‘I feel blessed and incredibly grateful’

Actor Freddy Rodriguez has successfully bounced between TV and film throughout his 20-year career. He now works The Night Shift for NBC. By Courtney CrowderOn the whole, actor Freddy Rodriguez doesn’t have much in common with basketball star LeBron James. But Rodriguez points to one important similarity: At a young age, he, too, faced the potentially life-changing decision of whether to “go pro.”In 1994, just a year after graduating from Lincoln Park High School, Rodriguez found himself with three options. He could enroll at Columbia College Chicago (his parents’ preferred choice), he could finish the audition process for the Goodman Theatre’s production of The Merchant of Venice or he could take a role in the Keanu Reeves-helmed period film, A Walk in the Clouds.He chose to do the film. “LeBron went straight out of high school into the professional basketball world, and that was the choice I had to make, whether I was going to go pro or go to school,” Rodriguez said. “I guess my justification was I could go to school to learn drama, where here I could do it firsthand and be in the professional world, so I chose to go pro.”He has never looked back.Most known for his Emmy-nominated turn as ambitious mortician Federico “Rico” Diaz in HBO’s Six Feet Under, Rodriguez has successfully bounced between TV and film throughout his 20-year career: His lengthy IMDB page lists at least one project every year since his 1994 screen debut.Rodriguez’s newest TV show, NBC’s The Night Shift, which premiered No. 1 in its time slot, according to the network, and has maintained an audience of about 6mn per episode, follows doctors who work the night shift at San Antonio Memorial. Rodriguez plays the exceedingly complex Michael Ragosa, the nighttime hospital administrator charged with keeping the budget balanced and the resident bad boy doctor in check. The series’ sixth episode, which will air this week, deals with a company of soldiers that is rushed to the hospital after a horrific bus crash.Rodriguez, 39, oozed swagger recently as he walked into the executive lounge at the Drake Hotel. Dressed in jeans, a black T-shirt and a black leather jacket, his jet-black hair parted just so, he looked like a reincarnation of the Fonz.He’s happy with his life and his career, he said, and on this gloomy, rainy morning he was inclined to reminisce. “Every day I feel blessed and incredibly grateful,” he said with a wide, toothy smile. “Especially now that I’m coming up on the 20th anniversary of A Walk in the Clouds and Dead Presidents and my first round of films, which has really put things into perspective and has been an incredible reality check for me. It makes you grateful.”Rodriguez’s West Coast lifestyle is a far cry from his upbringing in then-perilous Bucktown. In 1991, 16-year-old Rodriguez told the Tribune that he had been at “very, very, very high risk” of falling into gang life until, at 13, he wound up in a play produced by the nonprofit Whirlwind Performance Company.That show started him down the path that would eventually lead to Hollywood.As a soon-to-graduate eighth-grader, Rodriguez sported a smirk as he took a bow after performing Whirlwind’s City of Neighborhoods at the Blackstone Theatre (now called the Merle Reskin). That was the moment Rodriguez decided to become an actor, he remembered.“I starred in that play and I just sort of knew what I wanted to do,” he said. “And it’s all I have done since I was 13.”A 1989 Tribune article about the show said: “bright and self-assured” Rodriguez “stole the show in the leading role,” a sentiment that Whirlwind founder Karl Androes echoed. (The Whirlwind Performance Company exists today with a slightly modified mission as Reading in Motion.)“Freddy stood out right away because he was this ball of energy and this ball of desire right from the get-go,” Androes said. “As the article said, he stole the show, and that was pretty much the case every time Freddy walked on stage.“Whatever he had, he had it in spades,” Androes added, “because he would walk out on stage and do a couple (dance) moves, and the girls in the audience would go crazy.”Carole Gutierrez directed Rodriguez in the Whirlwind show and helped him get an agent and worked with him on audition material in his early days.Freddy “had a natural instinct; he just knew what to do,” she said. “I think that comes from the purity and authenticity that he had as a kid. He just knew who he was ... he had a natural ownership and magnetism.”After Whirlwind, Rodriguez studied drama at Lincoln Park High School and tried to stay focused. “Getting to do my first play at the Blackstone and starring in it, you build up a healthy ego,” Rodriguez said. “I had an agent at that time and I was auditioning, so my focus was more about doing that, trying to land a commercial or TV show, as opposed to school. ... I remember the first day of freshman year, (my teacher) slapped a book down in front of me and said, ‘This year we are going to learn the history of drama.’ I remember going, ‘What? The history of drama?’ I was just sort of restless. I just wanted to act.”Before Rodriguez played Rico in Six Feet Under, he donned a cockroach costume to portray Deke, a film student in Alan Ball’s short-lived 1999 sitcom Oh, Grow Up. (Ball went on to create HBO’s Six Feet Under.)On Oh, Grow Up, one of the characters “was making a deconstructed film version of ‘Metamorphosis,’ and so he had to be a cockroach in a really cheesy costume, but he approached it so seriously,” Ball said of Rodriguez. “A lot of actors come in and they are like, ‘I am photogenic and I am charismatic and that is all I need,’ but Freddy, he was really focused in a way that stood out to me.” — Chicago Tribune/MCTJessica Alba answers customer complaints Actress Jessica Alba is such a hands-on boss when it comes to her baby products firm The Honest Company that she sometimes even chats with customers who call in to complain.The star set up the company over two years ago and it has become a huge success, but Alba says not every client is satisfied, and she’s more than happy to try to fix their problems. “I answer the customer service line — not every time ... and I train all my customer service,” contactmusic.com quoted her as sayi ng.She says customers have a hard time believing they’re actually chatting to the boss when they call and get hold of the actress.“They’re calling if there’s some sort of problem ... They’re just more concerned about the problem and whether it’s gonna get fixed or not. I don’t know if it really registers that it’s me,” Alba added. — IANSEmma Watson to take horseriding lessonsToo much action here! Harry Potter actress Emma Watson is ready to take lessons in horseriding and sword fighting for her role in The Queen of the Tearling.The 24-year-old has been cast as Kelsea Glynn in the upcoming film adaptation of Erika Johansen’s action novel. She is being trained to do her own stunts. She will also be trained in snaring rabbits and climbing trees, reports dailymail.co.uk. Her character Kelsea is that of a fearless girl, who is removed from her home aged 19 to take her place as ruler of a fictional post-utopian country with dark secrets. Watson will sport a no make-up look to feature as a more realistic and athletic heroine.“With Emma, it’s hard to be that plain, but she’ll be playing someone who has a physicality,” said one of her co-stars.The film’s screenplay is being penned by The Revenant writer Mark L Smith. David Heyman will produce the movie, a director for which is yet to be locked. — IANSNicolas Cage now a grandpaNicolas Cage must have essayed various types of roles in reel life, but now it’s time for him to play a grandfather in real life! The actor’s son Weston Cage recently welcomed a baby boy with wife Danielle Cage. “Lucian Augustus Coppola Cage was born on July 1, 2014 at 3:14pm,” usmagazine.com quoted the actor’s representative as saying. The newborn is the couple’s first child. When the news of Danielle’s pregnancy had first broken earlier this year, Weston, a musician, had spoken about how his “dad is ecstatic”. Weston is Nicolas’s son with Christina Fulton. — IANS