Thomas Calabro

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Thomas Calabro in 2009

Thomas F. Calabro (born February 3, 1959 in Brooklyn , New York City , New York ) is an American actor who also appears sporadically as a director and producer. He also works as an advertising spokesman and in the voice-over area.

Life

Slow career start

Calabro was born in 1959 in Brooklyn, New York, where he grew up. He claims his first job was when he was eight years old , helping out in his father's snack bar, which was above NYCS Montrose Avenue . Initially, he was mainly assigned to smaller jobs, but learned how to prepare sodas , milkshakes , malted milk , egg creams , tea and coffee at elementary school age . In the first few years he mostly worked all day at the weekend in his father's snack bar. After working among other things as a dishwasher and warehouse worker in the family business, he came to the grill at the age of thirteen and was also responsible for accounting over the years . From his junior year in high school, he worked full time in the family business all summer and did so until his mother decided, when he was in college at the time and his father had just passed away, to sell the snack bar. He worked as the eldest son in the company, but was never paid for his work, as it was taken for granted that he worked in his parents' company and that he did so in the same way as his sisters in the household. While working in his parents' snack bar, he also attended school during the week. Among other things, this was the Holy Child Jesus Elementary School from 1970 to 1973 , a Catholic school which is located next to Monsignor William P. Murray Hall at 86th Avenue on the border with 111th Street in the borough of Queens . Here he also had his first appearance as an actor when he took part in the school play Joseph and His Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat , an amateur theater, and took on a rather small role. At that time he was just eleven years old, and one year later he got another engagement at the age of twelve.

Since Calabro, as was common at that time, belonged to the boy scouts and appeared in the local marching band as one of three snare drummers , the marching band was hired by the US television station NBC for a special broadcast. At this time he also got to know prominent figures like Ann Miller and Fred Gwynne . During the recordings for the show, the boys were asked not to actually play their drums, but just to make a fake performance. In the same year Calabro wanted to attend a week-long boy scout camp of the Boy Scouts of America , of which he was a member. His father consented, but only on the condition that his son should earn his own money, which he finally did in the family business. He worked for three weeks from Monday to Friday, from six in the morning to six in the evening, in the family business, which the family always referred to as “The Store”. For this he received 33 dollars from his father , which ensured his participation in the boy scout camp. The morning after he finished work, his father woke him up and said he should continue to work all summer. This is what the young Thomas Calabro finally did and worked in his parents' company until his college days, where he did not receive a fixed salary, but only had to get by with the tips he received. In 1973 the boy was admitted to the highly respected Stuyvesant High School , based on the East Side of Manhattan , of which he was a member until 1977. Most of the year 1974 he spent at the side of his boy scout leader , with whom he traveled across the United States and, among other things, hiked with him on the Grand Canyon . The following year, at the age of 16, he got his third engagement as an actor when he appeared again on the stage of the auditorium at the Holy Child Jesus Elementary School . In the play Jesus Christ Superstar he already played a much more important role than King Herod , for which he received a lot of praise and positive criticism in retrospect.

Gradual breakthrough after starting studies

In 1977 he was admitted to Fordham University , where he got his first real acting experience on the Bronx campus. At the beginning of his studies he had no idea where his future career would lead, as he wanted to switch to football at that point . After that, there came a time when he wanted to follow in his sister's footsteps and pursue a career as a surgeon . His father, in turn, wanted him to start a career as a lawyer, which Thomas Calabro did not want. Nor did he want to switch to gastronomy, which also served briefly as an aspect of his future career. Over time, Calabro attended all of the courses and finally found a course called "Introduction to Theater" more enjoyable. Through this course and the training he enjoyed, he finally found his way into the acting business. He described his teacher at the time, an already older man, as being very influential for him personally. In the summer of 1978, the young student gained acting experience at a so-called summer stock theater , a theater that mainly holds productions in the summer. After looking for summer courses in his freshman year, he learned that the university would give him four so-called credit points if he was employed at a summer stock theater. This was also the only year that this was approved by the university. The course was merged with the part of the Lincoln Center campus of Fordham University and Calabro was the last person to audition. Through his role as King Herod, which he had played a few years earlier at the Holy Child Jesus Elementary School , he was accepted into the summer course. However, he was not brought into the team as a paid actor, but as an unpaid trainee. In order to make a living, Calabro decided to take another job in a restaurant to finance himself for the next two months at the Summer Stock Theater, the Fort Salem Theater . For this reason, he briefly moved to Fort Salem in Washington County in the summer . The theater group's playing season also consisted of five shows within these two months, which was the main reason for Calabro's move to Fort Salem, as he wanted to escape a commute. During this time he felt in a way like a laborer, since he had to take on every conceivable job in the theater.

