Ellen Gray: 'Lone Star's' James Wolk honed his acting skills selling shoes

LONE STAR. 9 p.m. Mondays starting next week, Channel 29.

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. - Even when he's not playing Bob Allen, the Texas con artist at the uneasy heart of Fox's new Monday drama, "Lone Star," James Wolk comes off as an unusually confident 25-year-old.

Which is just as well, because with only one major acting credit to his name - playing a teacher with Tourette's syndrome in "Front of the Class," a 2008 Hallmark Hall of Fame presentation - he's taken on the juiciest role of the season as a second-generation flimflam man whose love for two different women may be the inspiration he needs to go straight.

Still, it's unusual, and maybe just a little disconcerting, to talk to an actor of any age and have his eyes, which, yes, look a bit like George Clooney's, never shift from one's face.

You might buy a used car from this man.

Or, more likely, a pair of shoes.

Because the way Wolk sees it, he's been acting more than half his life, even before high school drama, community theater and odd commercial in Farmington Hills, Mich., the four years he spent studying theater at the University of Michigan and the time after college that he studied with an acting teacher in New York while DJing parties on weekends.

And it all started with feet.

"My dad owns a women's shoe store," he told me during an interview here last month. "Have you ever sold shoes before?" he asked, pausing a practiced instant for the denial.

"So selling shoes is like acting, OK? I've been selling shoes since I was 11. And it just made me really comfortable with interacting with people and looking people in the eye and sensing people. It's what you have to do, and it's like acting, part of it's acting," he said.

So he was, what, measuring feet, tracking down sizes?

"Me and my sister were out on the floor - it wasn't like slave labor, we loved doing it. We loved our dad. It was like a family shoe store.

"We'd be out there, we'd sell shoes, I'd be talking to grown women. 'That shoe looks beautiful on you,' 'I'd like to [try] you in a different size,' 'That's open-toe, you might look better in a closed-toe shoe,' I mean, that's kind of odd training for a 12-year-old, I think. Not everyone has that. I don't know if I even would be doing this if my dad didn't own a shoe store. Because in a weird sense, it really made me fond of connecting with people, and being in front of people. It made me very comfortable with it."

If his own father (David Keith) hadn't been a con artist, "Lone Star's" Bob Allen, too, might not have been doing what he's doing: selling shares in oil wells he doesn't own, marrying a rich oilman's daughter ("Friday Night Lights' " Adrianne Palicki) and working his way into the empire her father (Jon Voight) rules with an iron fist, while simultaneously living in another part of Texas, with another woman (Eloise Mumford), whose own father has unknowingly invested in one of Bob's scams that seems about to be exposed.

And the thing about Bob? He appears committed to doing right by every one of them.

"I think he's honestly a good guy at heart," Wolk said. "He has a huge heart. He's a good person, he wants to do the right thing. And that's why I don't judge him, that's why I understand him and get excited to play him. Because I want to do justice to him, you know? I want him to succeed. Because he loves these girls."

It's a mess that makes for intriguing soap opera but which probably would take most people a little more than 25 years to create, and when he was first approached about the role, Wolk said, he thought the part was too old for him to play.

"I came in, said, 'Love this part' . . . I wanted to say, 'Thank you, but it doesn't feel like the right role to me. Feels too old.' Which is a ballsy thing to do, for an actor in my place, who really has no clout. But I wanted to be fair to the piece.

"And they said, 'OK, we see what you're saying. But why do you think that?' And we started talking about it. It was very casual. And then I left, and they called, and they said, 'We would really like you to come in and read.'

"I came in and I read and it felt great. And they obviously liked what they saw," he said, and somehow the age question was resolved to Wolk's satisfaction.

Though he still thinks it matters, and not just because few actors want to be seen playing roles older than they are, especially so early in their careers.

"I don't think I could play someone in their mid-30s who's had that life experience. I don't think I could bring as much truth to the character as I can if he's in his 20s and he's had the life experience that I have. I can play that more honestly. I feel more comfortable playing that. And an audience deserves honest, they don't deserve to be tricked," he said.

But, he acknowledged, he had wanted the part very much.

"It just felt like [there was] something about this guy I got. And I'm not a liar, I'm a pretty honest guy. Pretty honest guy," he repeated, flashing a grin, eyes still fixed, making full contact.

"But something about this character, I just got it and felt very connected to. Truly, and I don't know why." *

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