Daniel Bess was born and raised in Honolulu. In high school, he worked with Mark Medoff in his production of Stephanie Hero as well as working with HTY. At seventeen, he moved to New York and trained in the Conservatory at Purchase College. Upon finishing his training, he began working on the New York stage. His debut was in a production directed by Michael Mayer at The Vineyard Theatre. He also worked with Michael Grief at New York Stage & Film and other productions before moving to LA to pursue a film career.
Daniel’s television premiere was on Fox’s 24 as the character of Rick in the first season. He has also guest starred in other television shows such as Firefly, JAG, Grey’s Anatomy, and ER. He is now playing a recurring role on Veronica Mars and just shot the pilot episode of What About Brian? for ABC. Daniel has produced and starred in a film called Waterfall that was shot in the mountains and beaches of Oahu and is currently in post-production. His official film debut is in the film Constellation and he is now working on producing his yet-to-be-titled road film with his partners at WcJeWop Productions. He is also a Country-Blues-Hawaiian-Rock singer/songwriter. More information is available at https://imdb.com/name/nm1101442.
Honestly, it was a pretty simple thing. I did my first play in like seventh grade at junior high. I had always played music as a kid. So, I did a play—and it was the funnest thing I’d ever done—and then I did another play. I basically started realizing that this is what I was best at and what I enjoyed more than anything. I’d seen that there were people on TV so I knew that you could make a living at this. It was very simple.
I did plays and played music all through high school—I had my own rock band—and there was a really good performing arts program. One year, I went away to Italy—which was the best year of my life, socially—because living in Hawaii as a White boy is a little tough every now and then. Well, when I got back, they had turned the performing arts program into a performing arts high school—the first ever in Hawaii, Mid-Pacific School of the Arts—and the director of it got his Masters in Directing at California Institute of the Arts. This was Andy Mennick; such a pure artist. He was a real Zapatista-type teacher. He became my mentor. If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t have known about SUNY Purchase, where I ended up. Purchase was kind of a mystery to me, but I came to LA and had auditions for Purchase, Boston, DePaul, and Cal Arts and got into all of them. When I visited Purchase, it was kind of the most “no-bullshit actor guy” kind of program I’d seen. They took it all very seriously. It’s not a very pretty campus, but in New York, theatre is the biggest draw.
Of course, you can’t make a living as a theatre actor. You can’t have a career. There’s maybe twenty musical theatre stars that make a living doing it, but that’s it. Basically, I love film. And even the best of TV, in its nature, is kept so heightened, hour by hour. It has to go a little away from reality for that. So, for me, it’s film and theatre. But until you get a name, you can’t just take the summer off and go do Hamlet in New York. Once I realized that, I moved straight out to LA. I did about two-and-a-half years of theatre in New York before I moved to LA. My first play was True History and Real Adventures at the Vineyard Theatre with Michael Mayer directing. Kathleen Chalfant was in it. It was just an amazing experience. Then I did this other play—The Hologram Theory—at the Blue Light and it was very different from the first one. In one play I was a drunken Welsh tortured kid and in the next I was a gay androgynous kind of kid. If I could get paid eight hundred bucks a week to do that for the rest of my life, I’d be the happiest guy on the planet Earth. But it dries up. I did a play with Michael Greif at New York Stage & Film and after that it was literally a year-and-a-half of nothing.
I almost left Purchase a few times, like almost every actor does with conservatory. Conservatories really kind of destroy you. For every few teachers there that really try to bring out the best in you, there’s a few that just try to break you and mold you into what they want you to be. What saved me was guest directors. Our senior year, we did the William Saroyan play The Time of Your Life. I got to play Joe. We worked with an amazing director named Amy Saltz, who was the head of teaching directing at Mason Gross. It changed my life. It made me realize what I was capable of. I was so kind of keeping myself from getting smacked that I would never raise my head up. After that, I kind of said, “Fuck you,” to the rest of the school and I got three great parts. The agents in New York started coming up during those plays, so I really got to show my best. I actually got signed by J. Michael Bloom right before graduation. As soon as I graduated, the whole company broke up. It was the funniest thing, but in a way it was freeing. I had this manager from 3Arts who picked me up right away. After I booked my Michael Mayer play, they took me to Innovative. I started booking. Being a White, young, leading man is the most castable combination you can get. I was very lucky.
What do you consider your first break?
