// The David Gallagher Resource //

Interviews - Popstar!

Big-Time Secrets - Why David Gallagher keeps getting hotter and hotter! (September 2002, Popstar!)

Our coverboy is having a busy day. "I'm going through final exams now," he tells us, out of breath at his Popstar! cover shoot.

When we ask him how he balances school and work, he replies with the wry humor that peppers our conversation. "Balance? I...don't know! When I'm on the set, I have a tutor that works with me and we just kinda send work back and forth to my school. Once you start in the year and you get a little behind, you never quit playing catch-up. You're always a day behind at least, so you just try to work with it and go-with-the-flow."

David Gallagher has gone with the flow for six seasons as sweet-faced Simon on The WB's most popular series, the family drama 7th Heaven. In the whole-some tradition of classics like Little House on the Prairie and The Waltons, the show has mixed humor with heartbreak as its spun life-affirming storylines. Now, David's career is growing as quickly as he has over the years and hes beginning the careful process of shedding a one-dimensional cute-kid image.

The first signs of David stretching his acting muscles come in the form of one of Popstar!'s favorite current movies, the sweet, well-observed and laugh-out-loud funny Little Secrets, releasing August 16 from Samuel Goldwyn. This film fest fave stars Evan Rachel Wood as a self-possessed violinist with a knack for keeping secrets, Michael Angarano as her swooning young buddy and Vivica A Fox as a teacher with a hidden past.

David stars as Michael's big bro, a hottie who catches Evan's eye and does something so, so bad it sets into motion a chain of events that leads to her spilling her guts about her "own" deep secret. David is spectacular in this movie - a supercute strong-and-silent type who will make you fall for him from the minute he comes on the screen. Simon who?

The brotherly competition between David and Michael in the movie is quite convincing. David admits it was right up his alley. "I'm the oldest of five - I have two brothers and two sisters and they're all little. I couldn't see anyone being a big brother without the torment and the power that comes with it," he laughs. "It's kind of a scary thing because it's more power than you think it is when you kinda control an army of five...but it's fun. I'm definitely a teaser and an instigator. I can't help it - they just ask for it!"

There was no power struggle on the set of Little Secrets, filmed in the lovely but kinda quiet Salt Lake City, Utah. In fact, David became great friends with his talented young co-stars. "They were great, actually. Evan and Michael made my month in Salt Lake City exciting - nothing against Salt Lake City, but wow there's nothin' to do there. I had friends and that's what it was all about. I would've gone crazy if I was there by myself. We went to the movies and terrorized the hotel to no end and we got along really well on the set and that made for a great working environment."

Salt Lake City is full of beautiful girls, but they seem to have eluded David, who confesses, "That's my little secret - I'm single. That's a little secret I love exposing...and I'm always out looking!"

You guys know by now that Popstar! is not gonna let you down - we take the opportunity to ask David all about what kinds of girls he likes! "I'm not the kind of guy that likes a certain kind of girl. I have buddies who go after a certain kind of girl - they go for a look. I don't look for that at all," David admits. "I'm into all kinds of girls; blondes, brunettes, red-heads - I'm not picky about a category. A pretty girl is a pretty girl. Personality is what brings it over the top for me. Everyone says, 'I'm looking for personality,' which is true. But when you see someone you don't see a personality, you see looks, so that's the first thing that gets you."

If you bump into David and he thinks you're cute, you're in luck - he makes the first move. "I'll be the first one to walk up and start talking to you - I'm not a shy person whatsoever." But our advice to "really" make it go over the top is to be the first to approach him. "I love it when a girl comes over and starts talking to me."

The other bit of great advice for hitting on David is not to be a gushing fan. "This is the way not to do it," he instructs. "'Oh, my God! You're that guy!' That is not the way to get my attention. That's the way to get an autograph. Treat me like everyone else and that will get my attention. I also love a girl who can dance and make me laugh."

David has lots of fans and many admirers, but believe it or not there are some people out there who think 7th Heaven is lame - and they have manners to match their taste in TV, coming up to David and saying, "Oh, my God! You're that guy! I hate that show!"

We love his reply: "I go, 'Okay, what show are you on?' I don't understand that about haters - they don't realize this is what I do for a living. I do this and I go to school - I'm workin' a double shift. I'm actually doing something with my life. So I don't listen to them."

After his bad-boy role in Little Secrets, David will be seen in a movie he hopes will shake up Hollywood. Coldwater, being filmed now on a 200-acre ranch in Northern California near Sacramento, stars David as Brad, an even "badder" boy who's in for an education when his small-town shenanigans get him carted off to a scared-straight camp in the boondocks.

"I love the concept - that's why we're so passionate about the film," he says excitedly. "It's about these four friends who live in a small town - they're not truly bad kids, but they're troublemakers and they party. They get in a series of fights with these other kids and as a result they get sent to this camp where they abuse you to make you a better citizen. Nobody realizes they abuse you, beat you up and torture you - literally."

The experience does help Brad re-prioritize his life, but it also mobilizes him to do whatever it takes to help clean up the outrageous goings-on at the camp. Think David might be worried playing such a flawed character? Think again!

