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читать дальшеTWICE BLESSED
by Steven Eramo
from Cult Times, January 2002
Manticore's creations are running wild in Seattle in the new season of Dark Angel; we caught two of the escapees...
Dark Angel’s new heartthrob Jensen Ackles has worked in front of a camera for as long as he can remember. He was a child model at the age of four, then he stopped and started again when he was ten. A native of Dallas, Texas, the actor appeared mostly in local catalogues and department store ads, but he also did a few national TV commercials. Despite his success in the industry, Ackles decided to call it quits for good when he became a teenager.
“My friends used to bring these catalogues to school, pass them around and basically make fun of me”, he recalls. “At first, I didn’t mind, but eventually I got sick of it. One day I came home and said to my mom, ‘I don’t want to model anymore’, and that was that. I’ll just add, though, that by the time I was 16 I had saved up enough money to buy a real nice car. My friends were extremely jealous and I was like, ‘Who’s laughing now?’”
On Dark Angel, Ackles plays Alec, a ‘transgenic’ who comes from the same generation of clones as the programme’s leading lady Max (Jessica Alba). Alec has spent his entire life at Manticore and has remained a loyal soldier to the cause. Before joining the series for its second season, Ackles guest starred last year as Max’s genetically engineered brother Ben in the episode Pollo Loco.
“I had a rather quick audition for Ben,” says Ackles. “In fact, I only read once for the show’s producers, which was unusual. Normally, you go through a far more lengthy process. However, I think they were running behind schedule insofar as casting the character. They were seeing just a select few actors and I happened to be one of them. I guess I was what they were looking for because within four days I was on plane to Vancouver to start filming.
“Ben was mentally messed u,” the actor continues. “He was a genetic soldier who was trained to kill by Manticore. He eventually gained his freedom and ended up in the real world. Unfortunately, after a few years Ben suddenly flipped out. All his training came back to him and he started acting as if he was back in the military. He began hunting down innocent civilians and killing them. It was like a game to him. In Ben’s mind, this was what he was born to do.
“He was a neat individual to play. I was up in Vancouver for a little over two and a half weeks. It was a pretty complicated episode to film because there was a lot to it. The scenes in which Ben is hunting his victims down were shot up in the mountains and the forests around the city. It was March, so it was pretty wet and chilly when we were on location. Overall, though, I had an amazing time.”
At the end of Pollo Loco, Ben is killed and Manticore’s military strong arm, Colonel Donald Lydecker (John Savage), picks up his body and carries it off. So Ackles was naturally surprised when, a few months later, he received a call from Dark Angel’s producers asking if he would like to become a series regular. “I thought, ‘Wait a minute, Ben’s dead. Well, maybe they took him to Manticore and either put him back together again and re-cloned him.’ I figured being a sci-fi show, they must have some clever idea as to how to bring the guy back to life.
“I was overseas when the offer came in. My agency handled the logistics of the contract but we never talked about what I’d actually be doing. I just assumed I’d be reprising my role of Ben. When I returned to the States there was a sсript waiting for me. I read it and then phoned my agency and said, ‘I’m not in the sсript’. They called the Dark Angel office to express my concerns and were told, ‘Oh, yes, he’s in it, except he’s not playing Ben, he’s playing Alec.’ Once I heard that I flipped through the sсript and realized, ‘They’re right’. To my surprise I was stepping into this new role, and I couldn’t have been more pleased.”
The writers on Dark Angel decided to take full advantage of the actor’s natural animal magnetism when introducing his character in the show’s second season opener Designate This. “At the start of the story we discover Max is being held prisoner at Manticore,” explains Ackles. “The door to her cell opens and there’s Alec. At first she thinks it’s her brother Ben, but Alec quickly explains that he’s a clone and very different from Ben. He goes on to tell Max that he’s her breeding partner. Apparently, Manticore has a new procreation programme that requires them to mate. Of course, Max doesn’t take very kindly to this and throws a kick at Alec’s chest, which sends him flying against the wall.
“Being the ‘smart Alec’ he is [an attitude that leads Max to name him thus], my character kind of shrugs it off and goes, ‘Okay, fine with me’. He then jumps into her bunk and says, ‘I’m taking a nap. Wake me up in an hour.’ Alec continues to visit Max and one day he catches her trying to escape. She recruits him to help her and he figures, ‘Why not? Maybe I’ll get a new breeding partner.’ Right away he’s got his own agenda”, laughs the actor. “He helps Max escape and she blows up Manticore. Alec ends up without a home and in the outside world, so he has to make the best of it. It just so happens he keeps running into Max and slowly but surely they become a part of each other’s lives.”
In the second story of the show’s new season, Bag’Em, Alec finds himself the reluctant mentor to a band of Manticore fugitives. Together, they save Max from a group of company agents led by White (Martin Cummins), whose orders are to exterminate all Manticore escapees. In the following episode, Proof of Purchase, Alec becomes a pawn in White’s hands.
“I really enjoyed doing Proof of Purchase”, enthuses Ackles. “Up to this point, Alec has had a cocky, carefree attitude, which really goes against the very serious tone of the show. Here, he gets into trouble and all of a sudden can’t be his smart-ass self. Alec is ordered to perform a series of tasks that he doesn’t want to do. By the end of the episode he’s really been through the wringer. The sсript was written to give a great deal of depth to Alec. I hope I portrayed him in a way that showed this to the audiences. I like how the writers are developing my character. We’re almost halfway through the season and I’m just as inspired as I was when coming into my first episode.”
Given his convincing performance in Dark Angel, it is difficult to believe that Ackles became involved in acting by chance. “I did a play in high school and there happened to be a talent agent in the audience”, he says. “This man came up to me after the performance and suggested I’d do well in Los Angeles. Now, my dad has built a successful career for himself as a local actor in Dallas, so I’m familiar with the ups and downs of the business. I knew I wasn’t going to jump on a plane, fly to California and be ‘a star’.
“I shrugged off this agent’s offer, but he kept calling me. His persistence piqued my interest. After I graduated from high school I talked with my parents and we agreed I could go to Los Angeles for two weeks and see what happened. The agent sent me straight out on auditions and on the third one I was hired for a small part on a Saturday morning show called Sweet Valley High. That job paid for my trip and then some. I went back home and my parents and I decided that I’d give myself another six months in Los Angeles. That was almost five years ago and, thank God, things have been going very well.”
Dark Angel fans may remember the actor from his three-season stint as Eric Brady II on the daytime soap opera Days of Our Lives. He also portrayed an alcoholic drugged-up playboy in the CBS mini-series about the life of Marilyn Monroe called Blonde. “That was a bit of a stretch for me,” notes Ackles. “I had to do my homework before playing that role.”
Although still relatively new to the business, Ackles has his priorities in order as far as the rewards of his career are concerned. “The money,” jokes the actor. “No, I’m kidding! What I enjoy most is travelling to different places and meeting new people. For me, it’s all about life experiences, and I’m very grateful that acting allows me so many interesting and fulfilling ones.”
Copyright © Visual Imagination Ltd 2001