Nevertheless, he loved his work and came to smaller roles within the productions. According to his own statements, he “botched” his way through all the productions in which he mainly worked with people who had been singers, dancers and actors since their early childhood. Determined, Calabro finally came back from the summer vacation and decided with his colleagues to do everything possible to work on his acting skills in order to become the best possible actor. He saw a first big step in shedding his Brooklyn accent, which had already deepened. At this point, however, he had no idea how quickly and sometimes painfully his further career would begin. After he returned to Fordham University, he moved from the Bronx campus to the Lincoln Center campus in the 1978 academic year , where he met numerous fellow students in the summer. Immediately afterwards he auditioned for the first production of the theater group, which was to take place on the Liberal Arts Campus . In the Shakespeare production A Midsummer Night's Dream he was finally seen in a self-reported great, albeit small role. He was also considered the second cast of the Elf King Oberon , who was played in the first cast by the later great actor Denzel Washington , with whom Calabro was also in other productions and still calls him a good friend to this day. Only about a week before the theater rehearsal, Washington, who at that time was already having his first engagements in film and television, had to leave the team in 1977 in the television film Wilma Rudolph, The Black Gazelle , and bring the understudy Calabro to the team as king of the elves. To get rid of his still predominant Brooklyn accent, Calabro was associated with one of the most distinguished speech therapists of the time. With the speech therapist Fay Van Saal , he went through every single word of his dialogue throughout the production and worked his way through letter by letter, vowel by vowel, etc. with her help. Nevertheless, he was able to prevail and in the same year also appeared in other productions, such as Tea and Sympathy , for which, among other things, a film was made in 1956 that is known in German-speaking countries under the name Anders als die Andere , as well as the works Blood Wedding and You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown .

Further theater and festival appearances from the second year of study

After his first major theater appearances in 1979, when he also acted as a replacement for Denzel Washington, he came to more and more appearances over time. In 1980, at the age of 21, he finally had his first paid gig as an actor when he appeared in a summer stock theater production at the Old Bellport Playhouse ( Gataway Bellport Playhouse ), where Robert Duvall was also in action. His rather meager salary also included his activities as a theater director and teacher. He also taught children's groups from Monday to Friday, giving them an insight into acting. He also worked with the children on the plays Annie and Peter Pan , where he was also active as a director. His father died in July 1980, which is why Thomas Calabro took a short break from his theater activities to pay his last respects to his father. After returning to university, he received a surprising visit from his older sister, who asked him what he would do in his further life. At that point, she assumed that her brother was only delaying his further career without having a real goal in mind. Then he told her what he had said to his father a year earlier and said at the same time that nothing could dissuade him from his decision to become an actor. He also said that these thousands of hours that he had spent in his parents' company had contributed greatly to the development of his independence. After he had completed his two major courses in English and Theater in his senior year at college and was currently working on the minor in Psychology, he wanted to devote himself more intensively to acting and decided with more committed, talented and advanced especially to work together with more demanding actors and teachers. So he finally came to The New School Conservatory Theater , directed by a young Yale graduate, which Calabro called his "second school". At that time he was already busy with his graduation and the question of what he would do after graduating. At the time, he had two clear goals in mind. On the one hand, this was the move out of his parents' house and the start of his own “adult life” as well as the breakthrough in the field of acting. Since he saw no real perspective in this at the drama school The New School Conservatory Theater , other work should soon follow for Calabro. Among other things, he was engaged in charity work for some time in 1981 at Covenant House on 42nd Street in Manhattan , where he mostly gave acting lessons to children.

