Jeff Daniels speaks to CMU thespians

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Actor and director Jeff Daniels visited campus Tuesday to talk to a small group of aspiring actors in the Moore Hall Kiva.

Daniels told students how he went from being a CMU student to a nationally known actor and gave tips for auditions and networking during the 90-minute talk.

“Fate has a lot to do with things. I was sitting in the (Charles V. Park) Library at the start of my second semester junior year. I wasn’t studying or anything, just reading a CM LIFE ad (and) there was a notice for a try-out at Eastern. There were kids from all over the state, so there was a lot of pressure,” he said.

“I figured I’d try out, and if I was good then I knew what I was going to do and if I was bad, well, I’d just go work in the lumber yard.”

Daniels said he got a call-back, but he was planning to skip it and go to a Detroit Red Wings game that night instead.

A friend told him there was a man from New York there, so Daniels went to the second audition, where he was called to perform last.

“It was a scene from ‘Summer and Smoke.’ He sat me and the girl across from each other and told us to read it like a conversation. Everyone was leaning in to hear us, and every time our voices got louder than a normal conversation he would stop us. Then, suddenly, it was real, we were real and when that happened, he stopped the audition and sent us all home. I got the part.”

He said his parents were very supportive, even when he told them he was dropping out of college to move to New York City.

“To their credit, they knew nothing about New York. They thought New York was where you went to die. But they said, ‘You should go.’ I hope you have parents like that.”

Acting in his first play in New York, Daniels said he didn’t know anything and was bashed by critics, but because he had a part, he got an agent.

“I got huge breaks. You should hope for one of those. That’s how it happened to me, and it happened to me in this library.”

Daniels told stories of some of the people he has worked with, including Jim Carrey, Meryl Streep and Keanu Reeves.

“I read the (‘Dumb and Dumber’) script and was like, ‘Oh, God.’ … The studio didn’t want me, so Jim went to the studio and said, ‘No Jeff, no me.’

“To be able to hang with Jim Carrey and hold my own meant a lot.”

There are some actors who are arrogant, he said.

“But the best people in the business aren’t like that. They have nothing to prove, and are the nicest people in the world. It’s the mediocre people who are insecure that are like that.”

There are some differences between film and theater, Daniels said, but they are really the same thing.

“The core of it is, there really is no difference. All the nuts and bolts of acting are the same. In film, you get paid a hell of a lot more money. If I don’t need money, if my family is OK, I love theater. (Los Angeles) is a better transition (than New York) because you don’t really need talent. You have to have the cheekbones, the jaw line, you have to keep the weight off. It helps if you have talent, but what they look at is if you are photogenic,” he said.

“No one is going to believe in you but yourself. You have to have drive, you have to have singular ambition. Don’t let them beat you. Don’t let them get you down.”

Daniels said he really enjoyed his time at CMU, especially with the other theater people.

“It was a great group. We did have some great parties, and there were faculty mixed in with students. Everybody got along.

“That’s what I love about theater — there is a mix — it wasn’t like a football party. I never went to those. I did the Wayside and got carried out of the Bird,” he said.

Daniels has been in movies such as “Dumb and Dumber” and “Gettysburg,” and directed “Escanaba in da Moonlight,” which was filmed in his hometown of Escanaba. He recently finished filming “Blood Work” a Clint Eastwood film, which is scheduled for release in August.

Daniels has agreed to speak annually to CMU theater students, said Denny Bettisworth, speech communications and dramatic arts professor and chair.