LiveWorld Transcripts

Boxtop presents

Actor Chris Eigeman
"Mr. Jealousy"

June 03, 1998

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Trisha: I'd like to know which is harder - being on stage or filming a movie?

Chris Eigeman: Filming a movie. The experience of being on stage is so immediate and so rewarding and when you're doing a film it's very easy to get bogged down and exhausted because all you're doing is acting in little snippets. If you get tired or distracted, you don't have an audience to pull you back.

Katre: Do you have any idea's you would like to try writing wise for theater or movies?

Chris Eigeman: I would love to write The Great Action Picture, something like The Great Escape or The Sting, one of those movies where you don't feel cheap after watching it.

Karina: What has been the hardest thing in your Career? What has been the easiest?

Chris Eigeman: The easiest, being able to work with my friends, both Noah and Whit. The hardest has probably been when I did my first movie, which was Metropolitan. I would get lots of scripts for obnoxious rich guys who the audience would just hate. I guess the hardest thing was saying no to those and knowing that I was sort of being typecast.

Stardust: With notoriety comes a loss of privacy, how do you handle that, what do you do to get away from it all?

Chris Eigeman: I think if you become really, really famous that becomes a problem. I'm not that famous, so when people recognize me they think something like "Didn't we go to school together,” " were you on my soccer team" and not did I see you in the movies? So far it hasn't been a problem, except that I have a lot of people who went to school with me.

Entity: What's a typical day like for you?

Chris Eigeman: If I'm not making a movie, I get up and answer email, read the papers, make phone calls and walk my dog. If I am making a movie, I go make the movie, and hope I get home in time to walk my dog. I have a German Shepherd

Travelgal: Do you travel, and if so, where are your favorite places and why?

Chris Eigeman: Because I live in New York and I end up doing a lot of jobs in Los Angeles, I spend more time on planes that I want to. So I rarely take vacations that involve flying anywhere but recently I did take a vacation to Saint Bartz. I'd never been to the Caribbean. My wife loved it, I'm not really a beach person. I could have had the same experience staying at home, turning up the heat, and throwing money out the window every 30 seconds. The island is beautiful.

Mario: Do you ever find yourself having trouble getting "out of" character when the day is over?

Chris Eigeman: For movies, no, because it's also so piecemeal. For plays yes, I can remember almost all the lines for every play I've ever done. I can sometimes be walking along and sometimes start doing the entire play, that's a little strange. But I try to keep it a sort of nine to five thing, like it's just a job. Some people are lawyers, some are piano tuners, and some are actors.

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