Xander Berkeley: One Man's Journey Through Pop Culture Television

"There is a certain mad wisdom in my changing my look and flying under the radar. They don't get tired of ya. They can't quite figure you out. You always remain under the radar instead of somehow obviously that same guy over and over again like a commodity on a supermarket shelf. They'll pay you more and you'll get more famous if you do that, but I think you end up having a shorter shelf life. An actor's efficacy is fragile. You'll believe he's really that character if he's that character in everything.

When Don Johnson calls personally and says he wants you to come be the baddie on the first episode of his show, you do it. It was the first episode after the pilot, I think. He had his agent call my agent and say it was a personal request. I was flattered. When one of those big stars calls, you do it. He liked me!"

"The X Files was a niche show. I got the offer because the director knew my work, David Nutter... He's just a fabulous guy and a great director. He offered it to me, and I thought this show sounds cool. It was in Vancouver, and I worked in Vancouver a lot at the time. It was a go-to place, and you knew you'd be staying at the Sutton Place Hotel, and you'd be running into more friends at the Sutton Place Hotel than you would any place in LA that you would go, actor friends, and so I thought, yeah, I'll check this new show out.

Nothing had aired so I didn't know anything about it. I didn't really know David [Duchovny] or Gillian [Anderson]. We immediately hit it off, and Felicity Huffman, we did, as well. We just hung out the whole time. We went hiking and took all these hikes up [what were] ski trails in the winter time and enjoyed the weekend together. That just sort of seems to add to the work when you bond as friends and then get to play at each other's throats during the week.

That's what I remember about it, making friends and having a great time, thinking it was a cool, atmospheric show and of course, you never know, but it had all the earmarks of a cult TV kind of thing. And boy did it ever! It was kind of a game changer episode, fans kind of said."

"[David Nutter] also had the bright idea of putting me in the first episode of The Mentalist after the pilot and which I thought was going to be my opportunity to be a nice comic character. I didn't know it was going to turn out the way it did. I thought there was NO WAY I was the bad guy."

"ER was another one that I was friends with the guy who shot the pilot, but I wasn't going up for pilots at that time. I was doing obscure, independent movies in foreign countries during pilot season, thank you very much, and that was my way of avoiding getting dropped by my agent. 'Oh, I was working! I got offered something, and I told you...' I remember, I was really good friends with the guy who directed the pilot, and he really wanted me to come in for that, and I said, 'I think I'm gonna go to Bulgaria.' I was too scared of TV. TV scared me, and I didn't want to become that guy in people's minds.

Hello! George Clooney proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that you can go from being a TV star to being a movie star. But just somehow, the obscure was always part of the equation for me. I always wanted to appeal to the cinephile sensibility. I also was friends with and went out with people who were very famous, and it always freaked me out that they were public domain, that anybody could just walk up in the middle of dinner and take over.

That never appealed to me, and my mother, my dear, recently departed mother had many pithy adages, and one of them was, 'Well honey, money is only a problem if you have too much or too little of it.' And I always took that one to heart. And she said in regards to fame, 'Well, be careful what you think you want, because you just may get it.' And I always kept those in mind. Neither of those things were the driving force, but without a more recognizable name, you just don't get access to the better, or even any kind of movie roles these days."

"I still want to be considered by the great filmmakers for the roles that are up for Academy Awards in the character roles, and I want them to have me in the back of their minds and know that I can transform – change the way I look and appear – into their character and help tell their story. That's what I love to do.

I feel like I've protected my efficacy enough to do those transformations so that most movie-going audience members can look up and be pulled into the story and not be distracted by my personal celebrity, which I think always elcipses, at a certain point, the character." [On the one hand he feels he was successful and on another perhaps people are saying, oh there he is in that and over there in that, etc] "Hopefully they think there is something strangely familiar about you but they don't know who the hell you really are."

"I remember a certain agent saying 'no is the password to the next level,' and I know that is true on some level, that people won't really recognize what you are worth if you do just anything. I know I've been burned a few times when I've said yes to a friend for a role and it just didn't have enough to it, and I wondered, 'Really, what the hell am I doing here, it's just a mistake, there's really nothing here to do anything with,' but there have only been a few of those times."

What's next for Xander Berkeley? Keep your eyes open. He'll most likely surprise you.