06.08.99

DAN MATHESON: If you happen to be fan of the hit show "Felicity"
you'll be delighted to know that when CTV announced its fall lineup
yesterday among the announcements this critically- acclaimed show
will be back in prime time for another season. Canada AM's
entertainment reporter Kate Tavender caught up with one of the stars
of "Felicity", Canadian Scott Speedman. [taped segment begins]

TAVENDER: "Felicity" has made you a big star, an overnight star.
Can you please, though, tell us the story about how you were
discovered?

SPEEDMAN: Oh sure.

TAVENDER: I know that you've done this a hundred times but we've
got to hear it.

SPEEDMAN: How I was discovered or how I got the show?

TAVENDER: No, how you were discovered.

SPEEDMAN: Oh. A girlfriend of mine dared me to go on Speaker's
Corner and audition for "Batman Forever". The cast director was in
town. At Speaker's Corner you put the dollar in and say whatever you
like. And a bunch of guys had done it and I went in and I was
driving to Hamilton to see some of my friends and I parked the car
-- double-parked the car -- and I jumped in and said my name, where
I lived.

And I didn't really think too much of it and a couple of weeks
later Mali Finn's office called -- she's a great casting director in
LA -- and wanted me to come down to this hotel and audition for
"Batman Forever", for Boy Wonder.

And so I went down and auditioned and got a couple of call-backs.
And I was lucky, I was the past person she saw in Toronto so I got
to sit down with her and really talk. And we got talking about the
business and I had just retired from swimming. I was a swimmer.

TAVENDER: Yeah, because you were on a different track. I mean you
were an athlete, you were contemplating the Olympics.

SPEEDMAN: Well, I'd just been injured really. Hopefully, I would
have tried out for the Olympics again but I didn't know what I was
going to do and she got me involved with this great agency in
Toronto, Oscars and Abrams. And I just started acting from there. It
was really weird --

TAVENDER: And the rest is history, as they say.

SPEEDMAN: Well, along the road some people make it out to be --

TAVENDER: But it's been a real ride because now this show has come
along and people do struggle, I think, in television a lot and don't
end up with good scripts, don't end up with good programs. And here
you are, in a program that seems to me to be one of the smarter ones
on television.

SPEEDMAN: Yeah, that's been the real -- it's been very weird that
way. I've fallen in not only to an American show but I never thought
I was going to do television in the States. I never really wanted
to. My goal was always in film. But I wasn't acting so much when I
got the script and I actually didn't want to do it at the time. I
hadn't read it and I just said I didn't want to do it. But then I
read it and it was great. It was the first time that I'd read a
television script where I actually wanted to be involved. And so
lucky to get that.

TAVENDER: You haven't done a lot in acting. I mean you've done
some. But you've got to grow, you've got more things to do. So
what's your, sort of, evolution?

SPEEDMAN: Yeah. Well, that's a good question for me right now
because I feel the "machine of LA". I don't want to sit around there
with a lot of publicists and a lot of agents and a lot of
machine-type stuff and get into a routine where you feel self-
important where you're not doing anything. I've only done one show
down there, done one film and I really want to keep growing.

So, talking to a friend of mine named David Rotenberg, who's a
great, great, great teacher. And I think I want to do a play, which
I've never done. And right now I'm going to talk to him right now about
it.

So, I really want to do that and hopefully we'll be able to do
that. I'm terrified of doing it, terrified because I've never done
it before and never really trained for it. So I want to see what
that's like. But I'm so scared.