t have to work very hard to get it. I wish I could find a nicer way to say it. I spend all my time with my son and it’s great. The work itself can be rewarding. You end up learning what your bag of tricks is and what you do really well as an actor and what’s going to get you jobs. In terms of being artistically fulfilled, there’s not quite as much room for that when you’re doing what you do well and you’re turning that out consistently because that’s what they’re paying for. I never get bored, but it’s with the couple of plays that I’ve done that I get really exhilarated. That’s when you’re creating something, you’re failing, you’re getting back up, and you’re succeeding. I don’t do as much theatre as I’d like, but it’s enough to sort of keep me fresh. My favorite thing about acting overall is the lifestyle. It’s a great lifestyle.
I’ve never stopped realizing how fortunate I am to be in the position that I am and pursuing what I love. To be pursuing this business actively, we are all truly blessed. Diva behavior, I don’t grasp. Maybe that comes from those years, starting out, of getting up and working at a factory at 6am every day. No divas there and no divas now, for me.
What is your least favorite thing about being an actor?
Now that I have a family, it’s the uncertainty of it—that all of that can be pulled out tomorrow and I may not work for eight months. It’s starting to wear on me because I’m now looking at—five, ten years from now—do I really want to be the fifty-year-old guest-star who’s working a week in January and two weeks in February and got tuition coming up. Now those questions are what I’m really thinking about.
What would you do if you weren’t acting?
I would go to a college and teach kind of what you are doing in your books, Bonnie. I think what I can bring to a university is real, working experience of the film and television world. And I’d love to do it. I don’t think I would miss this particularly. We’d have summers off and I could try and shoot a film each summer. I’ve talked to actors who, if they were not allowed to act, would collapse. I’m not that. I can stop acting. I like carpentry; I love playing with my son. There are a lot of things I can do to feel rewarded. If this were taken away, I would survive just fine. Right now, it’s really hard to imagine looking a gift horse in the mouth to leave, because it’s going very well.
But, as an actor going into an audition, I can’t tell you how much the world changed when I stopped caring too much. I’d been booking enough that I knew, if I didn’t get this job, I was probably going to get another one in a couple of weeks. It’s very arrogant and it didn’t always happen that way, but I started to have a real sense of comfort that it was out of my hands. I think there’s something that happens to you as an actor—there’s a confident energy you give off—that is positive and appealing to them. If you can take it or leave it, there’s something that’s appealing and professional about that.
I think a lot of actors don’t realize what a career-killer desperation is and how easily it reads. You think, “I’ll go in and tell ’em I just want to do it and I’ll do it for free! I just want to be involved!” That will kill it. They will never, ever hire you. I can’t tell you how much things change when you make decisions about what you’ll no longer do. Five years ago, my manager and I made a decision that we weren’t going to take any more co-stars. Just won’t do it. And when you start saying no, suddenly it doesn’t shut doors. It opens them! They’re like, “Oh, he won’t do that? Nobody says no to us! Does he have something else going on instead? Let’s get him!”
If you’re not evolved as a human being—or at least getting close—it shows in your work. That’s when desperation starts to creep in, anger and resentment creeps in, cynicism creeps in. If you’ve got a good network of friends and activities are keeping you busy, you have a happy home life, and you can take or leave this job, you’ll find that your booking rate goes through the roof compared to what it was. But there is a fine line between not needing it and having contempt for it. You see a lot of bitter actors here. They’ve been at it too long or they’re angry that they’re there—at an audition at this point—in the first place. That’s very different than someone who comes in engaged, interested in the project, but projecting an energy of: “And if you don’t need me, good luck with it.” That’s what you want to bring in, if you can.
Do you ever feel like giving up?
No. I do, however, think about my timeline for LA. My wife Erin and I talk about this. What I’ve come up with is that in a few years, Willem is going to be ready for school. If I don’t have a series by that point, then we’re going to pull the plug. I think it’s pretty cut-and-dried. A series would change everything because it would start to provide at least a little stability. I think it’s attainable. I come close every year. But if it doesn’t happen, it doesn’t happen and we can call it and start figuring out where we’re moving in 2008. I’ll be in my early forties and it’ll all time out well for Willem and school and everything.
How do you choose the material you work on?
I’ll do almost anything if the money’s right. I just did a show called Rodney, a sitcom. It’s not a particularly good show. I won’t turn down something that’s going to pay me top-of-show just because it’s bad material. I don’t have that luxury yet. I will turn down some commercial stuff—the guy with diarrhea that’s making a funny face—it’s just not worth it. It’s not that I have a problem being “the guy that’s got diarrhea,” it’s just that you’ve got to have a clever hook to it. There’s got to be something that’s interesting for me as an actor—or that I think is going to be funny or moving in the final product—to make that worthwhile. If you’re going to make me do really demeaning stuff, there’s got to be a great creative payoff, even in commercials. I’ll still work for free if it’s material or a director that I really like.
How do you prepare for a role?
I think a lot of the prep work is done prior to the audition. I try not to get too strung out about anything. If I did it right the first time, I trust that it’s going to be there. I try to be as relaxed and centered and content as possible. I guess there was a role in Philly and one in Ally McBeal where I had to break down on the stand. The crying can be a little bit more anxiety-producing, the night before: “Is everything going to come together?” You have these horrible actor nightmares where they have to shut down for four hours because you can’t do what you’re supposed to do. But I’m not one of those actors that has to be in an emotional place for something to happen. And that’s good and bad. In some ways, it contributes to why I wouldn’t consider myself an incredible actor like some of the people I’ve worked with on stage. I don’t go to the place that they go to. But, that also preserves my sanity a lot more. Some actors I know are so messed up. It’s a trade-off. You can be such a basket case after a lifetime of going there, emotionally, all the time.
When I go to an audition, I really try to stay focused on why I’m there. A lot of people get carried away with chitchat or networking: “Am I going to say something clever when I go in the audition room?” and having the shtick ready. I’ve always stayed away from that. I’ve found it’s best if you’re prepared, go in, do your job, and say thanks on the way out. They’re really not looking to make new friends. People think, maybe, “Oh, if I can charm them or tell a funny story, that’ll win them over.” They have friends! They want somebody who’s going to do the job right!
What do you do when nothing is happening in your career?
I do whatever it takes to get out of my actor-head. I try not to care, which can kind of be hard if the wolf’s at the door a little bit. One of the surest things I think that really works when things are really bad is to book a trip somewhere. I’m now four out of six, where I’ve booked a trip and gotten a job that shoots while I’m supposed to be in Hawaii or something. It’s vexing. But maybe it comes down to not wanting it. You go on the audition, but you know it shoots while you’re out of town, so you don’t want it. You phone it in. And then they’re like, “Wow! He brought a really interesting new energy to it.”
Who are your favorite actors?
The first one that comes to my mind is Christopher Walken. I find he makes some of the most interesting choices. I find him absolutely compelling. For the same reason: Sean Penn. I like Kevin Spacey a lot. John Malkovich is another one, although he can get big sometimes. I did a movie with Dustin Hoffman called Moonlight Mile and I just had a couple of scenes with him, but I’ve always adored him as an actor. What impressed me the most was that he is a genuinely warm and together human being. He liked talking to people on set and finding out what they were about. It was so comfortable working with him. And when you work with somebody at that level and have a “moment” in your work, that’s pretty cool.
This interview was conducted on September 30, 2004, and it originally appeared in Acting Qs: Conversations with Working Actors by Bonnie Gillespie and Blake Robbins, available at Amazon.