TV: 'Action' took a cut ... but it didn't hurt

LOUISA CLEAVE encounters a rarity – a Hollywood actor devoid of hype.

They may be in the same business, but actor Jay Mohr has absolutely nothing in common with the movie producer character he plays in Action.

It's a sleepy sounding Mohr who calls from Las Vegas, where he is filming a new movie with Kevin Spacey and Helen Hunt.

Action (TV3, 10 pm) was cancelled in the United States in December after just 13 episodes but Mohr is philosophical about its early demise.

He is, after all, working alongside Oscar-nominee Spacey and Oscar-winner Hunt, and more recently starred as Jennifer Aniston's leading man in Picture Perfect and starred opposite Tom Cruise in Jerry Maguire.

In Action, Mohr plays egomaniac Peter Dragon, a hotshot producer full of self-importance and no time for the "little people."

The pill-popping producer is on a high until his latest film, a disastrous action movie, sends his career plum-meting.

Mohr, aged 29, says he is the stay-at-home kind of guy who prefers video games to the Hollywood scene.

"The Hollywood scene is all make-believe. There were billboards of me all over Hollywood when Action started but it's almost a letdown.

"All your life you want to be famous and you want billboards and posters. And when they go up you look at them and keep driving. It's not the reaction you thought you'd have."

Mohr said Action faced tough opposition from top shows Frasier and Chicago Hope and it was clear early on that the show would have a short lifespan, but he was disappointed the network did not change nights instead of cancelling.

Mohr believes it was the competition, rather than the storylines, which failed to attract viewers.

"I thought it would be very exciting for [viewers] to look into an entirely different universe."

So it wasn't an inside hatchet job because Action was giving away a little too much of the truth about Hollywood?

"We pushed the envelope a little, but I think the egos in Hollywood are so big that no one would possibly imagine they were the ones we'd make a show about."

Each episode in the series features a well-known actor making a cameo appearance as him or herself. Tonight it's Keanu Reeves.

Mohr muses that it might have been nice to have our own Temuera Morrison on the show. The pair have the same agent and met at a barbecue around the time of Once Were Warriors.

Mohr got his break on the American series Saturday Night Live, where he became known for his impressions of celebrities such as Ricki Lake and Sean Penn.

Even though he is moving up the ranks of Hollywood actors, Mohr still avoids the behind-the-scenes "mach-inery" of the film and television busi-ness.

"I turn up for the auditions, say my lines and go home."

He muses that if Action had carried on he would become "filthy rich."

"But to me that doesn't matter. I'm having fun."