For me, spiritually, doing the first play with Michael Mayer was the break. It was the greatest directorial experience I’ve ever had. He comes from such a place of love but he challenges you. As long as you’re giving one hundred-fifty percent and challenging yourself every time you come in there, he’ll take you to the next level. Unless you’re fucking up and not working as hard as you can, he will never, ever berate you in any way. He’ll just ask more of you. It’s like how, in acting class, every now and then you’ll just see that breakthrough where somebody starts bawling and they finally get that one moment. What we all strive for, as artists, is what’s going on at times like that. That’s what doing that play was like.
After that, there was a long process of depression: no work, struggle, everything else. I would’ve never quit, though. I knew that in my heart there was no way to leave this life. I would’ve done whatever it took: leave a girlfriend, live on the streets, go back to Hawaii to get my shit together, whatever it would take, but I wouldn’t quit. It wasn’t just the lack of work. It was personal stuff that I had to do to come to the place that I am now, as a person, where I can do the best work possible. It doesn’t matter how great—how talented—you are if you still have shit in your personal life that’s negative, you’ve got to come to terms with it. If you don’t like yourself, no matter what you do, your work isn’t going to work. What got me through that—and what gets me through that still—is class and being willing to ask for help.
I had finally broken out of this relationship that wasn’t good for me but I was dirt poor. I mean, literally, my grandfather died but I couldn’t afford to get to the funeral, I got hit by a car, I got held up at gunpoint, and then broke up with my girlfriend all within like a month. And then I booked a guest-star on one pilot—it was just a guest-star for the pilot—and I regrouped, hung out, and then two months later I was told they wanted me for ten episodes. That turned out to be 24. Then they needed me for twenty episodes, which was pretty much the whole first season. That gave me enough cash to get started in LA and gave me a foothold in LA in terms of television.
I had no fucking clue what I was doing because I had never been in front of a camera on a real set where somebody brings a tape measure up to you. I had only made my own films—that turned out like crap—in high school. We had a public access comedy show that my brother and I did, but nothing like having to cry because my good friend just got his head blown off and—two seconds before, “Action!”—there’s a tape measure a quarter-inch from my eye. It’s a whole different way of working. You’ve got to train to do it, and I was just running on gut instinct. During 24, I started taking class with this Meisner-based, New York-style teacher named Chris Fields. He taught me a way of working—especially preparation—that works when I have to go inside a casting director’s room or in front of the camera on a set. It always works for me.
How did you handle the instant notoriety from 24?
I was painfully shy—and not just with the girls—I just couldn’t really do the, “Hey, let’s hang out,” thing after a day of shooting. There’s such a false hype of everything at that point. I went to class, I talked to my friends, I spent my time with Jack Daniels at home from time to time, but I never really did the party thing. It was cool to get a nice little touch of it, hanging out with Kiefer Sutherland and going to premiere parties, but it was weird too. At these parties, a couple of kids from some other shows were getting a lot of attention and it was just really gross. These hardcore newspeople were there, getting all taken in by the celebrity bullshit and getting off on their own star power. What would be a turn on, for me, would be to get to a place in my career where I could work with Martin Scorsese. None of that other stuff.
Who are your favorite actors?
I really like what Chris Fields calls “lunchpail actors.” They come to work, do their work, go to class—it’s all about the work. It’s the Robert Duvall-type thing. You never hear about any diva moments from him. He always gives a great performance. He makes these quirky, indie films, and he never—for one moment—is all about pyrotechnics in his character acting. Jeff Bridges is the same way too. No matter what they do, you’re just enjoying the film with these guys playing the characters. There’s nothing fantastical about it. You’re just in it. Daniel Day-Lewis is probably my all-time favorite. You can’t help but notice how pyrotechnical he is, but it’s always an explosion that’s built from the ground up with him. Also, I would add Robert De Niro, Meryl Streep, Viola Davis, Kathy Bates, Morgan Freeman, Jimmy Stewart, Javier Bardem, and Steve McQueen. They all resonate with me because I’ve never seen a single moment from any of those actors that I didn’t believe. They all can do character work and slip into parts without showing anything. They just are. You don’t see them acting because you already believe them from the moment they start. You just go on the journey with them. They have a certain humanity and blue-collar ethos about them in the way they approach their work. You don’t care about their personal lives. You care about their work. Oh, also, Will Ferrell. He is the funniest actor I have ever seen and isn’t some crazed, coked-out celebrity. He’s a real actor and a normal human being who just happens to be absurdly funny.
