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chimney, they had someone else playing the part of the real Santa Claus, because he looked more the part.”
Those nerves were clearly still with Martinet as he took his first serious steps into the world of acting more than a decade later, but there was clearly something which grabbed his audience’s attention, even if it was nothing more than a shaky leg.
“I remember our first monologue was from a Spoon River anthology, it’s a series of monologues about people who are dead and they are coming back to tell their excruciating tale about how they died – it’s the most miserable piece of theatre in the world – but everyone gets to do a monologue.
“So I said ‘Forget It!’ I left the University.”
Perhaps an extreme and abrupt end to potential career in law, but after several months of soul-searching and recharging of the batteries, a chance conversation with an old friend provided an unexpected change of direction by suggesting he take acting classes.
“At first I thought it was the most ridiculous thing I had ever heard in my life, I am excruciatingly shy,” Martinet says.
“Even in fifth grade at school, I couldn’t conceive of standing in front of people. I had this incredibly deep voice for a six- year-old, I would often answer the phone and people would think I was the man of the house.
“It was my voice which got the me the role of Santa Claus, although admittedly I was only his voice as he was inside the
“My monologue was some guy who burned to death in a warehouse fire and I remember standing in front of the class and I am sweating profusely. I started my monologue ‘Oh yes, I died a fiery miserable death, blah, blah, blah’ and my right leg was shaking so severely, bouncing up and down, I thought that my knee was going to hit me in the face, so I put all my weight on my right knee and then my left knee started bouncing up and down too. I tried to separate my legs as wide as I could, without looking like I was doing the splits and put my weight evenly between them, but then both my legs were shaking. I must have looked like a guy who was bouncing up and down on a rocky road.
“I don’t know how I finished my monologue, but everyone was ‘Oh that was fantastic. You’re the only person of all the people who wasn’t nervous.’”
From this nervy start, Charles progressed to more serious undertakings and it was a brush with Shakespeare which really set Martinet to thinking he had the prospect of a career on the stage.
“We had the College play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and I wanted to audition for Oberon, that’s the coolest part to play.
“After doing my audition I knew that I was the best. I thought that I was going to play this part, it’s going to be fantastic, it’s going to be great, I know just what I am going to do with this line and that line and I know just what I am going to do there. But I didn’t get the part! I not only didn’t get Oberon, I got absolutely nothing in the play and I thought, ‘Oh my goodness’.
“Somehow that set a fire under me, a passionate fire, ‘I’m going to get some acting experience, I’m going to get these jobs”.
The passion for acting saw Charles audition for an apprenticeship programme with a local repertory company in the San Francisco Bay area and after being denied once with Oberon it proved to be second time lucky.
“I went and auditioned with the monologue from Oberon in Midsummer Night’s Dream. I was against the same exact people who had actually got the part of Oberon and all the parts in Midsummer Night’s Dream and I got the apprenticeship.
“So I went zipping along to England, to the Drama Studio of London where I studied being a professional actor and from there I spent the next ten years doing 75 plays and bouncing around the Bay area acting in theatre.
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