David James Elliott; Celebrity Profile

David James Elliott Celebrity Profile

E!: The big wedding would have to wait. David and Nanci were barely scraping by.
DJE: I couldn't get arrested. And then I started getting desperate. Money was getting low.
E!: Each failed audition made the situation worse.
DJE: Every day the stakes got higher. And then the pressure mounted. I would go into a room and I would just ...like, fall apart and die.
Nanci: His agents, they were ready to sell him down the river to anything that came along and everyone was losing faith in him.
DJE: They were basically, like, "Let's get rid of him. He's hopeless."
Nanci: It was over. It was all over.
E!: In a desperate attempt to break through in Hollywood, David's agent recommended that Elliott meet with renowned acting coach Howard Fine.
Howard Fine: He was at a low point in terms of his confidence. He'd done a lot of theatre. He had been a member of several theatre companies. And he hadn't made the transition and head-set yet to Los Angeles.
DJE: I was going into these rooms trying to figure out what they wanted, you know. What do they want from me? Instead of saying, "Screw them! This is what I do. This is what I think about this role."

E!: David honed his techniques, hoping to unlock the secret to landing a role. Then, in the midst of David's struggle, Nanci revealed that the couple was going to have a baby.
Suddenly the pressure on David and Nanci became almost unbearable.
Nanci: And I ended up having to model here to pay the bills. I modelled until I was about five months pregnant, 'til I couldn't do it any more. I mean, I was fainting. It was bad... sucking in my stomach all day, trying to still wear those little tiny clothes I was supposed to be wearing.

I remember like it was yesterday. We were sitting on that couch - same couch! - and said, "We have a couple of thousand dollars. Do you wanna pack up and go home, or do you wanna go to the Bahamas? Let's go to the Bahamas!"
DJE: So we went away and went to the Bahamas, and we had some property, and my father and I had rebuilt the house that he grew up in. So Nanci and I went down for two months and we just kicked back there.
E!: Elliott returned to the island where his father grew up. The respite gave David a chance to reflect on where he'd been and where he was going.
DJE: I knew I needed to get out of town. I'd forgotten why I'd gotten into this business in the first place. And I remembered. I found my muse of fire again. I remembered why I did it.

E!: After returning to Los Angeles in the fall of 1992, David was called in to read for a high-profile new TV series - The Untouchables.
David and Nanci realized that this was the most important audition of David's career.

Nanci: I was carrying Stephanie. We were umpteenth thousands of dollars in debt and plus we only had the $2,000, which we'd just spent.
DJE: My God, right now I'm so far in debt it's absurd. In debt, pregnant, I mean, you know ....

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