Brittany Underwood: A Delicate Balance
I caught up with Brittany Underwood (Langston) on the ONE LIFE TO LIVE set the day Timbaland was taping a performance at Capricorn. Though Underwood wasn’t in the Capricorn scenes, she did come in to take a peek at the music mogul.
Underwood is a college sophomore who juggles a contract role (with a storyline that’s edging onto the front burner) with a full course load. She lives on campus and commutes to work, but snatched some time for an interview.
Our conversation started from her beginning. “My mother is from Colombia, my father is from the United States,” she shared. “We lived in a very small town in New Jersey, so everyone knew everyone else. I didn’t have a lot of friends growing up. I got teased. I guess I was geeky and nerdy and I kept to myself. Everyone in my town was WASPy. My mother was from Colombia, so I had some Latin culture under my belt.
“At first I wanted to be a singer like Britney Spears,” Underwood recounted. “When I was little I did plays in the community theater. I was in Sleeping Beauty and then Snow White. I was a little woodland creature, a chipmunk, but I did the singing for Snow White. I did plays in middle school and high school.” And so a love affair was born.
“I always knew I wanted to be an actress but I didn’t think it was that realistic — thinking I would do a high school play and someone would come by and see me. I needed to figure it out. So I was praying: ‘What am I supposed to do? Give me a sign.’ Literally two days later I was listening to the radio and I heard this advertisement asking ‘Have you ever wanted to be on TV?’ It was for a seminar, ‘Breaking Into Hollywood.'”
Underwood took the course, participated in the showcase, got a call from a casting agent and booked an agent.
ONE LIFE TO LIVE is by far Underwood’s biggest (and steadiest) gig, though her resume is impressive for a youngster. Her first job was on LAW & ORDER: SVU. She had a bit part in the as-yet unreleased movie Margaret (starring Anna Paquin). And she spent part of last summer performing in the Shakespeare in the Park production of Brecht’s Mother Courage and her Children. She had one solo the show, which starred a couple of actors named Meryl Steep and Kevin Kline.
Not bad.
Underwood did her share of singing in OLTL’s “Prom Night: The Musical” storyline, which sparked some fan frenzy over Langston’s love/hate relationship with Markko (Jason Tam). The characters are now a couple, but the squabbling continues.
A full-time acting job sounds like enough to keep anyone busy, but when I met up with Underwood she was talking about a calculus exam. “My school makes a lot of exceptions,” she explains. “I’m so grateful, otherwise I probably couldn’t do both. I’m taking one class as an independent study. I’ve made arrangements with my teachers that if I miss a class I can get the notes online. I took my calculus exam during my teacher’s office hours. It’s working so far,” Underwood said gingerly, as if not to jinx it. “I have to stay on top of everything because if I say, ‘Oh, I’ll do that tomorrow,’ then everything builds up.”
Underwood still has time for fun. She has a steady beau (who was with her during the Timbaland taping), so life is not all work and more work. “I love campus life,” beamed the actress. “It’s so much fun being able to go at 3 o’clock to your neighbor’s room and ask for something or talk. It’s a cool little community. Everyone is going through the same things; you are all the same age.”
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