take a look through my pictures, and you can see me in some of the projects i've done, both in character and behind the scenes. the first one is the most recent — moving on, you go backward through time to see earlier pictures. without a delorean, even!
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fighting the scourge of the vagabond spectre
as earl haggerty, the long-lost brother of private detective jack "hard-boiled" haggerty, i took on some of the nastier bad guys down by the docks. first a knee to the groin...
kicking some vagabond spectre butt
...and then finishing this goon off with a thick-skulled headbutt.
jeff essex in the scourge of the vagabond spectre
in the end, the scourge is defeated, hard-boiled haggerty gets a drink, and the haggerty boys are reunited. with just a few minor injuries.
backstage on the scoundrels tour
here i am backstage in spokane, washington, during the dirty rotten scoundrels national tour. sure, two cigarettes are even worse for your health than one, but on the brighter side, the lighter doesn't work.
doing funny things with suzanne sole
in the scoundrels tour, i play andre opposite the phenomenally talented suzanne sole as muriel. here, we are, in fact, doing funny things. we do that a lot.
i get the girl
if you haven't seen it, sorry to ruin it for you, but — naturally — i get the girl by the end of scoundrels . what can i say — i'm french. must be the moustache.
paris, nevada here's a shot from a television pilot i did called paris, nevada — i honestly don't know the whole plot, but it sounds pretty spooky and neat. i played phil, the shady owner of the diner who has a lot more going on behind the scenes.
phil checks his merchandise
that stuff going on behind the scenes? yeah, as it turns out, phil is an illegal arms dealer. here, phil carefully considers a vial of something nasty.
he who lives by the illegal firearm...you know the rest
phil got what was coming to him. poor guy. i had a lot of fun with the prosthetics guy, getting my bullet hole installed and letting blood drip down my face.
jeff essex in the asterisk booth
here i am in asterisk as baseball announcer ron keener, flanked by mike sharpe and bucky o'sullivan, played respectively by jon coats and ned lynch.
on the set of asterisk
this candid was taken during rehearsals for asterisk , an off-off-broadway production at the american theatre of actors — i played fictitious mets baseball announcer ron keener. there i am seated at the announcers' desk, flanked by jon coats and ned lynch (two fantastic actors and really great guys).
on the set of the student
i took a moment while filming joe tripician's the student to brush up on my shatner impression, while director joe (apparently) worshipped the sun. meanwhile, my co-star christel ferguson clearly wondered how the hell she got tangled up with such weirdos.
playing love roulette
this publicity photo was taken for chris cayden's film, love roulette , the tragic tale of a rube on his first night in the big city. draped all over me (i played john the john) are the hookerish and incredibly fun elizabeth mead and angela halerz.
that bottle is our only hope...
john (played by me, of course) weighs his options...well, his option — singular — as the hookers wait in the next room.
my marx brothers
hands down, no doubt, my favorite performance ever was my chance to play adolph "harpo" marx in minnie's boys , the musical story of the marx brothers before they were the marx brothers. this was a publicity photo taken for the show: me as harpo, along with jason blanton as groucho, samuel ruiz as chico, and justin leader as zeppo. those three fantastic guys will always be my marx brothers.
harpo
here's a close-up of me as harpo, in the same publicity photo. i taught myself to play the harp for this role. after the show closed, the director gave me the harp i played as a gift.
in a basement during notes from underground
this is part of a photo that was half the page over an article in the long island voice about casting director joel manolato, who cast me in notes from underground for the new york fringe festival. i'm fiddling with random objects i found on the floor of the basement. the blonde was a very cool actress named sara.
hetchinson
i got a best supporting actor nomination at the sage theatre when i played fifth officer hetchinson, the sailor who leads a pretty dramatic bunch of passengers to safety after the titanic sinks in frank avellino's excellent play, ice in april . the play was picked as one of the off-off-broadway review 's best plays (along with a musical that went on to broadway, urinetown ).
the carpathia arrives
the final moments of ice in april : andy uhlenhopp, as an officer aboard the carpathia , coaxes a distraught hetchinson to leave the lifeboat and board the ship. the cold night's events have caught up with hetchinson, though, and he can't even bring himself to stand. and yes — i can cry on cue. you should see how choked up i get at the end of st. elmo's fire .
macbeth i had a lot of fun playing the title role in macbeth . massive battles, deadly conspiracies, literally climbing the walls, and blocking an oncoming sword with my bare hand (young siward forgot the fight choreography) were some of the highlights. the beard's real, of course — there's no deficit of testosterone in the land of jeff.
macbeth, slightly quieter
a slightly less psychotic look at macbeth. but you know he's positively seething underneath that calm expression.
visiting witches
in a pretty stunning visual, macbeth visits the three witches on the hilltop, and is surrounded by their living cauldron, which shows him a typically ambiguous tale of the future that gives all doomed antiheroes the wrong idea.
with jane at the globe
i lived in london for a summer, studying acting at shakespeare's globe — i even got to "help" in the reconstruction of the actual theatre. this picture is from a class with the extraordinary jane lapotaire — that's me between jane and another student, nick tamarkin (an incredible actor and comedian).
blue moon rising this was the publicity photo splattered in a bunch of st. louis newspapers when i was in jim nicholson's blue moon rising , as augie the lovable jock. (yes, jock. shut up.) i'm the one on the top branch, in the white tux. snazzy.
misplaced my clothes during blue moon ...
this one's for the ladies. (or for the guys, if you're into that sort of thing.) this was another series of publicity photos for blue moon rising — and yes, there's an actual reason i'm dressed only in a poison ivy loincloth. the nudity wasn't gratuitous. well, not only gratuitous.
shakespearean directors, take note
one more from the same blue moon photo shoot, but only because i've always wanted to play puck in a midsummer night's dream — this photo works pretty well for that, right?
