Actor Joel Gretsch is a self-admitted late bloomer.
“I’ve always been slow on the uptake,” said Gretsch, who stars in USA’s “The 4400.” “Two guys on our show … Patrick Flueger and Chad Faust, they’re 23 years old. I couldn’t have done it at 23. I didn’t have that sense of self at that time. I just didn’t. I admire actors who do.”
Gretsch, 42, studied acting for five years before he had the courage to audition for a role. Finally he was forced, he said.
“I had to do it because I was broke, and I needed a job. I needed to pay rent,” he said. “I’m working as bartender at night and working for an actuary company during the day, and I had to pay the bills. … A friend of mine said, ‘You need to separate from the pack … You can look from the outside in and it’s easy and comfortable to do that.’ My friend said, ‘Stop that. Go out there and do it.’ I did it. And you fail. You fail miserably, and every once in a while something happens and you click.”
He “clicked” with parts in “Minority Report,” “The Legend of Bagger Vance” and “The Emperor’s Club.” He also co-starred in the sci-fi series, “Taken,” so it was not surprising they found him again for “The 4400,” which begins its third season with a two-hour special at 8 p.m. Sunday.
In “The 4000,” Gretsch plays earnest Agent Tom Baldwin of the National Threat Assessment Command, who must deal with 4,400 alien abductees who have been returned to Earth and are trying to fit back into society. Many of the 4,400 now have psychic powers that were medically controlled by government officials who feared they would take over the world. This season, a group of returnee terrorists threaten to unleash its powers.
“I read the script and thought it was great drama,” he said. “The sci-fi part of it–I appreciate sci-fi, but if it isn’t rooted in a human drama level, I can’t have one without the other.”
