LOCAL ACTOR APPEARS ON “LAW AND ORDER”

  by

 Joanna Wilson

            You’d expect to see an actor or two walking along the streets of New York, Hollywood, and even London.  But in Bucks County?  Well, you might if you walk along  Eagle Lane in Langhorne.  Because that’s where Joseph Halsey lives.  And Joseph Halsey is an actor who has appeared in Law and Order, One Life to Live, and The Cosby Show, among others.  And, ladies, he is one handsome guy.  Dark hair, dark eyes, something of a petulant lipline, and a physique you’d look at twice, possibly due to weight training and study of the Martial Arts.  But what may be a surprise is—this actor is really nice!

            Halsey grew up in Trenton, “a good neighborhood, with an Italian mother and a Italian / Irish father “who danced on American Bandstand  in the ‘fifties’.  It was a modest living,” he said, looking  into the distance. “We didn’t have everything we wanted but we had everything we needed.”

            Halsey didn’t set out o be an actor.  “In high school, I wanted to be a musician. But in college, I realized I’d have to know a lot more about reading and writing music

to get anywhere.” 

He played guitar and base as part of a rock band.  (Other musical talents include pianist, composer, lyricist, and vocalist).  He still dabbles when he gets the chance.  Which isn’t too often, now.  Why?  Acting took the lion’s share of his attention and “became an obsession.  I guess the bug bit me after I’d been on stage and got a reaction from people playing a character that someone would relate to.” 

            While living in Florida with his family during the 90’s , he attended the Florida School of the Arts, a school structured like Julliard.  “Only about twenty people were accepted into each curriculum.  I chose that school because performing began as soon as you got there.”  Students received their academics from the Florida University, which was connected to the school. 

            Though he came from a non-acting family, his father deferred to young Halsey and, after taking out a loan, told his son that if he graduated with a B or better average, he would pay off the loan.  But, his father continued, if young Halsey didn’t “make the grade”, then he himself would pay it.  “I made sure I maintained that  B or better,” he said, and laughed.

            He learned that it was necessary to “get into the head of the character I was playing.  In college, I played Alan Strange (the lead) in Equus, and that role had an emotional life to it that was exhausting.  I had a hard time getting into his head, but an even harder time coming out.”  The character, he said, had no idea how to behave.  He

was honest, free-spirited, simple but complicated.  “I got most of the meaning of what

that kid was all about when the doctor said, ‘I have to fix you but I don’t want to. 

The  role forced me to look at my own innocence, my own spirit.”

            At the Florida School of the Arts, Halsey studied Stanislavsky’s technique of method acting, probably first brought to public attention by James Dean.  Basically, it requires the individual to revisit the emotional aspects of personal experiences in order to play a role at a deeper level. 

What you do, Halsey went on, is call on personal life-learned experiences and the emotions that went along with those experiences, then transfer these emotions—anger, love, sadness, joy—to the characters you play.

            “You learn to focus your thoughts in a certain direction,” Halsey said.  “This can take a long time to catch on.  To recollect past experiences for the benefit of the role you’re playing, you have to learn to relax your thoughts.  That’s where meditation comes into play.”  He credits his continuing study of Martial Arts as a way of life in helping him achieve ability to meditate.

            After two years at the Florida School of the Arts, he went to the Acting Studio in New York where he studied the Meisner Technique.  Meisner studied with Stanislovsky, but later believed that Stanislovsky  didn’t concentrate on the essence of a scene itself.  Said Halsey: “Instead of turning inward, as Stanislovsky taught, Meisner felt that the student should turn outward.  In other words, you didn’t do anything unless the scene called for it.”  After studying both techniques, Halsey found the middle ground to be the best place for him, which is probably true for most actors.

            After college, Halsey moved to Manhattan and “got a job waiting tables just like

other actors.”  He started hard-core training doing off-off Broadway and off-Broadway

parts.  Off-off Broadway, he explained, feature independent grass-roots productions.  “Plays from the younger, hungry go-getters, or the experimental and new-writer plays, or plays that put a twist on an old favorite.” 

Off-Broadway shows are those preparing to go to Broadway.  Technically, they are building a following, getting a reputation as small theater but planning to get into the thick of things.

            His early appearances included parts in Stock ( Mortimer Brewster in Arsenic and Old Lace, and Conrad Birdie in Bye Bye Birdie, both at the Palm Bay Players in Palm Bay FL.)

