Scripps Howard News Service
CENTURY CITY, Calif. (July 4, 2001 12:16 a.m. EDT) - Actor Sean Hayes loves to shock people. He likes dishing out the unexpected when people already think they know the flamboyant Jack McFarland, that famous third party on NBC's "Will & Grace."
"You constantly want to challenge yourself to prove something to yourself," he says. "I don't know what that is, maybe it's some deep-rooted thing to prove to a person or a group of people that, 'Look what I can do!' It drives me immensely. I don't know why," he says.
"I'll go to my grave working at surprising myself, trying to surprise other people," says the actor on a sizzling Sunday afternoon in a hotel room where the air conditioner drones on.
Actually, Hayes surprised himself when he didn't become a concert pianist, a path he'd trekked since he was a kid. "I was in high school plays, but I always pursued music. Music was my life, so I kind of just pushed it (acting) away and said, 'No, I shouldn't do that. I'm just going to stick with music.'"
But that changed in high school. He began palling around with theater majors. "Those people always made me laugh; they were fun to be around."
Though it seemed he was on his way to black tuxes and concert halls, the process was painful. "I thought that's what I wanted to do, but it never really sat well for me because the anxiety was so high for me," he confides.
"To play, it was too much. It was incredibly stressful because the potential to fail is so high, because it's all about precision and accuracy. And when you're speaking or when you're acting or improvising that's what it is - you're improvising and if you don't say the right thing, then you go back and correct it in a clever way. But when you're playing classical music you cannot miss a note, or else you fail. So that's a lot of pressure. That part never sat well with me. To stand up in front of an audience then sit down and play was never joyful, it was almost frightening."
No, Sean chose another line that would be equally intimidating to most. But he says he loves the feeling that acting gives him, "the freedom to go nuts. I often say I can't do drugs and can't kill anyone, so I act. It's a wonderful release of pent-up things inside of you."
This summer, Hayes has gone completely nuts with a new role - that of a supercilious top cat in the new film, "Cats & Dogs." It's his voice that lends the power-hungry white Persian his autocratic presence. "I first read for the calico cat, then Larry (Guterman, the director) said, 'Pick up Mr. Tinkles and try a German accent.' Which we did. We just experimented with accents and it just came out refined American, as they speak on 'Frasier,' I suppose," says Hayes.
Dressed in a maroon polo shirt and chinos, Hayes sports a mustache and goatee, his loose-limbed body cocooned in a beige brocade chair as he begins to relax.
Once he decided to become an actor, he tried his luck in Hollywood when he was still a scrubbed 24. "I moved here with $1,000, scared half out of my wits, never been here before. I knew one person. ... I said, 'OK, I'll come out and give it a try.' And I just stuck to the pavement, made my connections. I came with blinders on: 'I want to act, I want to act, I want to act.' And here I am," he grins.
He may be sitting pretty with "Cats & Dogs" and a small play he did on his hiatus, "Platonically Incorrect" - as well as his hit sitcom - but Hayes had his downtimes, too.
"It's really weird, I was a runner at a restaurant. He runs the food out, doesn't even wait tables," he explains. "I had a bunch of odd jobs and had trouble paying my rent sometimes, but I was just determined. I moved here in '95, I did this short film that summer, the following I did 'Billy's Hollywood Screen Kiss,' then I got 'Will & Grace,' so literally somebody's watching for me," he says, shaking his head and exhaling.
"Somebody's really watching. My grandparents are very religious, very religious - extremely Irish Catholic - and I sometimes think they're doing all this. They must know somebody up there. It's so cliche to say this, but I am spiritual. I believe in people. I believe in the good and the bad in people, and that's what I'm connected to."