'Queer As Folk' star Randy Harrison hits the stageBy Mark Kennedy for The Associated Press, May 2002.
Перевод в комментариях, за него огромное спасибо tunka-s!read moreOn his swift road to celebrity, Randy Harrison spent only the briefest time in the traditional employment of actors everywhere: waiting tables.
Fate apparently considered that insufficient.
These days, you can find Harrison, one of the stars of Showtime's hit series "Queer As Folk", again clad in an apron and tie ferrying dishes out from the kitchen - albeit this time on stage.
"It's a little ironic," the 24 year old acknowledges over cappuccino and croissant. "I'm trying to do my time as a struggling actor by playing a waiter." Harrison makes his New York stage debut in "A Letter From Ethel Kennedy", a touching off-Broadway play about a dying playwright reconciling with his parents.
The play gives Harrison, who was raised and trained in the theater, a chance to return to the stage after the success and controversy of his TV show, a sort of gay "Sex in the City".
"It's not like riding a bike," Harrison says of the theater. "It's amazing how quickly it all goes away. It's a totally different kind of energy; it's a totally different process."
Set in a restaurant in the Theater District, the play stars Anita Gillette, Jay Goede and Bernie McInerney. Though Harrison hovers through all three acts -usually botching food orders - he is hardly the star.
"I must tell you this is not 'The Randy Harrison Show'. This is the smallest part,"says Tony Award-winning actress Joanna Gleason, who directs the play.
read more"Here is an actor in service to the play. That's something unusual for a young man who is being catapulted into visibility and celebrity."
The role has also allowed Harrison to put a little professional distance between himself and Justin, the fresh-faced, club-hopping character he plays in "Queer As Folk."
Openly gay, Harrison rebels against the motion he might be doomed to the gay acting ghetto. In the play and an upcoming Showtime movie, "Bang, Bang, You're Dead," Harrison plays it straight.
"I want to challenge myself as an actor which means being able to be really versatile and play completely different characters who are not gay," he says.
It sort of irritates me when people say, 'Well here's the real test: He's got to play a straight character! Ooohh.' It's like, 'Get over it.' I've been acting my entire life. Eighty percent of the roles I've played were straight."
Born in Nashua, NH, Harrison is the youngest son of transplanted southern parents, a blond Yankee who was fond of saying things like, "Wicked awesome" and using R's in words like "wash."
By second grade he had fallen in love with the stage and his interest didn't waver after his family moved to Atlanta when he was 11. Harrison earned his bachelor's in theater from the University of Cincinnati College Conservatory of music.
And yes he waited tables - a T.G.I. Friday's in Georgia. "I was a terrible waiter. I broke things all the time," he recalls. That didn't last long. Within a few months he landed "Queer As Folk," his first high-profile role.