Randy Harrison |
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Actor Credits
FilmographyActor Credits"...thinking" [2008] Bang, Bang, You`re Dead [2002] TV Shows/SeriesQueer As Folk (Justin Taylor) [2001 - 2005] |
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Randy Harrison Biography |
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Randolph Clarke "Randy" Harrison has starred on Broadway, off-Broadway, regional theatre, summer stock, fringe theatre, television, and, more recently, independent film.
Broadway: "Wicked" (George Gershwin Theatre). Off-Broadway: Antony and Cleopatra (Theatre for a New Audience), Edward the Second (Red Bull Theatre), An Oak Tree (Perry Street Theatre) and A Letter from Ethel Kennedy (MCC). Regional: The Glass Menagerie (Guthrie Theatre), "Mrs. Warren`s Profession", "One Flew Over the Cuckoo`s Nest", "Equus" and "Amadeus" (Berkshire Theatre Festival); "A Midsummer Night`s Dream" (Alabama Shakespeare Festival); "Hello Again", "Shopping and Fucking", and "Children of Eden" (CCM); "Violet" (Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati); "1776" (St. Louis Municipal Theatre); and "West Side Story" (Forestburg Playhouse). Fringe: "Deviant" (New York International Fringe Festival). Televion: "Queer As Folk" and "Bang, Bang Your Dead". Film: "Thinking" and "Return, Shift, Escape". |
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Trivia |
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Trivia and QuotesQuotes When you watch it, you`re like, Wow. I look like that. But it doesn`t feel like that at all. It was about communicating with Gale Harold and getting across what I wanted to say about the character. I`ve done sexual stuff before - onstage, which is even more emotionally difficult. With a TV crew around, you are stopping and starting; it becomes really technical. It`s not erotic at all. I guess I had a suspicion of it my entire life without knowing exactly what it was - knowing that there was something different about me, which I attributed to being an artist. At 11 or 12 I started sort of clarifying for myself. It took a while. It always weirds me out and makes me unhappy that some people think I`m Justin. I`m not. People can be talking to me and I know they think they are talking to Justin. It`s hard to explain. I was always the shame of the family - the one Yankee who was actually born in the North. It`s a clique that I`ve never been a part of. It`s not like I identify them in a negative way. I don`t know for Justin; he`s always looking for meaning out of his relationships with people. I don`t think he`s as trapped into the drug thing as a lot of the others are. By the time I came out, that kind of stopped it. The bullying stopped when I claimed myself and proved that I wasn`t afraid. A lot of it was when I was hiding when I was younger. I can`t walk down the street with my head up. I`m not a hat wearer, but now I`m a hat wearer. I don`t want to be Tom Cruise. I`m not after some movie blockbuster career. That`s not the kind of work I`m interested in. And frankly, it`s not the kind of work I`m ever going to get. I wonder what kind of lives they will have built for themselves when they turn 45 and can`t really have any connection with people because they are so used to fleeting sexual. I wasn`t being bullied at school at this point. I had a group of friends, and I was isolated because I wasn`t communicating with my parents. I wasn`t telling them what I was going through. It`s a really subtle kind of thing. It makes me feel like Randy Harrison is not a human being to them. It`s difficult for me to imagine Justin as a real person. He`s so thoroughly a character created for serial television that his behavior, though dramatically justified on Queer as Folk, would register as childish, self-obsessed and absurd if it were displaced into the reality I`m familiar with. How could I be friends with someone who has nervous breakdowns at spilled marinara sauce, assaults high school enemies with small firearms, and has been systematically and repeatedly betrayed, lied to, condescended to, and humiliated by his boyfriend for four years? Were I placed into the TV wonderland of Queer as Folk, on the other hand, Justin and I would f**k once, realize we were twins separated at birth, and try to get our parents back together using elaborately quirky schemes. I`d most like to tell Justin to calm down. Maybe get him into a yoga class. It`s nice to see that people in Middle America are really affected. I hope that they are finding satisfaction. I`m in no way making a judgment. I know it doesn`t make me happy. Dad said that he was prouder of me than he`d ever been when I came out. It makes me proud, and it makes me scared. More than anything, I want to be an actor and I want to keep working, and I think there`s a danger in being perceived as a poster boy for something. I`m confident in my ability to maintain a career. I don`t know if it will be doing either independent films or plays in New England. I had been doing summer stock every summer while I was in college. We did a showcase, like most good conservatories do - monologues and things that agents and casting directors come to see. From that I got an agent. The whole character of Justin and the club life he lives - I have no experience with it. It`s really foreign to me, which is annoying, but that`s just how it is. I actually have more respect for people who are in the closet. You end up exposing so much of yourself because you have to talk about your sexual life. You shouldn`t have to talk about it. I just don`t think that I could be the kind of actor I want to be and not be honest with myself. Honesty is very important to me as an actor and as a person. I didn`t even think about it. I`m definitely a Yankee, a New Englander at heart. Both my parents are Southerners, so they always wanted to go back to the South. I think the sense of community that exists with all the characters - that`s the answer. The fact that they have found a family in their friends. It does give some depth and meaning to their lives. I don`t want to be the center of attention. My posture has changed. I walk with my head down and shoulders slumped. Suddenly I carry myself as if I`m ashamed of something. I could definitely empathize with the character, with the feelings of helplessness - if only the desperation and the feeling of isolation. I can`t speak on behalf of the show. I`m not a creator; I`m just a pawn. A lot of my friends are club people. It`s not me. It`s funny to represent that, because it`s not me. I don`t fit into a gay club setting. It`s just ironic that I represent that somehow. I never felt a need to manipulate my career from the outside - try to be someone I wasn`t to get ahead. What I`ve learned most while working on Queer as Folk has come really indirectly, less from playing Justin Taylor than from dealing with press, corporations, advertisers, the gay community, and fans of the show. I`ve learned the necessity of constantly realigning your perspective and the importance of standing up for yourself and being constantly aware that people are going to skew and censor you in order to make the idea of you better represent whatever agenda they`ve decided you`ll promote. And it`s all done so matter-of-factly, its such the status quo, that it becomes very simple to accept even though it completely corrodes the soul. It`s upsetting that it is such a big deal. I wish it weren`t an issue all the time. It`s funny that people say it`s a departure, because I`ve been acting since I was a child. I`ve played three gay roles out of hundreds. I love my parents. Coming out to them was sort of coming out to myself. I educated them, and I wanted our relationship to keep growing. I wanted them to be a part of my life still. I wanted to be able to share with them what I was going through.Trivia Graduate of Pace Academy in Atlanta, Georgia Father is a CEO of a paper company. Says he wanted to be an actor after his parents couldn't find a babysitter and had to take him to a production of Peter Pan. His only brother and sibling is a bank manager. Mother is a thwarted artist. | ||
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