By Christina Radish
Born and raised in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, Brennan Elliott was bitten by the acting bug at the early age of 10, when he began performing in theater productions. But like most Canadian youths, Elliott spent his summers playing golf and his winters playing hockey, leaving very little time for acting. While on a sports scholarship to New Mexico Junior College, he took a class in theatre, which helped him realize that acting was his true passion.
“Around 18, I moved out and went to New York, Montreal, Vancouver and New Mexico,” Elliott tells MediaBlvd Magazine in an exclusive interview. “I just vagabonded around a little bit, learning different ways of acting from different acting teachers at different schools. I figured I might as well do it while I was young and get some traveling in, while also teaching myself and learning from people, whether it be at Juilliard or The Studio or Circle in the Square, or whatever training was out there. I soaked it all in.”
Once he had officially put his sticks and clubs aside and jumped into acting full-time, Elliott decided to study acting at the University of Calgary. When he realized that that wasn’t for him, he left to find more intense, believable training elsewhere, trying the National Theatre School in Montreal and Studio 58 in Vancouver before coming across a guy named Eric Morris.
“He is the coach for Jack Nicholson and Johnny Depp. He wrote a book called No Acting Please, and he’s the most prominent acting teacher in the world. I came across his work six years ago and I’ve been studying with him ever since. Because he was in L.A., I moved out there to study with him, and I’ve been working ever since.”
{quote_top}Having had previous experience working for five years in Vancouver, before coming to Los Angeles, he was confident in this abilities when he made the big move, but he wasn’t prepared for how different it would be. “I had saved some money from jobs in Canada that supported me a little bit while I was in L.A. It was a lot more intense than Vancouver. It was overwhelming and new for me. It took me a good couple of years to get my feet on the ground and go, ‘Oh, this is how it works.’ It was daunting. It’s more relaxed and easygoing in Vancouver. There’s a lot more people in L.A., a lot more competition and a lot more politics.”
“In the beginning, I let a lot of that get to my head. Since then, I’ve grown in my confidence as an actor, an artist and a craftsman. It’s over the last year and a half that my work has gone to the level that I feel like it should be. A lot of casting directors were responsive and saw the talent, over the last year or so. I was green to the business when I came to L.A. six years ago. It’s not that I’m a grisled vet -- I’m still very young -- but I think you learn as you go and, when you’re doing five or six auditions a week, or you’re doing two or three shows at the same time, you’re learning and growing. I have to turn down work and auditions now because I’ve just been too busy, which is a good thing.”
With credits that include a rock video and a television show called Madison -- Vancouver’s answer to Party of Five -- Elliott recently came off of multi-episode arcs on the successful USA Network sci-fi series The 4400, as well as the hit CBS show Cold Case.
“When I got the offer for The 4400, I had never seen an episode, so I was really unaware of it. But, my character also knew nothing about it. He’d heard of the 4400, but he’s a photojournalist and travels around the world, working for National Geographic magazines. My character, Ben, was the boyfriend of the sister of Diana Skouris (Jacqueline McKenzie). We’ve just started dating and I meet Diana, and she has a precog daughter -- one of the 4400 -- that she adopted, who says, ‘You guys are going to get married.’ So, in my three episode story arc, which were the last three episodes of the season, we start to realize, ‘Okay, we’ve just met, but this kid, who is always right, is saying we’re supposed to be married. We don’t even know each other.’ We ended up getting married in the season finale. Now, what happens next season, I have no idea.”