Around 1981/82, Calabro bought a book entitled "Acting Professionally", which he called "his Bible ", and which he followed practically word for word. At the same time his first headshots were ready, which he sent along with his résumé to various agencies after he had previously obtained a book with all the names and addresses of important agencies and agents. Over time, he got some acting roles in NYU grade films and then went with the South Carolina Theater Company on a "Shakespeare Tour" called "Scenes and Soliloquies". During this time, Calabro continued to learn a lot and tried his hand at different acting classes and was eventually contracted by a respected agent of an equally respected agency ( Hesseltine-Baker and Associates ) and was there from that time mainly for theater work responsible. To pay his bills, the 23-year-old Calabro continued to work as a waiter in various restaurants and did a few odd jobs. This also included numerous creative works, such as assistant to an artist and a photographer. At the age of 23, the talented young actor came to his first job in advertising in 1982, which also meant his first job at SAG . It was used in a spot for the cleaning products brand Zest , which belongs to the Procter & Gamble group. In 1983 he came to the Long Wharf Theater in New Haven , Connecticut , where he briefly appeared in the play Open Admissions . Among other things, he was trained that year by Ed Kovens , who died in 2007 and who had worked with a number of great actors over the years. Further engagements followed for Calabro that year at the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park , one of the first state theaters in the USA, which was built in 1959. Calabro himself describes his way of life at this time as quite chaotic, as he mainly came to his theater performances during his student days and was often out of town for around six weeks, only to return without doing casual work, only to return to town soon after leave to play along with more pieces. Calabro initially saw his time at the regional theaters as a stepping stone for a possible future career on Broadway . Although he finally had no prospects of a later career on Broadway, he was so successful with his engagements that he could no longer earn his living with odd jobs, since he was already making enough money with acting at this stage. It should be noted, among other things, that Calabro, who was still attending various acting courses at the time, worked with Kovens or was trained by him for a period of seven to eight years and only when Calabro was in town and not exactly was active again in a foreign theater.

First engagements in film and television

In 1984 a change of agency was planned for the budding actor. After his agent, Jo Ganz, left Hesseltine-Baker and Associates to found her own agency, Calabro followed her and made his first notable appearance in the film and television business that same year (with the exception of the marching band appearance in 1971 ). At that time, Calabro, who was now part of the Kingman-Ganz Agency , was already 25 years old and started his television career relatively late. Only about two weeks after the agency was founded, his agent left it again, whereby the 25-year-old was temporarily without an agent, who he found in Michael Kingman, then Ganz's partner. It was through him that Calabro found his way onto television, as Kingman promised him not to bring him to soap operas, commercials or theater productions, but directly to television. His first film appearance was in the internationally broadcast film Exterminator 2 , where he slipped into the role of Larry . Other appearances in 1984 included the 2002 play Snack by Leonard Gershe , with whom he toured from Maine to Denver , as well as a role in a commercial for Pound Puppies , a brand of the toy manufacturer Tonka . 1985 followed for him another small role in the film Nights when the killer comes with Martin Sheen and Hector Elizondo . The time after that was again dominated by theater appearances and work in the voice-over area, which Calabro started in 1986 at the age of 27. In the same year he left his advertising agency, after his agent had already withheld his checks several times, and immediately switched to Cunningham, Escott and Dipine , his new advertising agency, which at the time was considered one of the most successful in New York City. After being used in numerous commercials for the agency, Calabro joined the agency's voice-over department. Before that, he asked one of the part-owners of the agency that he was interested in voice-over and received a list of dialects and funny voices that he should learn. There was also a meeting and the creation of a professional demo reel until he came to his first voice-over audition after six weeks. In this way, he had also expanded his possibilities as a professional actor and was now not only available as an actor, but also in the voice-over area.

