KANSAS CITY STAR: Anson Mount: Maybe not the best-looking guy in the room, but that's OK
By LUAINE LEE
Oct. 31, 2011
Most actors wouldn't admit it, but for at least one, life was just too easy. Anson Mount was kicking back in Los Angeles, auditioning for roles and soaking in his suntan the natural way.
"It was so easy to just roll out of my bed and go for a jog on the beach and go to an audition and go to the beach, it was a lovely lifestyle. But I wasn't struggling against anything," he says, perched on the corner of a banquette in a cafe here.
With all that ease, something had to change, he says. "I moved back to New York City from Los Angeles a few years ago ... To move back to New York from a place that's so comfortable, that's hard. It was time to get back to where I had a community, and it was time to stop competing for work I was not interested in. I just felt bored," he sighs...
... He may not be the best-looking guy in the room, but he's the man you want to watch in AMC's rollicking Western, "Hell on Wheels," premiering Sunday.
The network that already dished up "Broken Trail" to massive appeal has done it again with this saga about the building of the transcontinental railroad and the tent city (dubbed Hell on Wheels) that accompanied it across the plains.
Mount ("Conviction," "Crossroads") plays a Johnny Reb fueled by revenge for his wife's murder who winds up foreman on the railroad line with all the wrong enemies.
It's a gritty role that suited the man with the steely eyes and trimmed beard. "It's hard for me to do anything unless I put myself into it 150 percent, so it's all or nothing for me," he says.
That doesn't mean he's a perfectionist. "You give it 100 percent then you have to let it go. I wouldn't be sane if I were a perfectionist," he says. "You have to be able to get to the point as a professional to walk into an audition and throw your pages into the trash and go on. Otherwise you'll go nuts..."
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