{quote_middle}Although he hasn’t been in exactly the same predicament as Ben, Elliott admits that he was able to identify with the situation his character on The 4400 was in. “I was in an environment once where a spiritual psychic lady stopped me in the middle of the street and told me that I was going to marry the girl I was with at the time, and I had just met her. I said, ‘We just had a humongous fight in Coffee Bean about 20 minutes ago. It ain’t working out too well.’ The feeling that that experience created in me was one of confusion, but yet wanting it to happen. We all want to do what’s right and have the universe bless us. We don’t want to make mistakes. You think, ‘Is this right? Is it wrong? I’m not in love yet. I don’t know this person well enough, but someone is telling me I’m going to marry her. Am I losing the one person I’m supposed to be with?’ All of those emotions were what my character was feeling. I’ve had those feelings where you’re struggling with wanting to do the right thing, and then not wanting to hurt the person you’re with, but knowing you’re not in love with that person. My acting coach and I work quite diligently on personalizing and sensitizing and finding choices that come from the subconscious in your own life that parallel the material, so that when you’re in the moment, the audience thinks, ‘It doesn’t look like they’re acting. They’re really experiencing.’ I don’t say I’m an actor. I say I’m a professional experiencer.”
Once his work on The 4400 was complete, Elliott returned to Cold Case to revisit Ray, the high school and college love interest of the main character, Lily Rush (Kathryn Morris), that he first portrayed at the end of last season. “I love that guy. That guy is a character. He builds Harley Davidson bikes. Our characters were madly in love with each other. We couldn’t live with each other, but we also couldn’t live without each other. We wanted to get married, but when we got to the altar, we realized we were too young. We split and went our separate ways, and when we reconvene, I realize, ‘I’m ready to settle down. I’ve got my bike shop. I’ve always been in love with her and I’m ready to be a mature adult.’ When our characters are together, it’s just perfect. When we’re not together, it’s not. But, we can’t be together because of our jobs and the past. She can’t get over the past and she has so much resentment toward me. After the fourth episode, she said goodbye to me, and I don’t know where it’s going to go from there. Hopefully, the writers can bring Ray back on his bike, so he can see if Lily wants to go for a ride.”
Next up for Elliott will be a stint on the ABC television series What About Brian, starring Barry Watson, that starts on December 4. “I play this very successful, blue-blood, wealthy investor worth millions, who’s 32 and retired. He just makes money off his investments. He can have anything he wants. Love is not really in his future. It’s more about power. He sees a house he wants to buy, so he gets it. He walks into the house and sees a painting, he doesn’t look at the painting and go, ‘God, that’s a beautiful painting.’ He says, ‘That would look good in my office. I’ll buy it.’ Or, he sees a girl and says, ‘She would look good in the house. I’ll have her.’ His concept is completely business oriented, and his mentality is completely driven for success, at all costs. Whatever he feels like he wants, he gets.”
As a love interest for Deena (Amanda Detmer), the unhappily married mother of three little girls, who recently kicked her husband out of their house, Elliott has really enjoyed working with the Brian cast. “With Amanda’s character and I, it starts with that feeling of, ‘Oh, you’re cute. You wanna go out? You look good in the house.’ But, as he spends more time with her, he starts getting his heart tugged and he’s really digging this girl, which is new for him. He’s a high-powered executive who’s used to being Mr. Businessman, and then he falls for something and thinks, ‘Woah, what’s going on? I’m feeling things.’ That’s something I’ve never played before. It’s been fun.”
{quote_bottom}Once his time on Brian comes to an end, Elliott would like to set his sights on film. “The kind of actor I am, I enjoy the process. If I had a few months to prepare for a big film, I’d love to do that. Obviously, film is the goal, whether it’s A-list features, or great independents. The goal is playing a wide variety of characters. Brando, Montgomery Clift and Daniel Day Lewis are guys you respect because they’ve played all these great characters, and they have the opportunity to create these great roles on film.”
“On TV, I’ve been lucky enough to create really great roles, but it moves a lot faster. You’re cast on a Monday and you might be on set on Wednesday. Having my own series would be great. I just want to work. I enjoy the journey. I know what it’s like to not work, so I want to work all the time. I think that if you have the mentality of just doing the work, staying in the moment, creating great roles and doing quality, honest work, then you’ll continually work. Everything else will come.”