In 1987, at the age of 28, Calabro appeared in Wild Blue , an off-Broadway production, at the Perry Street Theater on 46th Street. He played seven different characters in one night with eight one-act plays . Not only did he have a lot of pressure, as he had to change genre several times over the course of each evening, but he was also used in front of a relatively large audience. So Calabro quickly got other appearances in film, television and theater, which further boosted his career, which is still in the early stages. With the play he had such great success that the show was extended to four more appearances and they even switched to a larger theater for the last show in order to perform in front of an even larger audience. In 1988 he moved to the then existing Manhattan Punch Line Theater , where the 29-year-old appeared in Bill Bozzone's Women and Football . In the play he played the husband and the well-known actress Phoebe Cates mimed his wife. Then he got his best-paid job up to that point when he was booked for the pilot of the series Dream Street , in whose later cast he also appeared and was used in all of the six episodes. The series was broadcast by numerous stations and received mostly only positive criticism, especially for its quality. From the late 1980s, or actually in the early 1990s, Thomas Calabro began to work more and more in the film and television sectors, including an appearance in the film Ladykillers in 1988 and a not insignificant one Supporting role appeared. In 1990 he also appeared on an episode of the popular television series Law & Order , as well as an appearance on an episode of A Blessed Team . After he got an engagement in the miniseries A Woman of Honor in 1991 , he was also seen as Detective Andy Parma in an episode of Columbo in 1992 , before his breakthrough that same year. For Calabro, the career was initially quite surprising, as he had to get by with little money a few years earlier, as he had no more secure income after the short-term successes with Dream Street and further productions with his participation were a long time coming. At this time he began temporary and unpaid work as a stage director for off-off Broadway productions and was also involved in other projects.

Breakthrough with Melrose Place

Before he was cast in the hit television series Melrose Place , he became a member of The Actors Studio and the Circle Repertory Company in 1990 . After initially acting only as an actor, the two institutions transformed him into a director, but continued to be successful as an actor. Even before the production of Melrose Place , Calabro was director of the play Stealing Souls: Bring Your Camera in 1990/91 , where he was responsible for coordinating a full band and a 22-person cast. The play was performed inside and outside a church in the East Village . After production, he realized that he had to take a drastic step, as he was not earning anything at that point, doing this work for free and also putting a few thousand US dollars out of his own pocket into production. In addition, his longtime loyal friend, lawyer and agent Michael Kingman died of AIDS in April 1991 , which in turn meant a change in the way Calabro represented himself. In 1991 he moved to Los Angeles for six months , where he got the aforementioned guest role in A Blessed Team . Since most television companies at that time did not have the money to fly actors from other parts of the United States to Los Angeles and only a few such productions were to be found in New York, Calabro made the decision to spend half a year on the West Coast to pull. There he was brought into the cast of the then very successful television series Melrose Place , among other things after his Columbo gig , where he played the villain of the series, Michael Mancini , and in this role in all 226 broadcast episodes until the series expired in 1999 was seen. He was also the only actor in the full cast to appear in every single episode of the five-time Golden Globe nominated series. In his early days in Los Angeles, he joined the Judy Schoen Agency , which at the time was still being looked after personally by Judy Schoen, who died of lung cancer in 1999 at the age of 57 . From 1995 to 1998 he also showed his skills as a director in four episodes. In parallel to the Beverly Hills offshoot , 90210 , Calabro was also used in numerous other productions. During this time there were appearances for one episode each of Burke's Law , Ned & Stacey and MADtv as well as supporting and leading roles in the films Kidnapped from the Cradle , Robbed Innocence , Mad Men and LA Johns - Sharp Curves, Hot Guys .

