Larry Joe Campbell has played the role of Andy on ABC TV’s “According to Jim” for the last seven seasons. Larry is a graduate of The Second City Touring Company and resident stage in Detroit. I spoke to him just after Christmas.
SC: Happy Holidays – what are you doing?
LC: I have to go to Build-A-Bear in an hour.
SC: Why?
LC: We got five gift certificates as presents for Christmas, so all the kids want to go now. My life in Hollywood is very glamorous.
SC: How did you get started in the business?
LC: There was no drama program at my High School but my parents were always wannabe type entertainers. When my Dad got out of the Navy he had a full ride available to him at the New York Academy of the Arts. When he went on a tour of the campus he saw Robert Redford fencing and it was a really amazing place. But, in the end, he didn’t take it. He said is family thought it was a path to failure. Later in life he admitted to me that he was the one who was scared. So he was always supportive of me taking the path of an actor. My mom used to have this act where she played a homeless woman named Maude. She actually got paid to crash weddings with her shopping cart and blacked out teeth. Her job was to find the groom and kiss him. Often only one person knew that this was an act and people would try to throw her out.
SC: That’s unbelievable.
LC: Yeah. They were both great characters. There was a benefit for a local hospital in Northern Michigan. It was a kind of follies revue. They asked if I wanted to be in it and I said okay. I ended up loving it. I did get to do one play in my senior year called “Rest Assured.” I played an Italian butcher and all my words ended in a vowel. It was horrible. My dad wanted to do my makeup for me, so he decided to shellac my hair pitch black. He used spray paint.
SC: How long did it take to get that out of your hair?
LC: A month of steady washing and haircuts. Then I took theatre classes at Central Michigan University and after graduation my cousin in Texas told me that I should move to Houston because she was an agent and they were casting “Beverly Hills 90210” and “Melrose Place” in Houston. This should tell you how naïve I was at the time.
SC: Because they weren’t doing casting for those shows in Texas…
LC: Exactly. So I move down to Houston because my cousin the agent says that I can audition for these shows and, she says, she’ll buy me headshots as a graduation present. I get to Houston and – big surprise – my cousin is not an agent at all. She’s a secretary at an agency and she wants to be an agent. There are no auditions and she won’t buy me headshots because she said I’m too fat.
SC: You’re too fat for headshots?
LC: I haven’t spoken to her in a long time. So I move back to Michigan empty handed and I decide to live in Detroit because there is a small theatre scene there. I got a job working the midnight shift at a plastic factory. Not a fun job. But I also got a job as an intern at the Boarshead Theatre in Lansing Michigan which was amazing. They paid us $100.00 a week – which, for an internship, is pretty good money. We would teach a playwriting class to students in the morning; work in the scene shop; rehearse for whatever show we had roles in; more classes; back to rehearsal; and then we’d hang lights until 2am. From then on I knew I never wanted to do anything else. But, I still lacked confidence in myself as a performer so I went to graduate school – but I dropped out after a year.
SC: What did you do next?
LC: I actually went to Chicago. This was around 1995 and I auditioned for all the major theatres – Steppenwolf, Goodman, Victory Gardens. Here’s where my naïve side shows up again. The casting agents told me to “keep in touch,” which I took as “you’re hired.” So I moved to Chicago and, of course, there was no work for me anywhere. I ended up working at a sub shop in Union Train Station. The son of a couple ran the shop for them and he had these diagrams for all aspects of the work that you had to follow precisely – diagrams for cutting a tomato and even taking out the garbage. Mind you, I’m saying “diagrams,” but they were stick figure drawings. There was this young woman who worked there that never said a word. I had been asked to watch her take out the garbage to make sure she was following the correct procedure and when we got the garbage area – which was where all the various fast food employees would hover around – she spoke to me for the first time and said, “taking out the garbage is my favorite part of the day because I’m so lonely and this is when I get to see all the other lonely people and it makes me feel less lonely.” After my shift, I never returned and I moved back to Michigan.
SC: You auditioned for Second City then?
LC: Yeah, my second time, actually. I auditioned when Second City first opened in Detroit. It was a madhouse – thousands of people cramming in to audition in huge groups – guys dressed in cow
costumes. I was in the last group on the last day. They had locked the doors and I banged on them and begged to be let in. I think I got out one line and that was it. I was reluctant to audition again after that because I figured it was always that crazy. But a friend got me to go and it was much more manageable. I got hired into the touring company and then when John Farley left the resident stage, I was hired into the mainstage company.
SC: That was a great time at the theatre.
LC: I learned everything there. I developed a kind of fearlessness as a performer. There were wonderful cast members who taught me so much. One actor named Rico Bruce Wade used to wear three pairs of socks during the show, because he had a nerd character in one scene and it was important to him that his character had white socks showing underneath his pants but his other characters needed to have dark socks. It was a commitment to character. Josh Funk was another actor that taught me the discipline of the work – after the improv sets each night he would want to talk about the work and go over scenes in detail. Keegan Michael Key, whose on MAD TV now, was an amazing actor that brought boundless energy to the stage. I remember when Angela Shelton – a former cast member of Detroit – told us that on opening night, John Candy came backstage and said “You better enjoy this now, because you’ll never had something like Second City ever again in your career.” And he was right.
SC: How did you land “According to Jim?”
LC: Bob Sagat actually came to the show one night and he did the improv set with us. We had no idea how dirty he actually was, so we had an awesome time. He stayed after the show and we closed down the bar. A week later, Ray Rio from Brillstein Grey Entertainment came to the show. Ten days later I was signed. I got a part in a short lived sitcom called “The Trouble with Normal” with Jon Cryer and Paget Brewster. I actually auditioned for “According to Jim” and they passed on me. But after the series was bought, they decided to re-cast the role of Andy. I auditioned with Jim Belushi and we immediately connected – probably because we’re both Second City guys – and I got the spot. It happened so quickly. I was leaving the parking lot after the audition when my agent called me and told me to get back inside for the photo shoot for the show. I was wearing this grey sweater for the audition and it had a small stain on the belly – that entire year, I was in all the publicity photos with my stained sweater. I guess no one else noticed.
SC: Do you have any advice for young performers?
LC: I do. I was golfing with my brother right before leaving for LA. I had been signed by the agency and I was set to audition for the pilots and my brother said “Do you really want to do this?” And I said, “Yeah, I do.” He then said, “I don’t believe in you, but I’ll support you.” He denies he ever said that, but it was the driving force for me to never give up on myself. If you want to do this work, you have to just do it.