|
LAURENCE LAU IS NOT WHO YOU EXPECTED! | |
More Soap Opera Digest and Soap Opera Weekly Articles
|
|
July 1982 - And after about five minutes of talking with Laurence Lau (pronounced law), you can be sure people will wonder, "Where's the Wonder-Bread-Builds-Strong-Bodies-Twelve-Ways-Boy I expected?" He's nowhere to be found. It's true that Laurence looks like a refugee from THE DONNA REED SHOW with his sun-streaked blond hair, twinkle-twinkle blue eyes and health club-worked-out body. His wide-eyed friendliness may suggest naiveté, but his life has been like the "Adventures Of Tom Jones," circa 20th century. Lau grew up outside of Portland, Oregon, moved to Houston, then at 17 decided family life was unbearable, so he varoomed his motorcycle back to Oregon. Restless there, he took all his cash and flew to New York to attend his senior year of high school on Manhattan's ultra-tough Lower East Side. There was a two-year stint at Columbia University: "Columbia was very tame when I was there. About the worst thing that happened was our class vice president put on a burlesque show with some hookers he hired from Times Square. The local feminist organization paraded in with signs and persuaded the hookers to leave the stage." Tired of academia, Lau hitched to Denver, where he worked construction until the local union man realized he wasn't a card-carrier and kicked him out. There was a fast marriage that ended just as fast, a "discovery" in Hollywood, some made-for-TV movies; a major AMC role and another marriage. Add to that experiences you wouldn't dream would happen to a man before his twenty-seventh birthday - especially one with that face - and you realize Laurence Lau is not exactly the boy next door.
Just The Facts
Other Acting Jobs: Marital Status: Married and divorced twice. Currently single.
One of the things Lau is most proud of: Official Web Site and Fan Club |
My mother left home when I was seven and she died when I was 15. I don't really remember how I felt when she left. My father says I was very angry." Eight years Laurence's father remarried. A big mistake, everyone thought in retrospect. His parents still loved each other and there was much tension in the new marriage. The new Mrs. Lau did not like the children and they, feeling the waves of jealousy and resentment, didn’t like her. After a year, his father realized the marriage was a mistake and they spilt up. In those first years, Laurence had more emotional bruises than most of Agnes Nixon's (AMC creator) characters.
There were other problems: a younger brother had been given too much anesthesia during a routine operation, resulting in severe cerebral palsy. "He's been in an institution most of his life," Laurence says softly. "He can't talk or walk or anything. It's painful for me to see him, so anyway, it was just my father and my brother and myself for a while. And with my mom gone.... My father is a lovable man but he didn't know how to express love. I learned at a very early age _ it's probably a bad thing - but I learned how to just shut out the pain." That pain filtered through in other ways. Lau was a pretty popular kid, a "jock" who also loved art. He spent a lot of time listening to music, drinking beer, smoking pot and getting into various, sundry squabbles with the law. "Just for the pure excitement of it," he explains. "There was no warmth in my household. My stepmother didn't like me, but I did my best to keep it from my father because I didn't want to be the reason they broke up, so the only place I found any kind of warmth was with my buddies." Laurence is convinced he would have gone down a very "unhealthy path - you know, my attitude was just, 'screw the world' " - if he had not formed a close relationship with his high school art teacher - a woman only a few years older than himself. He admits, with that line that reverberates through his life story, “‘She sort of took me under her wing.' She realized where I was as a young boy and just really cared about me as a person. It was that maternal feeling I think I was responding to. I felt a tremendous amount of love and warmth toward her. Suddenly, I was going to the ballet, working on my art, listening to better music, reading. I started becoming sensitive to people."
A year later, the family was uprooted to Houston and Laurence had to cope with both family difficulties and being the new boy in town. "I had this great relationship split up. She [the art teacher] was the only person I could talk to about what was going on inside of me." Add to that the recent death of his mother and Laurence was in for hard times again. "I grew very cold," the situation with his stepmother worsened, he started to get in trouble again and decided the only answer was to leave. Laurence took his motorcycle and drove a rather circuitous route back to Oregon. What should have been a three-day trip, took Laurence a month. His backpack was stolen, then retrieved. He learned how to surf from friends in Southern California, was chased by Hell's Angels outside of San Francisco.... "I'd sleep three or four days in a park and be a little scared. I knew I was pretty tough but I was good prey if a couple of guys wanted to take me, which was part of the reason I was doing it. It was a challenge; I wanted to see if I could survive on my own."
"...I finally realized there was more to life than partying and rock and roll!" |
In Oregon, Lau realized you indeed cannot go back home. His art teacher had moved to another school and all those friends who seemed so terrific in memory were just "regular people" in Oregon. Living with his grandmother was fine, but slowly those old feelings of boredom and discontent seeped back into his life. Finally, Old Lady Adventure shined her face on Laurence once more - this time in the shape of some modernized Three Musketeers from New Yawk Cittyy! "These guys were staying with a friend of mine, one was black, one was Jewish and the third was Puerto Rican. Can you see these guys coming into a pretty conservative, middle-class white area?" He saw them every day and was totally enthralled with their talk of political causes, injustices and The Movement. "This was 1971 and they just got me going, keyed up about what was happening. I finally realized there was more to life than partying and rock and roll!" Those three boys had graduated from The Lower East Side Action Project School, a free private school with only sixty students. The place was designed to teach students how to become self-sufficient. They were pretty skeptical when Laurence, a northwest white-bread WASP, decided that he too must attend school. After being accepted on the phone, and some way encouragement from his father, Laurence did New York. "It was the first time in my life I was in a minority," he says. "There were about five white kids in the school and the rest were black or Puerto Rican. Twelve of us lived at the school. We'd get together every day at these group rap meetings where you really aired your feelings. I learned to assert myself."
Laurence also become very close with the couple that ran the school. Larry and Michelle Cole. Laurence received a blood transfusion of the Cole's love for the city. "The skyscrapers, the rivers, all that stuff - I was thrilled by New York! The Coles were really into going out to restaurants and seeing different parts of New York. We'd do movies blitzes, see nine movies in two days. I was initiated into the city in the best possible way. It takes a lot to find the gems and the Coles showed me the gems right off the bat." The Coles also picked up on Laurence's passion to take on corrupt politicians and become a renegade lawyer. They put him in touch with some people at Columbia and Laurence was accepted. For two years, he immersed himself in academia, finally deciding, "This isn't a relationship with the real world, this is all armchair bull!" So he picked himself up and hitched to Denver. "Why Denver? I don't know."
With five dollars in his pocket, and dreams of becoming an architect, Laurence was practical enough to realize he had to get a job. "I started to get scared," Laurence admits. "But I was determined not to tell the family. They didn't know where I was, nobody did.” Although he didn't find a place to work, he did find a woman who took him under her wing. She was living at the local YWCA and suggest Laurence move into the empty room adjacent to hers. "It was great - I had a clean room and show!" A day before he was caught sneaking into the room, he landed a construction job on a Bell Telephone skyscraper. "I got out of the YWCA and moved into the Melvin Hotel, right downtown, one of those places, you know? It was $22 a week, came with a bed, bathroom and hot plate. All the couple next door did was drink. The wife was a waitress and she'd get five bucks a day. He'd go get his bottle of whiskey with it. He'd sit on the front stoop, tell stories, drink whiskey and play the harmonica. God, it was funny.
>> Continue Here for Part Two of this Interview, plus, Links to Lau's Official Web Site and Photo Galleries! >>>>>
© Soap Opera Digest,
1982, 2002.
Photo copyrighted by Katherine
Thurston