Regional theater parts included Chris Keller in All My Sons, and Sal Lombardi in Pizza by the Slice, both at the Florida School of the Arts.

Some of his Off Broadway roles were Irish Ain’t Smiling at The Vineyard Theater, The Insanity of Mary Girard at the Sanford Meisner Theater, Desert Storm:  The First 28 Days at the Playwright’s Horizon, all in New York City.

            What do you do when nerves get to you and you know you could “mess up, big time”?  “I’ve seen people get so nervous they do mess up,” he said.  “When I first started, I got so nervous I would obsess over it.  I don’t now, at least as much. Meditation can help you focus.  Nerves go away once you get lost in the role and you understand this is your job, your livelihood.  Then you get into your character and work begins to flow.”

Here, Halsley looks out through his dining room window to a brand new wood fence measuring 6 ft high that he installed, “mostly to keep my dogs, Tugg, an eight-

month, ninety-pound Mastiff and Hunter, a smaller Bichon in my sight.”  Using the fence

fence as a comparison, he said, “Before beginning , I felt a lot of anxiety because of the size of the job.  But I focused on the work, put it up piece by piece, and things got easier.  I don’t think acting is any different from any other job.  The important thing to remember is to keep going, persevere even though you aren’t getting the jobs at the moment.  They’ll come your way if you give then time.”

            Halsey, who prefers dramatic roles, has been acting professionally about eight years.  “I get called for firefighter/cop roles, and that’s exciting.  I enjoy that because it’s closer to reality, to what everyone can relate to.”

            He has appeared on NBC’s Law and Order, Law and Order,  SVU,  and Law and Order, Criminal Intent (where he plays a police officer), ABC’s  One Life to Live, FOX Network’s America’s Most Wanted, and a recurring part on NBC’s The Cosby Show.

            He has come to know all the players in the shows including the leads.  When Jerry (Orbach) passed away, everyone just seemed to stop dead.  Some just cried.”

            “It’s fun,” he said, “when I get hired as a musician and an actor.  I played a bass player for a singer on One Life to Live for awhile.”

            And do actors who have, you might say, “arrived”  treat the “up and

coming” with hauteur?  Not at all, he said.  “They remember being in the same position  themselves.  I’ve come to the point where I can sit in my trailer while stand-in’s or extras reposition lights on the set where I’ll be standing.  I remember doing that starting out.  As you go through each phase of this business, you don’t forget being there yourself.  I don’t think people change when they get work.  If they’re decent people before they get there, they’re the same after they get there.  If they’re not before…” he said, trailing off.

           Though wanting to be a musician, he rarely if ever does musicals.  “I prefer drama.  I could do musical theater on a regional level but the musicals in Manhattan use dancers and singers who are the best in the world.”  His last musical theater audition was for Tommy in NYC, when he realized he’d have to start studying all over again if he wanted to be marketable.  “I didn’t want to do that.  I enjoy doing drama.”

            What about learning lines?  Doesn’t it take hours of memorizing?  “First of all,” he said, “I don’t have long term memory for anything.  I can’t learn my lines until the day before we shoot.  But the way television works, you don’t do a whole scene at a time.  Everything is done in sections where you say about five or ten lines at a time.  Then it’s edited and put together.  Besides that, your lines could be changed at the last minute.  It’s

just a matter of picking it up and doing it.  I think it’s like anything else; the more you do it, the easier it becomes.

            Perhaps harder than learning lines is learning the character.  “A casting person once told me that every role is you,” Halsey said.  “What you bring to it is the best you  that you are.”

             Explaining further, he said that you’re aren’t a good actor until you’re the best you that you can be.  Once you bring your point of view to the role, you make it an

extension of yourself.  If someone else played the part, he would bring himself to the

role.

            Right now, the sky in Halsey’s future looks sunny.  He hopes to take part in different aspects of the creative process—from continuing to work in front of the camera

to working behind it, as well. “Maybe some day I’ll try my hand at either writing or

directing,” he said.

            Right now, he’s happy as part of the big wheel, as he calls it.  “Everyone on the set has a different job to do.  If one person doesn’t do his/her job, the wheel breaks down.  None of us want to see that happen.  So, we do our job and hope for the best.”

With Joseph Halsey, that comes easy.