If you need somebody to hang sheetrock, plaster a wall, lay carpets, install sewer pipes or pour concrete, Joseph Lyle Taylor is your man. He's done all those jobs and more. But Taylor gave up the luxury of those steady paychecks to become an actor.
You can catch him as one of the wicked Bennett boys on FX's modern-day Western, "Justified." Taylor plays Doyle Bennett — "sort of the Johnny Cash of the Bennett clan," is how Taylor describes him — "a little older, little smarter, a little cooler" than the rest.
But if Taylor is willing to sweat in the hot sun of Santa Clarita, Calif., for a role, it's because he knows what real work is. "My uncle had an excavation company so I'd go home in the summers and work in 114-degree heat digging ditches and laying water pipes and sewer pipes and roads and sidewalks," he says over breakfast of a blueberry muffin and coffee in a hotel restaurant here.
"I was good at all of them. I always tried to do the best I could at anything I did. My father instilled that in me. But the road crew was the hardest job I've ever done, seriously HARD. Concrete gets hot, and that's how it solidifies. It sets up and you're wearing these rubber boots and gloves to protect you from the concrete. It's already 100 degrees and this concrete is getting very hot ... I got respect for the guys who do that for a living. I was 20, and it was hard."
His first viewing of a play in high school sparked his interest in acting. "I'd never seen a play before, and it blew me away. I wasn't dying to do it, I just loved to watch. It was, in my head, just the best thing I'd ever seen. It excited me on so many different levels."
A friend, who was taking drama class, urged Taylor to join him. "I said, ‘I play football, I can't do that, I'm a linebacker.' He said, ‘No, no, come try. It's the easiest "A" you'll ever make.'
"So I went in and it became difficult because it was a lot of work, but you had a lot of fun and a bunch of my friends were in it, and we had a really good time. But I wasn't going to pursue it. I was from Vidor, Texas. I was going to get a job somewhere. That's what the plan was. I needed to make money."
After a couple of small scholarships and further study, Taylor decided the urge to perform was too strong. "I wasn't interested at the time in studies. I just wanted to do theater," he says, removing his leather jacket in the stuffy room.
So he transferred to the Pacific Conservatory of Performing Arts in Santa Maria, Calif., where he was able to study under professionals from the Abbey Theatre.
From there he moved to New York to try out for the Neighborhood Playhouse. "I'd never even been to New York. I was enthralled. I landed in the middle of Manhattan and I was, like, ‘Whaaaaat! Look at this place.' For years I'd walk around New York City and it would hit me that I lived in New York City — a kid from Vidor, Texas, population 11,000, walking the streets of Manhattan. I remember thinking the buildings can't be much higher than the trees. But they were."
He finally landed a juicy part on "Law & Order." "I was a dumb punk rocker who was falsely accused of killing this guy. It was so exciting. I thought I'd really made it. I was on NBC! But I don't think I got another job for another year and I DIDN'T make it."
He filled that gap by working at a food warehouse. "I was loading foodstuffs on trucks and driving to restaurants. That's the worst-paying job I ever had. I earned $7 an hour.
"I was in the play ‘Sideman' with Edie Falco, which won the Tony. So I got some heat off that and did a couple independent films. Then I was unemployed. My last unemployment check for $74.55 arrived and I thought, ‘Well, this is rough.' Then I got a call from my agent who said, ‘(Director) Sidney Lumet wants to see you.'"
Someone who'd caught Taylor in "Sideman" recommended him for Lumet's new TV series, "100 Centre Street." He won the role.
That proved life-changing in several ways. He married his costar, Paula Devicq, and established himself in the acting community. But the marriage failed, and his father died at 53 from heart failure and a life of drinking and smoking.
Taylor was 29 and also a drinker. "It was hard. I went into some serious binge drinking for about a year and then I finally said, ‘I can't keep it up.' I went to AA (Alcoholics Anonymous). What is difficult, you have to stop hanging out with your drinking buddies. For a year I was like, ‘I don't know what to do. I really don't know what to do. What does one do if one doesn't drink?' You end up doing other things. You get involved in other things, you have to, otherwise you'd be right back."
With "Justified" and the movie "Seven Days in Utopia" due in August, Taylor's drywall days may be over.
