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Canadian TV Guide
January 1990
by Glenn Esterly
From Montana hippie to prime-time grunt
The road leading Jeff Kober to China
Beach was full of uncommon twists and turns
By Glenn Esterly
Jeff Kober got into acting out of sheer necessity. "I was a pretty
good rancher (in Montana), a fairly decent corn-dog salesman in a
carnival, a very marginal guitar player and a thoroughly lousy
waiter," Kober says. "I had to get serious about acting lessons
after I came to Los Angeles. I had to say, "When I'm 50, am I going
to wake up and, in my own eyes, be a hero or a fool?" Some of the
most brilliant actors in the world are still in classrooms in this town
and will never get out. They never let their passions overcome their
fears."
Kober's passions have led him to the role of Dodger on China Beach.
"It was supposed to be a one-shot appearance in the pilot, playing
the war-weary marine who'd just spent several months in the bush, having
seen far more than any young man should see. He was changed irreconcilably
and aged far beyond his years. Yet he was able to relate to the complete
innocence of this innocent, virginal 'donut dolly' (Nan Woods). When I
read that script, I knew I had to have the part."
Kober's impact in the role led to recurring scenes on the acclaimed series
during its second year ("Dodger was wounded and spent a lot of time
questioning his worth and his manhood"), before he shifted to regular
status this season. "Dodger's suicidal mood changed when he was
presented with what we’re told is his baby, by and Asian woman. He
decided to accept responsibility for it and started to re-embrace his own
life." (As of this month, Dodger is returned stateside - but will
remain a key character.)
Growing up in Billings, MT., Kober never quite embraced the life of a
rancher, even though he worked hard at raising Black Angus cattle and
sugar beets. "After my English teacher, Mrs. Dillbeck, introduced me
to literature - especially Shakespeare - I knew I was going to be leaving
Montana to do something else. I'd go into the bunkhouse at night and talk
to the dogs, drinking wine and read Nietzsche. The other cowboys talked to
the dogs and drank wine, too - but I didn't see any reading Nietzsche.
Admittedly a misfit, Kober let his hair grow long, went off on a
hitchhiking expeditions, played in rock bands and passed - in what were
still Vietnam War years - as a Montana hippie. The tsk-tsking about his
being different got more pronounced when he toured the country for a while
with a carnival. "Where I come from, the people are very tight-lipped
and extremely independent," he says. "I didn't enjoy getting
singled out because I was being independent. If I walked into a bar,
somebody would make a crack about my long hair - "Who's the girl at
the end of the bar?"
Finally, with a girlfriend living in Los Angeles, he decided to move
there. "About an hour out of Montana, I felt this tremendous weight
lift off my shoulders." Living across the hall from Jerry Giddens,
lead singer in the original Walking Wounded band, Kober taught himself to
play "a highly mediocre" bass guitar in order to get into the
group. "We had a hit little band for a year, but it was riddled with
strife. Jerry's made it into a success now with all the new members."
Trying out acting classes, Kober discovered that "I had a lot to
learn about being in touch with my feelings. Acting was the one thing that
made me feel - and feel alive. In the beginning it was personal therapy.
Then it became a way for me to feel fully alive, which is all that acting
is - to be completely alive in a given situation."
Kober got small parts on daytime soaps, then guested on Falcon Crest,
Remington Steele and MacGyver. There were also movie roles in "Out of
Bounds," "Alien Nation" and the upcoming
"Transit." When the chance to read for Dodger cam along, Kober
had a bad fly attack and sounded more like a bullfrog than a human, but
the producers thought the vocal quality was distinctive and asked him to
keep the croak.
Vocal quality aside, Dana Delaney, an Emmy winner for Best Dramatic
Actress, says Kober's unlikely emergence as an actor in demand -
particularly playing skewed characters - reminds her of James Woods'
career of playing misfits. "James Woods would never be right for a
sitcom, and neither would Jeff," Delaney says. "Jeff strikes me
as a guy who's going to have longevity - and with a break here and there,
maybe emerge in a more prominent way than anyone could anticipate."
On the personal side, Kober met his wife Rhonda Talbot, a film company
executive, four years ago in a health club - "It sound like a
horrible cliché', but that's actually where we met" - and they now
have a 5 month old son.
Like the professional side, Kober attributes the marriage to being forced
to open up. "I was doing 'Out of Bounds' at the time, playing a drug
dealer in my first significant feature role. Basically I was in a panic
situation, taking in everything not ruling out any possibilities -
expanding rather than contracting. If I hadn't been thinking like that, I
might not have been receptive to meeting a new woman in a strange setting
like a health club just then. I was open to whatever came at me -
including a woman named Rhonda."
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