06: WGE MAG
“I had this passion for acting, but regional theatre can be incredibly challenging in terms of your own personal finances.
“A friend of mine called me up and asked me if I would like to audition for a corporate video and I’m like ‘Sure, what’s a corporate video?’ He said: ‘A corporate video is where you do a video for a corporation’ and I was ‘Ok, I’ll do a corporate video.’
“Luckily for me the first 10 or 15 that I auditioned for I got and I got to do lots of great parts. Aliens, martians, nerds, scientists, you get to do everything and they pay you more in one day than you made in two weeks in the theatre as a professional.”
So almost like Mario in the Mushroom Kingdom, Charles had completed one level, before he had progessed to the next and it wouldn’t be long before experience took him up a platform once again where there were even more coins to be had.
“I happened to do a job which was the American Gothic painting for Orchard Supply Hardware, and after doing that job the producer asked me whether I did voiceover, I said, ‘Of course I do, what’s a voiceover?’
“I made as much doing the voiceover as I did standing around with a pitchfork all day.
“The economies went bad, corporate videos stopped but then trade shows suddenly opened the doors and I was doing a massive number of trade shows and that’s the best. I had an ear prompter, I can record absolutely anything in there and all I do is listen and repeat. It’s a great exercise in being mindless but looking extremely intelligent whilst you do it.”
So from traditional theatre to corporate videos to voiceover work to tradeshows – it wasn’t long before he was invited to what was to become the most important audition of his life. Though at the time, Martinet wasn’t quite aware of how big a deal this chance audition was.
Charles explains the beginnings of what would be a fateful audition: “A friend called me up and told me that there was an audition for a trade show in Las Vegas and that I should go and do it. I said, ‘My friend, I’m a professional actor, I never crash auditions, I get invited to them… what’s the address?’
“It’s the only audition I have ever crashed in my entire life, I can’t believe that I did that.”
“It’s the only audition I have ever crashed in my entire life, I can’t believe that I did that.
“I was enjoying a beautiful day at the beach and I drove down to the South of Market Street in San Francisco and I am late and I knock on the door and the producer and the camera guy are on their way out of the door with the camera in the bag, they’re walking out and it’s like ‘Oh hi, can I please audition for this?’ The producer looks at his watch, looks at me irritated, looks at his watch, looks at the cameraman and says ‘Ok, come on inside, we’ll set the camera up. You’re an Italian plumber from Brooklyn, so make up an accent and you are going to be having these things glued to your face, they’re contacts that when you move your face, that’s going to move these rollerballs which communicates with a computer and that in real time is supposed to make this plumber guy move his mouth. We have no idea whether that’s going to work, but you are going to be talking to people all day long, if it works or it doesn’t work. We’ll set a camera up and you will just talk to people, but that’s your job, to talk all day long. So here’s what you do, make up a voice and make up a video game, make up whatever you want to make up, just start talking and whenever you stop talking, that’s your audition.’ I’m thinking ‘Ok, an Italian plumber from Brooklyn. (adopts macho Rocky Bilbao voice) ‘Hey I’m under your sink, don’t bother me, leave me alone.’ I’m thinking I could do that, but it feels to me so gruff and coarse, I don’t know the age of the people but I want to make sure that if they are young people then I am being nice.”
It’s at this point that dear old William Shakespeare enters stage left once again…
“I am sitting there thinking that there is another voice, which by great circumstance, is thanks to William Shakespeare.
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