Adrian Bellani: Nice To Meet You
It is not easy to replace the likes of fan favorite Jesse Metcalfe, but NuMiguel Adrian Bellani refused to let his predecessor’s popularity intimidate him.
“There wasn’t any pressure, because I never saw Jesse on the show,” Bellani insists. “I also never wanted to follow his steps and be one of the big stars of the show. I just wanted to make the character my own and not try to copy. It was easier on me than Mark (Cameron Wystrach), because I didn’t have to fill in the shoes from one episode to the next, like he did with Fox.”
It also helped that Bellani, who was born in Miami but raised in El Salvador, finds the character so relatable. “We’re very similar,” he says. “I come from a huge Roman Catholic Latino family that’s very close. He’s quiet, but he’s very passionate about what he does. He goes for what he wants and doesn’t stop until he gets it.” The same can be said for Bellani, who first left El Salvador and his family behind to attend college in Texas and then, in February 2005, to make it in Hollywood.
“It was a dream and an adventure I was pursuing,” he recalls. “It gets lonely, but I’m glad my family gets to see the show back home. People from a small country like that don’t realize what’s it like to be out here. They don’t know what it means to ‘go to auditions,’ ‘get a callback’ or ‘be testing today.’ It’s important for them to be able to see what I’ve achieved, because they’ve supported me so much.”
Truth be told, when Bellani arrived in L.A. he didn’t have much experience with those Hollywood terms either. His agents initially signed him as a “developing client,” because he hadn’t taken any acting classes and had no experience aside from modeling. Luckily, he’s a quick study and, less than a year later, he landed his second audition: PASSIONS.
Since then, he’s been getting in step with life in Harmony. “It’s hectic,” he marvels. “It’s a lot of work. You get your material a couple days in advance, but when you have a storyline like Miguel/Kay/Fox, that’s building up and is going to get juicy, we’re working almost every day. With English as my second language, I’m [glued to my script] the night before.”
He is usually the first to clock in, except on the rare occasion when Juliet Mills (Tabitha) beats him to it. “I’m usually here at 6:30,” he reveals. “One of my biggest fears is showing up late or missing something. I have anxiety attacks the night before. It’s always been that way. If I have a big day, I always wake up early to try to be there on time. Mornings are also a nice time, when I can be by myself and Mark’s not playing guitar.”
Not that he objects to the musical habits of dressing roommate Wystrach, who is likely to strum his guitar throughout conversations and also uses the instrument to get into the emotional mood of upcoming scenes. “It’s great,” Bellani raves. “The first time I heard him, he was playing a Johnny Cash song. That was awesome. I don’t know anything about playing a guitar.”
Bellani does, however, know something about speaking English. It may be his second language, but it isn’t too far behind his Spanish. “I grew up speaking both, but when I’m with my family I speak Spanish and when I’m breaking down my scripts, I usually do it in Spanish,” reveals Bellani, who went to an American school in El Salvador. “I can go from English to Spanish in a beat. I’m actually trilingual. I speak some conversational Italian, too.”
The only thing he hasn’t managed to get a handle on is that dressing room. “I need to get some decorations in here, because the room is very depressing,” he admits. “I’m still trying to settle into it, but otherwise, I’m doing great here. I’m working hard and having fun.”
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