CITAZIONE
Over lunch at a Japanese restaurant near his Hollywood home, Melrose Place star Shaun Sipos orders sushi like an expert. It’s a skill, the actor explains, that he picked up in Tokyo on the set of the film The Grudge 2.
A native of Victoria, British Columbia, the 28-year-old Sipos talks of his love of travel, remembering a particularly impetuous trip he took in the spring of 2009 through Asia with an actor friend promoting a film. That particular excursion, it turned out, is why he almost wasn’t cast on Melrose Place. And then ultimately, it is why he was.
Jet-lagged on his return to L.A., Sipos met with Melrose producers Todd Slavkin and Darren Swimmer, who were curious why an actor would choose to vacation during the all-important “pilot season,” when casting occurs for new series. “They asked me, incredulously, ‘What have you been doing? Why haven’t we seen you?’ I explained that I’d just gotten back from China, Korea and Thailand, where we were chased by monkeys who had stolen all our stuff,” the actor remembers. “I explained that I thought the trip was more important than pilot season. ‘Besides,’ I said to them, ‘now I’m here and meeting you.’ ”
The cocksure comment convinced the producers, who had already auditioned more than 1,000 guys, that they had found their David Breck, the estranged illegitimate son of original Melrose character Michael Mancini. And indeed, the actor admits, he and David do have a lot in common, starting with their fiery natures.
The eldest of five, Sipos first dabbled in acting in a high school elective, where, he admits, he would find creative ways to “mouth off” to the teacher he disliked during improv exercises. Soon after, the receptionist at his dentist’s office suggested he try modeling—and then, based on his insulted and animated response, acting. She introduced the then-teenager to a friend, the only agent on Vancouver Island; months later, Sipos had won a role on the 2001 WB network sitcom Maybe It’s Me.
The show was ultimately short-lived, but brought Sipos from Vancouver to Los Angeles. He continued to score jobs in both cities, eventually landing a part up north in the film Final Destination 2. But during a fallow spell in L.A., the young actor had to resort to sleeping in the flatbed of his truck. He could have returned to Canada, where his father, an immigrant from Croatia and a onetime title-winning bodybuilder, still runs a successful fitness equipment company. “I guess I’m just stubborn,” he now realizes. “But also, I was young. I was reading a lot of Jack Kerouac, and Hermann Hesse, and Paulo Coelho. I thought, ‘This is an adventure! I’m living in my truck! I can pick up and go wherever I want, and who knows what tomorrow is going to bring!’ ”
Eventually, tomorrow brought ABC’s family-set sitcom Complete Savages, where Sipos ended up being handpicked by producer Mel Gibson, who went on to become a mentor. After that show was canceled in 2005 after only one season, Sipos spent the next four years concentrating on independent film. Then last spring, after that fateful trip to Asia, he decided to line up whatever TV meetings he could, so late in the season. The first was at The Vampire Diaries, where he auditioned for the role of bad vampire brother Damon Salvatore opposite his friend Paul Wesley. Sipos didn’t end up becoming a vampire, but he did land the part of someone nearly as dark and secretive. His Melrose character David, the actor explains, “is very wily, very creative” and, after the death of his mother, “obviously at war with a father he resents.”
In true nighttime soap fashion, Melrose is full of juicy Oedipal plotting between David and his dad. And while he can’t relate to that particular family dynamic, Sipos says he does connect with quite a few aspects of his character. “He and I are very similar in having that mischievous quality, and also in the way we’re both protective of our friends,” he explains. But David’s got some real problems, too—and that just makes it all the more fun for the actor portraying him. “He’s definitely got some walls in terms of his relationships with women,” Sipos observes. And then there’s David’s rebellious side, which he exercises in such a typical young adult way: by breaking into mansions and stealing art.
