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Web Exclusive!
Break On Through
May 09, 2007
By Sarah Kuhn
Two years ago, aspiring actor Mark Hapka packed all of his belongings into a U-Haul and set out for Los Angeles. Hapka was living in Syracuse, NY, at the time, and wasn't exactly familiar with his new home city. "I didn't know anything about L.A., I didn't know anybody in L.A., and I just picked up and drove cross country, pulling the U-Haul behind my Maxima," he recalls, chuckling.
Hapka adapted quickly, however, enrolling in classes at Playhouse West and landing gigs in student films and music videos. After appearing in a showcase in December 2006, he also nabbed representation, signing with The Gage Group.
But it was acting in a nontraditional medium — the Internet — that has proven to be his biggest break yet. Hapka is the star of Ghost Whisperer: The Other Side, a popular original Web series that serves as a companion piece to the CBS hit show Ghost Whisperer. Hapka's character, the earthbound ghost Zach, will cross over to the television series in the season finale, airing May 11. The actor was granted Taft-Hartley status to appear in the episode and is now eligible to join the Screen Actors Guild. "That's a great thing, and I know it's a rare thing that happens for an actor, so I was very blessed and very lucky," he says.
Ghost Whisperer executive producers Kim Moses and Ian Sander always hoped to bring Zach to the television series — but they didn't let Hapka in on that up front. "We didn't want to put the pressure on him," recalls Moses. "Also we didn't know if it was going to work; you never know with new actors. But as soon as we put together the first webisode, we knew right away that this was going to be great, that he was very special."
In casting the webisodes, Moses, Sander, and CD Ricki Maslar were looking for a fresh face, an unknown actor with a sort of "It Guy" quality. "[Mark] has a magnetism to him," says Moses. "There's something very sincere about him, because he's just coming into the business. There's an innocence about him, but at the same time, he's not a baby. There's something about an actor--there's an inner light when you look into their face and into their eyes, and he's got that."
Hapka still can't quite believe he landed the part, especially considering that he almost didn't make the audition. The actor was visiting friends and family in New York when his agent called him about the gig and said, "'We have this audition for this web thing,'" Hapka remembers. "I just assumed it was something that was going to be put together and put on YouTube. They said, 'We have this timeslot for you,' and I said, 'I can't, I fly back into L.A. that day, and I won't have landed by that point."
Luckily, Hapka's reps managed to get his appointment pushed, and after a sleepless red-eye flight and a series of auditions, the role was his. One particular challenge the actor faced was the fast-paced nature of the webisodes: Each one is only a few minutes, and Hapka had to create a character that audiences would immediately connect with. "I read these sides and I was like, 'This is crazy,' because it had [Zach] popping all over the place, transporting himself, and all this stuff happening to [him] within the course of two pages," the actor remembers. "I thought, 'What they are looking for here? I assume they're looking for an actor who can express emotion quickly and get the point across quickly, because they're two-minute webisodes.' So when I did the audition, I pretty much played the whole scene in my imagination, and apparently it came across on my face, and that's what they were looking for."
Hapka will next be seen in the independent feature The Danny McKay Project, in which he plays the lead. And his Ghost Whisperer gig seems to have paved the way for a new caliber of auditions. "I've been going out a lot more," he says. "I've been going out for big roles in bigger films now--studio films. It's exciting. [Ghost Whisperer] started off a whole new level of what I'm going out for and what I'm going to be doing next. My credits are getting better, my résumé's looking better, and I've got great tape now for my demo reel."
As far as advice for up-and-coming actors, he says the most important thing is to stay focused. "In this business, it's all or nothing," he says. "You can't just try the acting thing; you've got to put everything into it. Stay involved in whatever you can, whether it's a play or a scene or a student film or a short film. Stay involved and keep working, and you're going to get better at your craft, and people are going to sense that in you and want to work with you."
Watch Ghost Whisperer: The Other Side at www.cbs.com/ghost.
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