The actor talks to BuzzFeed News about finding success in Hollywood, joining a new twisted television family, and tackling a character who is nothing like Friday Night Lights’ Coach Eric Taylor.
Kyle Chandler attends the Bloodline premiere in New York City at SVA Theater on March 3, 2015
Mike Pont / FilmMagic
It's hard to separate Kyle Chandler from Coach Eric Taylor, the character he played for five seasons on the beloved football drama Friday Night Lights. The series propelled the now-49-year-old actor's career, earning him a devout fanbase and recognition from movie and television producers alike.
But that was after Chandler spent two decades trying to break through in Hollywood.
The actor, who grew up in Illinois and then moved to southern Georgia in his preteen years, attended the University of Georgia, where he first became interested in theater. He got the idea from some fellow students he bummed a cigarette off of one night, prompting him to audition for the college's production of The Comedy of Errors, in which he was cast as one of the twin Dromios. After committing to being a theater major, Chandler and a friend took the train all the way to New York City to audition for a program for which 12 people from across the country were selected to head to Los Angeles and get an introduction on Entertainment Tonight. Chandler won his way into the program, but his friend didn't, so he exchanged his one-way first-class ticket for two coach seats and they flew out to the West Coast, "smoking cigarettes the whole way and drinking scotch."
"And that's sort of how it happened," Chandler recalled in an interview with BuzzFeed News. "I was the last year [of the program], I'm in deep south Georgia, and I end up getting the damn thing. It is pretty absurd."
Chandler spent his next year-plus in Los Angeles bartending before he got his first gig: Skinner in the TV movie Quiet Victory: The Charlie Wedemeyer Story. He continued to get cast on television series, including Gary on CBS's Early Edition and Jake on ABC's What About Joan, but it wasn't until 2006, when he landed a guest-starring role as Dylan, a bomb squad leader, on Season 2 of ABC's Grey's Anatomy, that he began catching the eyes of big-name casting directors.
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