Biography

Shortly after Sean Hayes' first audition - at age five, for a United Airlines commercial - his father abandoned the family, leaving his mother to raise the kids on her own. "Everybody has a sob story, and that's mine." Sean explains. Although he continued an on-and-off flirtation with the theater world at his suburban Chicago high school, Sean's main focus was training to be a concert pianist. "I think I stayed with piano partly out of guilt over how much time and my mom's money I had already spent," he explains.

His dedication paid off in the form of a music scholarship to Illinois State University. "Coincidentally, they also have one of the greatest theater departments in the country," Sean explains. "So I studied music, but always ended up stopping by to see those funny theater people while I was walking to class. I was a groupie because I was afraid to cross over and admit to myself that I enjoyed acting."

Sean supported himself in college as a classical pianist, and performed in a pop band that was looking for that classical edge. When he finally did start auditioning for acting roles, he found a safe cover in being able to pose as a musician who was merely curious about acting. After college, Sean began working in the Chicago theater community, serving for a few years as the music director at the Pheasant Run dinner theater in St. Charles, Illinois, and appearing in several of their productions. "But it wasn't a cheesy place," Sean insists. "They actually put on really well-respected shows, which was kind of unbelievable."

Sean began going out for commercial auditions in Chicago, and, as he recalls, "just got lucky and started booking commercial after commercial." After finding success in advertising and guest appearances on television shows, including Silk Stalkings and Tough Target, Sean branched out into non-alliterative titles during the spring pilot season auditions.

Although he still hadn't had any formal acting training, encouraged by his success in Chicago, Sean moved to Los Angeles in 1995 with three theater friends - his Will, Grace and Karen - Mickey, Suzanne, and Ashley. "The thing I had going for me is that I had become a big fish in a small pond in Chicago by the time I moved," Sean says. "You can't get TV or film work there, but at least from commercials, they had 'tape' on me," meaning that he had built a videotape resume to send to casting directors.

After a decidedly unglamorous start in L.A. ("the four of us lived in this run-down, literally rat-infested house, where the rent was $150 per person," he remembers), Sean again quickly found success by appearing in commercials - thirty-five of them, to be exact. During one Super Bowl, Sean turned up in two different high-profile ads.

In between jobs, Sean tried stand-up comedy, as a way, he explains, to "exercise any kind of craft that I could." Having cut his comedic eyeteeth with Chicago's legendary Second City improv comedy troupe, he did stand-up at The Comedy Club in Los Angeles, and helped form a sketch comedy group with Jeff Mayse and actor friend John Quaintance, who later wrote for David Kohan and Max Mutchnick's second NBC sitcom, Good Morning Miami.

If paying his dues in stand-up and commercials wasn't motivation enough to find larger roles, the gig as an elf with the tour of Kenny Rogers Christmas Show might have been. "I spent my days writing letters to producers, and following up on leads from Backstage West," Sean remembers, " I lived with blinders on." Thank goodness Sean didn't know when to fold 'em; he eventually landed an agent as well as parts in several independent films.

Sean got his big break as the title character in the 1998 film Billy's Hollywood Screen Kiss, about a gay photographer pining for a man who may or may not be gay. It was this film that then brought Sean to the attention of Will & Grace casting director Tracey Lilienfield, who recruited him to read for the career-making part of Jack McFarland in January 1998.

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