Sean Paul Murphy: Master Thespian

Yours truly still waiting for his star
on the Hollywood Walk of Fame

Unlike most people in the movie and/or television industry, I never had a great desire to appear before the camera. I do remember trying to get in a talent show in grade school. My friend Bob Burgess and I were big Laurel and Hardy fans, and he wrote a sketch in their vein. I played Hardy to his Laurel. We tried out for the talent show, but we lost to people lip syncing to records. (Yes, I'm still bitter about that!)  I never tried out for plays in high school. I rarely attended them either, despite the fact that I started writing them myself.

Once I started attending casting sessions as a producer at Smith Burke & Azzam, I saw just how hard how it was to be a good actor. Not only did you have to deliver the lines convincingly, you also had to know how to handle your entire body in the process.  Especially the hands. When I would try acting, I always found myself worrying about my hands.  They seemed to have a mind of their own.

Still, despite my wayward appendages, there was a time when my friends would often put me in commercials. Not surprisingly, considering my build and personality, I was usually cast as the jovial, heavyset guy. The commercials came at a rather fortuitous time in my life. Most of my commercial work was done at the dawn of the Age of Internet Dating. A couple of these long-airing spots gave the online girls a chance to see me in action on television. That was essential since the first picture I would send them of myself was the one below. (I felt if they would still go out with me after that, I had it made.)

My Internet dating photo. To quote Charlie Sheen:  "Winning!"

I didn't take my acting career seriously enough to even keep copies of all of my spots, but here are a few that I managed to find. The first one is a promo from WBFF Channel 45 in Baltimore. The spot, directed by my friend Chuck Regner, was a spoof of a popular radio station commercial which was syndicated all around the country.  He needed a heavyset guy who could dance, but he settled for me. (My dancing days were ahead of me.  That's how I met my lovely wife Deborah.)



This next commercial for Towson Towson Center, directed by David Butler and written by John Patterson, actually gave me a line.  I'm the guy who says, "You should see this place."  By the way, this spot is a good example of that hands thing I was talking about.



Director David Butler also gave me a starring role in this spot for the Adventist Healthcare System. They didn't have a harness for me to swing upside down in, so they just tied a rope to my leg. I didn't enjoy that part, but I got to keep the boots.



John Patterson wrote this spot for the Baltimore Zoo during his tenure at W.B. Doner.  This time I got to push a big ball of yarn for the big cats.



My commercial acting career ultimately petered out after I was cast in a national spot for Waccamaw stores by my friend Pam Poertner. I was my third Taft Hartley spot and I would have to join the Screen Actors Guild in order to appear in another one. I opted against joining the union. I didn't feel I could recoup the union fee without actually soliciting work, and I was too busy as a writer and editor to do that.  Of course had I known the union card could get you in the movies for free during Oscar season, I would have done it....

BTW,  you don't have to be a member of SAG to read my tale of first faith and first love and how the two became almost fatally intertwined:

My novel Chapel Street is now available! You can currently buy the Kindle and paperback at Amazon and the Nook, paperback and hardcover at Barnes & Noble.

Learn more about the book, click Here.

Listen to me read some chapters here:

Chapel Street - Prologue - My Mother
Chapel Street - Chapter 1 - RestingPlace.com
Chapel Street - Chapter 2 - Elisabetta
Chapel Street - Chapter 3 - The Upload
Chapel Street - Chapter 4 - The Kobayashi Maru

Let's stay in touch:

Follow me on Twitter: SeanPaulMurphy
Follow me on Facebook: Sean Paul Murphy

Follow me on Instagram: Sean Paul Murphy

Subscribe on YouTube: Sean Paul Murphy