After transferring to a new elementary school, the other kids asked Bryan Dattilo who his agent was. This is what kids talk about in Beverly Hills, Calif.
“I told my mom, ‘I need an agent. Everyone at my school has an agent,’ ” he recalls.
He was in third grade.
Acting came naturally. “I was always kind of an obnoxious, lippy kid who said things. And people said, ‘Who does that kid think he is?’ I would excuse myself from the table and take calls from my manager.”
So he started working. A few years later, while watching TV with his grandmother, he became familiar with “Days of our Lives,” a sweet hint of where his career would take him as Lucas on the NBC soap.
“She would kick me out of the room because I would ask questions,” he says, starting to laugh. “And she would say, ‘You can’t talk during my story.’ I called her years later and said, ‘Meem, I got an audition for “Days of our Lives.” ‘ She told me, ‘If you get it, I could watch every day.’
“When I got it she freaked out, crying,” he says. “She taped the first three years of me on the show.”
Until he landed this steady gig, however, there were plenty of other jobs.
“I was a food delivery guy for a Jewish deli,” he says. “And I washed dishes. I was a bar-back, gum scraper off the floor of a club. On my 21st birthday, I was washing dishes, and my mom cried and told me she wanted more for me out of life. I said, ‘Don’t worry. I’m only 21.’ “
Dattilo was right; within a year he was on the soap opera, which Grandma still watches.
“I would like to see Lucas have a triangle with another woman and make Sami jealous,” he says of his TV bride.
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Birthplace: Kankakee, Ill.
Birth date: July 29, 1971.
Family: When he was a boy, his mom worked for the National Enquirer. He’s divorced and has a son, Gabe, 7.
Where else you’ve seen him: “CSI: NY,” “Gaydar.”
How he relaxes: “I love my hammock when I need to relax. I have a pretty cool setup,” he says. “I have a waterfall, and the top of it is a grotto waterfall so I can climb on the top and then go swim in the pool.”
Pets: Three Labrador retrievers. “They understand the power of the pack,” he says.
