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Take Five?

Soap Opera Digest: What makes you see red?
Brian Gaskill: I don’t like when I see red, so I try to avoid it. Digest: Okay, who do you envy?
Gaskill: These are ugly questions! [Laughs] No, let me think about it.

Digest: Who do you most admire?
Gaskill: Presently, my wife, for going through being pregnant.

Digest: When were you or are you happiest?

Gaskill: I’m more content now, but as far as when I’m happiest … I have no idea.Digest: If you weren’t an actor what would you be?

Gaskill: Among the people who know me it’s common knowledge, but I would be a teacher. I would teach acting, but not in the sense of an acting studio with acting students. I want to work with high-school kids. I would be a theater acting teacher, but hopefully helping them through that time in their life that I think is really important. Digest: What profession could you never do?

Gaskill: Soldier. It’s awful, and there might be someone out there who would see an actor say something like that and think it’s un-American. More power to the people who can do it, but I’m a pacifist and I’m scared and I couldn’t. Under the circumstances of having to fight for my home — if it was face-to-face, I might fight to survive and I might be okay, but to make it a calculated thing … I could never do it. If I were protecting my family, it might be a different thing. Not
everybody’s meant to do it, and I think everybody should find their true calling in life and be able to follow it. That’s the biggest blessing anybody could have. My calling is definitely not fighting [laughs].Digest: How do you relax, or what is a perfect day for you?
Gaskill: I’ve just been working now, so that’s where my mindset is at. What I’m most looking forward to is I want to meet my baby and have her outside of my wife for her own comfort. And to have that family. I want
to discover what my perfect day would be with them. Right now everything’s in limbo. Whatever I’ve done in the past doesn’t even matter anymore because everything’s about to change. [Daughter Alabama Zoe was born on September 26, a few weeks after the interview.]Digest: What movie role would you have loved to play?

Gaskill: Years ago, the role that I always said I coveted was James Spader‘s in Sex, Lies, and Videotape. That was so different than
anything I’d ever seen. I loved the role [Graham] and what it represented. What I feel now is … the type of character I would really love to play — and as it is I’m 35 years old and still get seen younger and I’m still not being rushed to auditions playing fathers — yet I could be the father of a 16-year-old child. But instead of having a
plethora of different, great roles and maybe really only enjoying a couple of them — which you find out in a biography at the end of [actors’] lives that they really only liked playing that one role — I would love to be remembered, if I ever had the chance to be remembered, as somebody like Michael Landon, and do like a LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE for years. There are two avenues that I would like my career to go as an actor if I continued acting: One would be to be a figure in people’s lives, like Michael Landon. The other would be somebody like Johnny Depp. If I were to have that successful a career, I would want to make character choices closer to where Johnny Depp has gone…. [He winces] I so hate talking! I’m getting to the point where I’m hating listening to myself. Like, “Let me talk about myself more! I really see myself….” [He rolls his eyes, exasperated.]Digest: No, I’m interested!
Gaskill: Well, I hope to see myself as a strange combination of Johnny Depp and Jimmy Stewart.Digest: Okay, speaking of Michael Landon, have you gotten to work with his daughter, Jennifer Landon [Gwen]?

Gaskill: I haven’t worked with her at all. I would love to work with her. I have this fantasy idea in my head that [BJ] ends up going to the nuthouse and something happens to Gwen that makes her go crazy, like she
finds out that the baby isn’t hers that puts her over the edge and in the nuthouse, and then our characters develop this brother/sister relationship and it sort of ends up actually redeeming him in some way. Who knows? But she’s definitely, as far as watching her as an actor,
she’s probably my favorite actor on the show.

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