Full Speed Ahead
There’s an awful lot going on inside Ricky Paull Goldin‘s head. Whether it’s his acting methodology (as Gus on GUIDING LIGHT), his charitable causes, or even the prospect of fatherhood, Goldin offers up deliberate answers that reveal he’s thought everything through — which doesn’t leave a whole lotta time for much else. “I only sleep 4 1/2 hours a night,” Goldin offers matter-of-factly, as he tinkers with his cigarette lighter. “That is about as much as my brain will let me. I could take a sleeping pill, I guess, but I don’t want to do that.”No, there’s too much to do for Goldin to sleep the day away — especially days he gets to work with co-star and on-screen love interest Beth Ehlers (Harley), whom he’s often referred to as Cybill Shepherd to his Bruce Willis (a la MOONLIGHTING). “Couples that can go the distance — this is something that has been working [as a story] since the beginning of time. It also makes your favorite next-door neighbor couple interesting. I have a deep love for Beth Ehlers. It is mostly my attraction to her talent. The speed, and how she delivers with accuracy — she is like a sharp-shooter. This business, our medium, is so underrated, man! So I hold her in very high regard. I don’t want anything, or anybody, to take her away from me right now.”Goldin recalls the first time they met. “It was screen-test day. I didn’t know who she was; I didn’t know the show very well. I thought that she could be difficult to work with. But that is just to people who don’t know her or don’t realize that she is very good at what she does. You’d better be as good or better.”Goldin bent his character to his own liking for the audition. “He was supposed to be a cop, but he was supposed to be a clean-cut, all-American jock-type that had graduated from Quantico and was now in the FBI, but he couldn’t boil water. I went in wearing all black and I hadn’t shaved for a week. I didn’t think I was going to get the role anyway, so I wanted to do my own thing that would make me happy.”That doesn’t mean Goldin didn’t take the audition seriously. “I knocked around with an FBI acquaintance of mine in L.A. a couple of weeks before I came out here to prepare. I put myself on tape in my own house and I screen-tested myself about 50 times to see what I liked: what kind of breath I would be taking, what kind of walk I would have. I came up with all this stuff I stole from COLUMBO with Peter Falk, BARETTA with Robert Blake, Robert Conrad from THE WILD WILD WEST. I am an on-camera thief!”
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