David Sheinkopf

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"I WAS A LOUD-MOUTHED PAIN-IN-THE-ASS KID"

FALCON CREST's David Sheinkopf Has Packed A Lot Of Dangerous Living Into Nineteen Years

For nineteen-year-old David Sheinkopf, landing the role of Danny Sharpe on FALCON CREST was a piece of cake. Getting to work on time every morning - that was the tough part. Alarm clocks, it's a known fact, just don't work as well for teenagers as they do for the rest of us.

It seems David, a native New Yorker, was tardy during his first few weeks on the FALCON CREST set. That may be fine when attending an English Lit class, but Sheinkopf found out real quick that it didn't wash in the world of prime-time television. He became a lot more prompt after TV father Gregory Harrison (Michael Sharpe) took him aside one morning and advised, "David, you've got to get here on time. You've got a great opportunity. Don't blow it." Looking back, Sheinkopf observes, "I've grown up a lot in the past few years."

Growing up is one thing. Being a grownup is quite another. Sheinkopf would be the first to tell you that he's got a long way to go. His appearance and place of residence are also rather revealing. Instead of Danny Sharpe's chic attire, Sheinkopf favors faded jeans, proudly aged and scuffed black Frye boots, and a Bob Marley and the Wailers T-shirt.

One glance at Sheinkopf and his cramped, sparsely furnished, teen-esque North Hollywood apartment dominated by stereo equipment and CDs is plenty to convince a visitor that he isn't some Hollywood wanna-be obsessed with collecting the proper celebrity toys. His FC alter-ego is a hotshot who wouldn't be caught dead looking like Sheinkopf or hanging out in a place like this. But if David's life was compared to a fictional character, it would more likely be James Dean in Rebel Without A Cause than Danny Sharpe.

"I was a complete rebel," Sheinkopf admits. "I got kicked out of a lot of places. I'm not gonna lie about it. After my parents got divorced when I was fourteen, I just went totally haywire, I just didn't want to listen to anybody or anything. School, for me, was something I didn't feel I needed to be at. I guess I got out this aggression I was feeling at the time by being the class clown. I'd open my mouth; I'd flip the teachers off; I smoked in the boys' room. I thought I knew it all. I was basically just a troubled child."

This happened while Sheinkopf was attending a boarding school in Massachusetts, where his parents shipped him during their divorce proceedings to keep him out of the line of fire. He was booted out, just as he had been from other private schools and even from the famed High School for the Performing Arts in New York City. It was only after he discovered he could go to night school and avoid the hassle of getting up in the morning that Sheinkopf earned his diploma. "A lot of my problems through school involved getting up on time," recalls Sheinkopf, "which is no longer a problem, considering I've got to be on the set at six-thirty or seven a.m."

Shaking the sleep from his eyes was made all the tougher during David's high school years by a penchant for drug experimentation. He speaks on the subject of drugs with the authority of a DEA agent.

"When you grow up on the streets of Greenwich Village in New York City, you get a very knowledgeable education about drugs at a very young age," stresses David. "I saw many, many people go down from cocaine and crack. If I could count them all, I'd write a book. I know kids who just start messin' with drugs when they get into college. I got them out of my system long before, and they're no longer a part of my life. There comes a time when you have to grow up, and I've grown up. If I hadn't, I would have ended up being one of the many corpses who used to be my friends."

Sheinkopf comments, "I was smart enough not to overdo the drug scene. And I haven't done any hard drugs in a long time." Still, when it comes to the subject of drugs, the actor speaks as if he is something of a narcotics expert: "I never was into dust. That's a pretty nasty drug. It's embalming fluid. Anyone who smokes anything they put into dead people's bodies ain't playing with a full deck."

Somehow, this isn't the kind of guy whom you would figure to have a good relationship with his parents, and for most of his youth, David didn't. "I was a loudmouthed, pain-in-the-ass kid," he confesses. "They put up with a lot from me, but it wasn't their fault. My parents raised me... very independently. They gave me a good set of values. Family became very important to me, and now it comes above every - I think for me - my business, my relationships. I'm a Jewish person by faith, but I'm an Italian by heart."

