BEVERLY HILLS, California — Actor Jeff Hephner can’t explain what he does for a living. When he must fill out a form defining his profession, he says, “Most of the time I put ‘sole proprietor of a business’ because I live outside of Detroit in Michigan, so the idea of being an actor is foreign to a lot of people. ‘You can’t live here, you have to live in Hollywood.’ So that opens the door to conversations that I can’t ever finish,” he shrugs. “One of the great things about living where I do is that most people don’t ask.”
His parents asked, and were shocked when he confided he wanted to be an actor because Hephner had been an athlete all through high school and even earned a basketball scholarship to college.
“I come from a small town. I was a jock. My dad was a football coach. We didn’t have open ‘theatre’ conversations in my home,” he says.
“It was my secret. So it wasn’t until I grew wings and fell out of the nest that I felt strong enough to do it on my own.”
Known for Chicago Med, Chicago Fire and Boss, next Monday he stars in the second season of NatGeo’s Mars. As a new arrival on the Red Planet, Hephner plays what he calls “the conflict.” “It’s this guy you think is going to come in. You are on the side of Mars and of science, and you see that guy who’s going to come in and mess it up … He is the archetype, the stereotype, the representation of capitalist interests, of industrialism, or profiteering … You pour that into a colony that exists on Mars, and then you have conflict,” he says.
He’s no stranger to conflict. During Hephner’s last year of college he severely tore his calf muscle, essentially ending his basketball career and resuscitating his acting dreams. “So I have about seven months of rehabilitation. And it was then I quit school and said, ‘I’m going to go do this!’
“It was the first moment that I had deep self-reflection, as deep as you can at 21 or 22. And I made the decision my days of [being] a ball player are over. The days of being knock-around were over. And I wanted to really chase something I was passionate about. And I have. My parents thought I was insane. They were terrified.”
Because the family had vacationed in Jacksonville, Florida, Hephner headed there, where he had sighted a couple of small theatres. They were so small he was the only guy to show up for auditions and easily won the male roles.
From there he trekked to New York, as clueless as ever. “I drove a 1996 red Ford Ranger to Michigan; I dropped it off at my dad’s farm and took a train to New York. Two days later, I was in New York City. I was scared. I don’t think I went outside for three days. I didn’t know a soul, had absolutely no idea,” he grins.
He stumbled on a nearby site where they were casting commercials. “I walked by and there was a line for an open casting for a commercial, and I got in line, a couple of days in. I finally got to where you sign yourself in, and they said, ‘Do you have a headshot?’ ‘I don’t have a headshot.’ ‘Who’s your agent?’ ‘I don’t have an agent.’ ‘What’re you doing here?’ ‘I dunno. I stood in line.’ ”
He only came close to making one commercial. “ ‘OK, you’re at a beach but you’re going to have this spicy sandwich and you’re going to get so hot, you’re going to take your shirt off.’ They gave me a paper plate, and I’m in the car driving and ‘Oh, you’re soooo hot, take your shirt off.’ I felt like such a jacka**. I said, ‘I’m never going to a commercial audition again.’ And I never have.”
That ricocheted Hephner right back. “I just kept standing in line, knocking on doors, talking to strangers — all the things you’re not supposed to do. And it leads you to the next thing,” he says.
A short-term construction job and bartending led to the next thing: meeting his wife, Heather. They met at an NYU bar. “It was the night before Columbus Day, she was a teacher, so she had that day off. The only people in the bar were her and her friends, me and my friends,” says Hephner, 43.(“She was literally the first girl I told I was an actor because I wasn’t — I was doing student films. I was a bull ---- artist. I hadn’t earned anything to claim being an actor. She was the first one I ever told. That night, we were leaving, and I said, ‘Hey, I want to talk to you.’ As you do when you meet somebody you fall in love with immediately, you talk forever.”)
Now the father of three, a daughter 11 and sons eight and nin, Hephner’s not sure it was love at first sight, but says, “I needed to talk to her again, to see her again. And we’ve talked every day for the last 17 years.”
