| Zack to the future Saved By The Bell hunk graduates to the big screen Calgary Sun Louis B. Hobson Like the Hunchback of Notre Dame, Mark-Paul Gosselaar is haunted by the sound of bells. From 1989 to 1995, Gosselaar played the wise-cracking, girl-crazy Zack Morris on NBC's popular Saturday morning series Saved By The Bell. Gosselaar, 24, stuck with the show for Saved By The Bell Hawaiian Style, Saved By The Bell: The College Years and Saved By The Bell: Wedding in Las Vegas. "I was 13 when I started on Saved By The Bell and I was 19 when I finally pulled out. It was a difficult decision because it was steady work but I felt I had to give a different direction to my career," Gosselaar says. His worst nightmares were realized. "I didn't work for almost three years. It was like I'd hit a wall. I'd go to auditions and all anybody wanted me to play was a Zack clone. I ended up doing some straight-to-video movies just to pay the rent." It's not surprising that Gosselaar doesn't list Kounterfeit, Specimen, Sticks and Stones or Twisted Love in his credits. It was on TV, where he began, that Gosselaar finally found the new beginning he was searching for. He was cast in high-profile TV movies She Cried No, Born into Exile and Dying to Belong. Then came the offer for a starring role in the MTV comedy Dead Man On Campus. "In Dying to Belong, I played a homeless kid who kept changing his hair coloring. When I went in to audition for Dead Man on Campus, my hair was almost black. "The director (Alan Cohn) didn't recognize me as Zack and he loved the hair so I've kept it as a good luck charm." It seems to be working. Gosselaar is filming the new Warner Bros. dramatic TV series Hyperion Bay, which debuts this fall. Still, Gosselaar is not deluding himself. There are people who are still going to think of him as Zack Morris. "The show is in reruns. I have college girls asking me to autograph posters and 11-year-old girls logging onto my websites." Gosselaar checks out his official and non-official websites on a regular basis. There are two common rumors that persist to dog his career. "The first is that I'm dead. The first time I encountered that rumor was in November of 1993. It was a bit of a shock that time but I'm getting used to it now," he says. "I've died at least six more times -- usually in a motorcycle or car accident or by a drug overdose." The second persistent rumor is that Gosselaar is gay. "There are people out there who desperately want me to be gay. I don't have the heart to log in to set the record straight." Gosselaar will celebrate his second wedding anniversary Aug. 26. He and his wife Lisa have been together for five years. "Lisa was a Revlon model. Her agency wanted her to get some acting experience so they got her a cameo on Saved By The Bell. "I had made it a policy not to date guest stars or day players but she was the one who put the moves on me that day." By the time he met Lisa, Gosselaar had dated his three co-stars Tiffani-Amber Thiessen (Kelly), Elizabeth Berkley (Jessie) and Lark Voorhies (Lisa). "Saved By The Bell was like high school for us so we ended up going out with each other. They were such incredibly beautiful women that it would have been impossible not to be interested in them." It's been four years since Gosselaar and his costars went their separate ways. "We are very close but the end of the show was like high school graduation. We all wanted to have our own new lives." Though a whole generation of viewers watched Gosselaar attend school on TV, and now a new generation is about to catch him going to college in Dead Man on Campus, he confesses that he barely made it through school and never went to college. "My entire education is what you see on TV. I had tutors for three hours every day and hated every minute. I wasn't a good student so I had no desire to go to college. When we were shooting Dead Man, most of the actors would sit around and talk about their own college experiences. I felt left out." Gosselaar is feeling more confident about his future these days. But if things don't pan out, he's not about to panic. "When I thought my career was over, I was going to go to work for my cousin who owns a car detailing shop. "I'd love to be an actor for the rest of my life but I could be happy at any job as long as I had a supportive home life." |
 |
|
 |
|
|