The thankless roles John Goodman was ashamed of playing: “It tore me up”
When John Goodman first left St Louis, Missouri, to pursue acting in New York City, it was 1975, and he had just $1,000 to his name. He found an apartment in Hell’s Kitchen and took on bartending and waiting jobs to pay the bills while learning his craft in the nearby theatre district.
In those early years, Goodman admits he had no plans to become a film and television actor. Instead, his first love was the theatre, so it was a dream come true when he began securing Off-Broadway roles. However, he quickly realised that it wouldn’t be feasible to make a living solely from theatre, so he needed a more reliable source of income.
Against his artistic impulses, Goodman began looking for acting jobs in commercials, voiceover work, and dinner theatre gigs. It was the commercial work that took off, and soon he was playing salt-of-the-earth guys in adverts for Dunkin’ Donuts, Burger King, Mennen Skin Bracer aftershave, Gillette, and A&W root beer. “I did anything I could put my hands on,” Goodman once told the New York Times. “I didn’t have any fallback skills. Eventually, I got my Equity card and started making enough money.”
While Goodman was happy that he could support himself with acting, he started to feel resentful that his only means of making money was by hawking products on TV. That wasn’t what had compelled him to move to the city to become an actor, and it didn’t help that his friends at the time were primarily working Broadway and film actors.
“I felt terrible because I was making dough doing a lot of commercials,” he admitted with a sigh. “That’s how I was making my living: smiling and eating hamburgers.”
Amazingly, Goodman was so bent out of shape about what he perceived as selling out his artistic ideals that he would actively try to tank auditions for adverts. He’d arrive hungover from a night on the tiles, put minimal effort into his performance, and act like he was above the whole endeavour. Yet, somehow, this seemed to work in his favour, and he admitted, “I’d always get the job. It seemed to fascinate those guys that I didn’t care.”
At his core, Goodman confessed, “I was ashamed of doing commercials.”
He had real artistic aspirations and felt they were going to waste, and this made him angry and dissatisfied with his lot in life. Fast forward several decades, though, and Goodman knows his youthful indignation at being ‘forced’ to accept commercial work amounted to little more than “lazy perfectionism.” Sure, at the time, it tore him up emotionally, but with the benefit of hindsight, he realised he was raking himself over the coals for no reason.
“It was so unnecessary,” he confessed. “Such a waste of anger.”
Ultimately, as the years went on and he gained more experience in the industry, Goodman saw that working in these commercials taught him a lot about acting. He also realised he wasn’t angry at being forced to make them, but rather frightened that they would be all his career would amount to. However, after enjoying a decades-long career on stage, film and television, he can now admit, “I was taking myself just a little too seriously.”