It was between the ages of eighteen and nineteen that Sheinkopf says he learned a lot of things: "I finally accepted my parents' divorce and began to figure out what the hell I wanted to do with the rest of my life. I never realized how much my parents really cared." He appreciates the strong, positive role model provided by his mother, and it inspires him to this day. "Mom set down the rules and I had to abide by them or else," he remembers. "She made me respect women and look upon them as my equals. You hear about all of these psychotics whose mothers slapped 'em around when they were age five and they went around serial-killing for the rest of their lives. Well, that won't be me." One thing Sheinkopf remains grateful for is that his parents didn't push him into acting, though he did get into the entertainment business at the tender age of nine by modeling for magazine ads and TV commercials. "My mom never dragged me around to a [casting] call. I did it because I wanted to," he insists. At fourteen, Sheinkopf won his first "acting" part, a delivery boy on AS THE WORLD TURNS. Watchers of ATWT might remember Sheinkopf for a slightly more significant role, that of Arnie Gephart, a ne'er-do-well who specialized in drinking, driving, and mowing down pedestrians a few years back. "Helluva guy," notes Sheinkopf wryly.

Following that, the actor was cast against type for a ten-month stint on ANOTHER WORLD as Richard Smith, a clean-cut college kid. Sheinkopf landed Danny Sharpe on FALCON CREST only a month to the day after traveling to Los Angeles "on a wing and a prayer." The prayer was answered when he was discovered at Vincent Chase Workshops, a Hollywood acting showcase, by Barbara Miller, a casting agent for Lorimar Productions. "The best part about getting on FALCON CREST was that I never even had to audition for the part," beams Sheinkopf. "it wasn't offered to me off my old soap opera experience. It was based strictly on the showcase. I was the last of a couple hundred actors they looked at."

Somehow, it was appropriate that on October I7, at the moment David was being telephoned and told he'd gotten the role, the earth started to shake in San Francisco. "My TV is on in the background, and the ABC announcers at the World Series are telling me that a major quake had just hit the BayArea," Sheinkopf recallsvividly. "Is that bizarre, or what? I mean, my lives in San Francisco, so I kind of freaked. I had to hang up and call her immediately, but I couldn't get through. Eventually, called me and I said, 'Are you OK? Good. By the way, great news…'"

Although Sheinkopf confesses isn't a special lady - other than his mom in his life right now, it's clear he's quite fond of the opposite sex. "I've always been a swingin' kind of guy. I've had a few serious relationships in my life, but nothing real long-term. I just love the company of women, I really do. I think women have a lot to offer in the way of confidence and talking and just affection. Not all of it has to do with sex, particularly in the times we live in."

Without a woman to occupy his time these days, Sheinkopf likes to clip a set of headphones over his ears and rock out to the tunes of classic rock favorites like the Doors, Led Zeppelin, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and the Rolling Stones. "I don't like anything current," he says, "except Eivis Costello."

Upon arriving in Los Angeles, Sheinkopf invested in a state-of-the-art stereo system and one hundred compact discs before he even bought a bed. He Observes, "Music is the greatest. You can just sit back and get lost and make everything OK again."

Few could have predicted that this is how it would turn out for Sheinkopf, least of all Sheinkopf himself, a fiercely independent sort who remains as spiritual as he is hardened. "it's really, really weird. Life takes a lot of strange twists and turns," he muses. "Sometimes I freak at everything that's happening."

Transplanted Californian that he is, Sheinkopf believes fate and direction are playing a part in his success: " I came out to Los Angeles with a purpose and a focus, and I got what I wanted because I made my own reality. I believe everything's meant to be. That's what Buddhism teaches you, to have a oneness with yourself and not attract bad karma. I don't need any bad karma. No way."

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