Scoot McNairy
If Scoot McNairy hadn\u2019t found acting, it\u2019s possible he\u2019d be mowing lawns for a living. Scoot grew up relishing the outdoors of his native Texas, and started his own landscaping company at age 13 to make some spending money. Towards the end of high school, he had some thinking to do about his future. Since he was dyslexic, college seemed out of the question, so one day, his father asked, \u201cWhat is the one thing that you could do every single day, that would get you up and out of bed, that would make you want to go to work?\u201d Scoot\u2019s answer: being on a movie set.Aside from being outdoors, Scoot\u2019s other great passion was watching movies. He was fascinated by the magic of it all. And as a kid who loved to take things apart, he wanted to know how everything worked. He decided to move to Los Angeles for film school but got relatively little out of it, and felt like he needed hands-on experience on a movie set. Scoot\u2019s fastest way in was getting work as a background actor, also known as an extra.\xa0\u201cI swear I learned more in two weeks as a background actor on\xa0The Practice\xa0than I did in the entire year I went to film school.\u201dBackground work turned to commercial work which eventually turned to acting in television and film\u2014thanks to an acting teacher who politely kicked him out of class so he\u2019d start\xa0auditioning\xa0for roles instead of compulsively going to class. Because of his unconventional education, he approaches his job from a unique angle, creating very real and emotional performances in projects like\xa0Halt and Catch Fire,\xa0True Detective, Narcos, and the upcoming Quentin Tarantino film\xa0Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.Scoot joins\xa0Off Camera\xa0to talk about the dark place he had to live in to embody his True Detective\xa0character, how growing up with a learning disability helped him embrace failure, and why the only time his heart beats at a normal rate is on a motorcycle.