The marriage to production assistant Elizabeth Pryor on April 10, 1993, and the production of the play Gravity Shoes , which was performed at the Hudson Guild Theater , also fell during this period . In addition, Calabro's MP acting contract was renegotiated at this time and he changed the agency again around 1996, the year the couple's first daughter was born, and Adam Levine joined the Metropolitan Talent Agency , where Levine worked for the next three years Manager of the agency advanced. Calabro accompanied him until 2005, before the partnership between the two broke up. In the initial phase, however, it was quickly agreed that Levine only asked for ten of the usual 15 percent commission. After the success with Melrose Place , Calabro continued to be booked for countless productions, although the time after that was a pretty stressful one. In the years that followed, he had various auditions for one and half-hour comedy productions and was selected during this time for a production called Hard Knox , which, however, caused some problems with the financing. In 2000 he was the executive producer of the two-hour film Falling Rue . Film appearances that Calabro made during this time include An Angel on Black Ice (2000), Best Actress (2000), They Nest - Tödliche Brut (2000), Face to Face (2001) and the aforementioned film Hard Knox . He often played one of the main characters or was seen in equally important supporting roles. In between he made a guest appearance in 2001 in A Breath of Heaven . Also in 2001 he was briefly employed as a yoga teacher, where he himself has been attending the Angel City Yoga in Studio City , which is now closed, for over four years . There he was asked to take over a group after the failure of a teacher and did his job so well that he worked as a teacher for another eight months. Although he was not a certified yoga teacher, he came to this position because of his experience, good training and personal relationship with those in charge of the studio. In the low-budget production Face to Face , Calabro first met Scott Baio , the screenwriter of the film, with whom he worked closely in the following years. With Baio, Calabro was used in numerous productions over the years, both of which mostly occupied the positions of producers, but also appeared as screenwriters. Up until 2004, nothing is known about appearances in film, television and theater. Over the years, Calabro became a father twice, including in 1998 and 2000 when his two sons were born.

Time from 2004/05

In 2004 the native New Yorker worked in the film The Perfect Husband, followed by a further engagement in the film Single Santa Seeks Mrs. Claus (2005) and in an episode of Nip / Tuck - Beauty Has Its Prize , also in 2005. According to a guest appearance in an episode of Cold Case - No Victim Is Ever Forgotten In 2006, the now around 48-year-old came to numerous film appearances in 2007. He was seen in the films Chill , Cake: A Wedding Story , 'Til Lies Do Us Part and Ice Spiders each in a leading role. In the latter film he was seen alongside his former Melrose Place colleagues Patrick Muldoon and Vanessa Lynn Williams, among others. He previously divorced his wife on October 1, 2006. In the same year he was also involved in the theater production It's Just Sex at the Zephyr Theater . In January 2007, the actor met licensed acupuncturist and Chinese medicine practitioner Marc Ryan and videologist and writer Fran Battaglia, who asked him to help produce their show. With Calabro's help, the Green Health Live Interactive Internet TV Show was brought into being, although there were slight difficulties, especially in the initial phase, and mainly with the financing of the entire project. After leaving the project, the almost 50-year-old was back in various film and television productions. In 2008 he had a supporting role in the film Fall of Hyperion and a leading role in Safehouse . In 2009 he was given a special honor when he slipped into his old role of Michael Mancini and was seen in the remake Melrose Place until 2010 in a total of nine episodes. Before that, he was also in two episodes of Greek from 2008 to 2009 , as well as an episode of Without a Trace in 2009 . He also worked in a segment of the short film production Locker 13 (2009) as well as two main and essential supporting roles in the films Detention and Elle: A Modern Cinderella Tale . In 2010 he also made a guest appearance on the television series CSI: NY and was used in an episode each of Castle and Navy CIS in 2011 . Another film production with Calabro, which is expected to be released in 2012, is called Devils Inside and is currently still in preproduction . In 2012 Calabro made a guest appearance as an episode of the musical comedy series Glee , where he mimed the father of Noah "Puck" Puckerman (played by Mark Salling ).

Filmography

As an actor

Film appearances (also short appearances)
Series appearances (also guest and short appearances)

As a director and executive producer

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Stage: One-Act Comedies In Punch Line Festival (NY Times, February 17, 1988 ), accessed May 12, 2011
  2. ↑ Theatrical Agent Judy Schoen is Dead at 57 (Playbill, November 3, 1999 ), accessed May 12, 2011
  3. ↑ 'Glee' Casts Thomas Calabro as Puck's Father ( Memento of the original from April 18, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (English), accessed on August 7, 2012 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.buddytv.com
  4. ↑ Glee Exclusive: Look Who's Playing Puck's Dad! (English), accessed on August 7, 2012
personal data
SURNAME Calabro, Thomas
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Calabro, Thomas F.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION US-American actor
DATE OF BIRTH 3rd February 1959
PLACE OF BIRTH Brooklyn , New York City , New York