"Before I knew much about the story, this character had to draw me in and it did. This character Brad is very much a rebel and a bad boy in the sense of him and his friends terrorizing their town - things that normal kids really do. It'll be a big change for me as far as image and acting, and I think that's what I wanna show people that I'm capable of so that I'm to be taken seriously in the future."

David is the star of "Coldwater", but he's also co-producing this highly personal project. "My biggest role as a co-producer so far has been pitching it because it is an independent film and when the script first came to us it had no funding. I actually went and helped them pitch the movie, I was setting up studio meetings and it's really hard to pitch a movie that's not made. That was our kind of trial. Then we found Spirit Horse Productions and they were very interested and had a lot of faith in our team, so we're working with them to get it made and then we'll go with them again to get distribution to get a big, wide release - that's our goal."

Why would he bother to do all this dirty work? "It's part of the business that is inevitable and you're either a part of it or you're not and as a filmmaker, I wanna be a part of everything. This is a great opportunity for me to get involved in that and get a head start because you don't really hear of many 17-year-old producers out there and it's a story within itself what I'm trying to do. It's more than about doing it just to be the first one to do it, it's about telling the story."

"As an actor, you have to go out on all these auditions and calls and then you get to a point where scripts just kinda come to you. Instead of doing that, how about making my own scripts and getting my own movies made for myself and actually taking the action to put myself in that position instead of waiting for it to kinda just come around - that's how I'm lookin' at it."

With all these bad-boy roles, we wonder aloud how misbehavior goes over in the Gallagher household. "My parents don't let anything slip by them and nobody gets away with anything in my household - at all!" he laughs. "There's a lot of turmoil at my house - someone's always in trouble, someone's always doing something they shouldn't and that's just how it goes. It's a big house. I'm no different - I get in trouble and I don't get any slack just like everyone else."

But one reason David feels he doesn't test his parents' patience too often is that he is allowed to pursue his dreams. "I do get a lot of freedoms, which is why I have a good relationship with my parents and my relationship with them is very important to me which is something a lot of kids don't have at my age. You hear that kids are too cool for their parents or they don't want to be bothered or their parents are so strict that they just wanna get out of the house and never look back. They let me spread my wings and then when I mess up, then they pull the rope there. They let me figure things out and I figure things out - and it's working."

David's very mature in many ways, not the least of which is his support of many charities. "Probably the biggest charity that I'm involved in is the one that I'm brand new to: CAN-Cure Autism Now." You can learn more about it at www.cureautismnow.org. "I'm really, really excited because I'm going to go in a golf tournament to raise money for it. My little brother Killian is autistic - he has what the doctors call a slight autism - and it was a really scary thing when we first found out because we really didn't know a lot about it and we heard all these stories about kids with autism not speaking and that it was a hard disease to grow up with. He was two years old and he didn't speak. We put him in a school with other autistic kids and now he's five years old and he won't shut up!" David speaks proudly of his kid brother, and of his work with this deserving charity.

As a final step toward spreading his wings, David will "absolutely" be leaving 7th Heaven. Don't worry - he's still got one more year to go. Following in the paths of Barry Watson, who recently announced he is battling Hodgkin's Disease, and Jessica Biel, David will leave after next year - to go to film school.

"After this next year of 7th Heaven, I'm done and off to college." he says. "I got a 1210 cumulative on my SATs and I'm trying to look into great film schools. That's what I'm all about - I really wanna get down the methods of some of the greatest directors and see where I fit in and take it from there."

Ever since David got into the business, he's wanted to do more than just act. "My ultimate goal was always to become a director/producer/writer/actor - a filmmaker," David reveals. "I've got my head start with the acting thing, so the next step is to move on and try to fit in somewhere else, into another department."

Along with co-producing "Coldwater", David has been writing up a storm. "I started writing my first screenplay with my friend and I'm actually gonna start writing my second screenplay with another friend of mine so that I will hopefully have two done within a couple of months. These are ideas I'm playing with and testing the waters with."

Still, David is a realist - he knows that if he hopes to be a quality director, he has to invest time and energy. "You can take classes on writing and I've already got a handle on writing, and producing is a trial and error cause you just need to know the business. But to direct, you really need to be taught methods. It wasn't something that I just really wanted to try. People say, 'Directing? That's great - why don't you try asking to direct a "7th Heaven" episode and start there?' and I'm like, 'You know what? Television and movies are so different - the creative license is very limited in television because you have a style that you need to conform to, you have rules. Other than where you place your characters, there's not a whole lot of freedom that you have. I don't want to get into a ritual."

Saying his goal out loud, you can hear the ambition and resolution in his voice. "I want to have my own short, I want to have my own calling card, like Tim Burton or Steven Spielberg - I wanna have that for me."

With that, he has to get back to cramming for finals in between posing for our magazine.

David Gallagher has a wealth of working knowledge of this bizz that we call show, he's got untapped creative talent and he's got a plan for how to combine the two to pursue his dreams of being the next great American filmmaker. Hollywood's best-kept secret is officially "out".