Mark Harmon as Gibbs in “NCIS: Naval Criminal Investigative Service,” has “regrets” about his work.

Last Updated on 02/12/2023 by てんしょく飯

Before becoming an actor, “NCIS: Naval Criminal Investigative Service” actor Mark Harmon wanted to be a carpenter and worked in advertising sales. What are his thoughts on his job?

Mark Harmon has experienced a variety of jobs.

NCIS: Naval Criminal Investigative Service” is a long-running American drama series that has been on the air since 2003, but Mark Harmon, who played Leroy Jethro Gibbs, the main character from Season 1, left the series after the fourth episode of Season 19 He left the show at the end of the fourth episode of season 19, which aired in 2021. Although regrettable, many fans understood his decision at the age of 70.

He began his acting career in the late 1970s and has been nominated for an Emmy Award and a Golden Globe Award. However, he actually had other career aspirations in his youth. Mark revealed to Men’s Journal in the U.S., “I wanted to be a carpenter.

I wanted to be a carpenter. I tried to become one, but I just couldn’t get hired. I enjoyed getting up in the morning and doing that. I enjoyed driving to work. It’s about the material and doing it right. If you do it right, it lasts. （I still enjoy it [carpentry]. If I wasn’t acting, I would be doing it.”

What a surprise that he gave up becoming a carpenter because he wasn’t hired for the job!　Perhaps he still feels that way at age 71, with a little bit of regret. What’s more, he didn’t become an actor right after that; he went into advertising. He worked for four years at his first company and then worked for seven months as an advertising salesman for a shoe company.

From that background alone, it would appear that he had no interest in acting at all, but deep down inside he had a passion for it. On his way home from one of his business trips, he heard a 33-year-old sitting next to him talking about how he was working hard to get a pension at age 65. He said that seeing someone who hated his job but was willing to dedicate the remaining 32 years of his life to it was a turning point for him, and he “went home, got in his car, walked out of the office and quit.”

This is what he wishes he had known at the beginning of his career. It was also his advice to many working people.

He said, “I used to play sports, so my roots are in playing the game and working hard to get results. What happens there is that you don’t let people know what you are thinking or doing. （At the beginning of the chase (in a match), you work very hard to control everything. But as an actor, you can’t control anything. Sometimes it is important to keep your distance and not to focus too much on it. Sometimes that’s a better strategy than trying to throw the ball more than the person next to you and trying to put it through the tire hole.