But Chiklis never faltered. With his parents' encouragement, he did
summer stock in
New Hampshire and scored a raft of regional shows
closer to home. He was captain of the
football team at Andover
High, but it was acting that fired his imagination. When it was
time for college, he applied to one place -
Boston University's
School of Arts. "It's a good thing I got in," he says. "I don't
think I realized how competitive it was. Like, out of 3,000 people,
85 people got in. What was I thinking?" Luckily, he was one of
those 85, and he spent the next four years in Boston immersed in
stage work - learning Shakespeare, studying Chekhov.
At night he lined his pocket as a court jester at Medieval Manor, a
Renaissance-themed restaurant where he offered customers wine and
one-liners. He played drums in a female-fronted rock band, Double
Talk, a group with a philosophy of noise and Aqua Net above all
else. "We would play the club circuit, these really nasty places
like the Rathskeller, also known as the Rat, and we'd play the
Channel, the Spit, the Roxy. We'd play the Paradise and the Middle
East in
Cambridge, and by the way, those two are places I still go
to nowadays. The
Middle East is a small, intimate venue, and it's a
great place to see everybody from King Crimson to the Dixie
Dregs."
Of course, playing rock music in the '80s came with one imperative
- big hair. "Believe it or not, the bald guy had some big hair, and
it was long," says Chiklis, whose shiny skull has earned him a
place among the recognizable-bald-guy ranks of Telly Savalas and
Mr. Clean. Chiklis even did a Bertolt Brecht play,
The Caucasian
Chalk Circle, with a
Mohawk - "and it actually worked for the
character," he adds. Not everyone was pleased with the fashion
statement, however. "At the time, my dad owned a beauty salon
called Talk of the Town, which is now called Shear Image. And you
can imagine - me walking in with a jet-black Mohawk? He had some
suggestions."