Meat Loaf is still food for thought . . . he returns to acting and music. Taste it he

[AndyK]

Interesting article/interview here

This is the story of a little-known actor by the name of Michael Lee Aday. He was classically trained and began his career tackling the work of Shakespeare. But one day, a band in which the actor played took off, and Michael Lee Aday was joined by another persona. His name? Meat Loaf. Yes, Meatloaf, as in rock, roll and Bat Out of Hell.

Ah, but Mr. Aday never gave up his love of acting. He continues homing his talents with meticulously chosen roles . . . one of which is Citizen Jane, airing on the Hallmark Channel on Saturday, September 12). The film will have encore presentations on Saturday, September 12; Sunday, September 13; Friday, September 18 and Saturday, September 19. (Good timing! Mr. Loaf turns 62 on September 27, 2009.)

Citizen Jane is based on a true story about Jane Alexander (not the actress, though the actress playing Jane in the film is Ally Sheedy), who resolutely refused to allow the San Jose Police Department to give up on her aunt’s murder case. Mr. Loaf stars as Detective Jack Morris, a composite character based on three real-life cops, who helps Alexander finally crack the vexing case.

Still, one might still consider Mr. Aday a struggling actor, since it’s Mr. Loaf who gets all the, well, meaty press. Meat Loaf remains an iconic name in the history of rock ’n roll; his seminal ’70s album Bat Out of Hell, buoyed by the classic singles “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad” and “Paradise by the Dashboard Light,” sold 43 million copies worldwide, and remains one of the Top 5 bestselling albums of all time. This summer, Mr. Loaf went back into the studio, recording songs for a new CD. Its producer, Rob Cavallo, issues a friendly warning: “This record's going to shock people in terms of his musical style. It's got all of the drama of a Meat Loaf record, but it's totally contemporary."

And so the question begs to be asked: To be or not to be a music icon. “I like to get away from the Meat Loaf persona,” Aday simply says.

Indeed. The long, stringy hair from his halcyon rock-star days has been cut to something approaching a buzz cut; on the set of Citizen Jane, he’s not only serving as a co-star, but as the production’s quality-control expert and comic relief.

During filming a particular scene, he noted a lapse in logic in the script that resulted in a rewrite that fixed the problem; while that was going on, Mr. Loaf was regaling the film’s crew with a witty soliloquy on famous continuity errors in other movies. Best of all, he’s able to laugh at his mistakes: When he blows a take in the rewritten scene by hanging onto a prop phone for too long, he jokes, “That would’ve been good–if I had hung up the phone.”

No one really noticed, but Mr. Loaf cops to being his own toughest critic. “When I’m driving home, I always go, ‘God, I should’ve done it that way,’” he explains. And so, in between takes, he imagines himself driving home, “seeing myself being pissed off,” he says, in order to better calibrate his performances.

Tell him When it’s suggested that such behavior is called perfectionism, Meat Loaf wryly begs to differ: “No,” he quips, “it’s called being a nut.”

Before his rock superstar days, Mr. Loaf was an actor, appearing in legendary theater producer Joe Papp’s Shakespeare in the Park in the early ’70s and appearing in such films as in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Fight Club and Wayne's World, in which the big man shone as Tiny the bouncer. He recently guest starred in the most buzzed-about episode of House, in which series regular Kutner (Kal Penn) committed suicide.

“I read the script and thought, ‘Oh, this is a water-cooler episode,’” Mr. Loaf says. “Even if it overshadows me, that’s still okay. People might not initially remember I was in it, but I like that.”

Katie Jacobs, one of the executive producers of House, says having Mr. Loaf on the series was “thrilling and kind of surreal. I had not known he began his career as a formally trained actor. The amount of vulnerability he displayed was really touching and he was so willing to open himself up and share all that real emotion.”

So why doesn’t Mr. Loaf use his real name for such serious acting assignments?

“I’ve tried that before,” he says, reeling off a list of attempts that date back to 1972, when he did As You Like It in Shakespeare in the Park. “I said to him, ‘Joe, this is Shakespeare! Maybe we should use my real name.’ And Joe said, ‘What? You think if Bill Shakespeare were alive today, he wouldn’t use Meat Loaf?’ And he just walked away from me,” Mr. Loaf recalls.

He tried again in 1992 with the Steve Martin film Leap of Faith. “We’re at a screening, the credits are rolling and it says, ‘Michael Lee Aday,’” Mr. Loaf remembers. “Steve leaps up and says, ‘Who’s Michael Lee Aday?’ When it was explained to him, Martin said, ‘What are you people, nuts? That’s Meat Loaf–you put Meat Loaf up there in the credits!’”

Mr. Loaf goes on to recount the same thing happened with the 2001 film Focus–even though he appeared alongside Oscar nominees William H. Macy, Laura Dern and David Paymer, Meat Loaf was considered a more prestigious moniker than Michael Lee Aday.

“Every time we’ve tried to avoid the name ‘Meat Loaf,’ it hasn’t worked,” he says, simultaneously amused and proud.

[Elijah's way]

Thanks for the info.