What is your favorite thing about being an actor?
I’m not really into any one religion, per se, but there is an idea that comes from Zen and from Buddhism of Satori or Nirvana—that moment where you truly stop all thinking. The best moments on stage are that moment. I don’t think I’ve found that yet, on film. Actually, in Constellation, I did have that moment. I did! I had two lines, but I had to be basically breaking down in every scene. I definitely had that in the play I did with Angela Goethals and Michael Mayer. You may only ever get it in one scene or one part of a scene, but it’s beautiful.
What is your least favorite thing about being an actor?
Ah, just the business. Just the whole notion of it as a business. They don’t call theatre “the business” like that. If you’re going to be an artist, you have to have a certain awareness of the business. What’s a good thing for me—since I don’t tend to focus on it—is that my manager started saying, “Dan, your feedback’s been great. You’re doing great auditions. You know how to do it all. We’re going to go to Armani Exchange and spend eight hundred dollars.” Honestly, I swear to God, I’ve been to test for a couple of things! I go in there wearing a nice fucking suit and this is such an image town that it makes a difference. It’s working! She was right. She knows how to play the game because she’s a producer. She knows all the bullshit you’ve got to do and how you’ve got to look and the car you’ve got to drive on set with. It makes a fucking difference! I’m starting to realize that I’ll play the game until I’ve got a name and then I’ll do whatever I want, go live in Italy, whatever.
How do you handle rejection?
More than anything, I take stuff into my own hands. I produced a film. I got my brother to write it, chose all the actors, got the director, and put it all together. The thing is, I need to pump another forty grand into post-production. We shot on a 24P camera, which looks great, and it’s all shot in the mountains and waterfalls of Hawaii. It’s kind of like a Stand by Me story. Anyway, doing your own thing helps with rejection because you’re not looking to be called in on anything—you’re too busy on your own thing. It’s like you have to spiritually kiss ass to get work but you start getting work when you stop kissing ass.
Also, I always stay in class. I work on my music—an alt-Country-Hawaiian kind of thing: Lucinda Williams meets Ry Cooder—and I have some great people behind me on this CD I’m doing. I stick with the best people I know in the world: my friends. Falling in love doesn’t hurt. And every few months of enough rejection, I go out with Blake and get pissed drunk and eat a whole pizza and then wake up sore the next day and get on with it. What can you do? At least, as an actor, you can make a living so much better than a musician or a dancer can. Everything I’ve learned and been through since being out of school has made me more confident as an actor. My friends, continual study in class, and the knowledge that nobody knows a thing in this town until it’s spelled out for them keeps me going. Despite the constant rejection—and Lord knows I’ve had less than many—and the fact that I would never want my children to do this for a living; I still could do nothing else.
Do you prefer theatre to film and television work?
It’s hard to say. I’ve done some readings for the Mark Taper Forum, but as hard as I’ve tried, I haven’t been able to get “in” with the LA theatre world like I was with New York. The good thing about LA is that there is a plethora of theatre here—although most of it is crap—and there are some really great playwrights doing some amazing stuff here. On camera, the thrill is visual. In theatre, the thrill is audial. What I’m starting to really appreciate about film is the ability to be real. You don’t have to make your voice louder. I have the instrument to do that, to really bring it down. You don’t have to do more than what needs to be done, on-camera. It takes having full confidence in your training to know that it’s going to show. You just know when you’ve got it, when you’re centered in the work. And being centered as a human will also inform your work.
Honestly, I’ve changed more in the last six months than I had in the fifteen years before. A lot of things finally came together. I did Constellation down South and almost all of my scenes are opposite Gabrielle Union. The older version of my character is David Clennon, who won an Emmy for thirtysomething. He’s probably the kindest man on the planet Earth. He is one of the most wonderful humans I’ve ever worked with. He literally memorizes the crew list before showing up. He knows everybody by name. Anyway, I worked on this for three weeks. I came in with no money—I was really deep in debt from making my own film—and I hadn’t been hired to work in the two and a half years since 24. Relationship-wise, I was just hopping from whatever to whatever. For some reason, with that director there was such a deep sense of importance to the film. That film’s producer has now become my manager. The cast was just incredible. Whether or not the film is a success, it changed my life for the better.
This interview was conducted on December 8, 2004, and it originally appeared in Acting Qs: Conversations with Working Actors by Bonnie Gillespie and Blake Robbins, available at Amazon.