HOLLYWOOD — Two months ago James Guidice was sitting at the dining room table of his family's apartment in Bensonhurst in Brooklyn when he heard that there was an ad in the show business newspaper Backstage for an acting role that fit him like a glove.
"It said that there was an open casting call for someone to play Jason Alexander's son in a new TV show, 'Bob Patterson,' " recalled Guidice, a 17-year-old whose only previous acting experience was playing the Cowardly Lion in "The Wizard of Oz" in junior high school.
Guidice said: "They were calling for a 17- or 18-year-old, short, overweight couch potato. I thought, 'Well, I fit that description.' So I said: 'Let me try. Maybe I'll wind up in Hollywood.' "
He has.
After a quick series of auditions and screen tests that have dazed the teenager and his family, he is playing Jeffrey, the son of Bob Patterson, who is portrayed by Alexander.
Guidice (pronounced GUHD-eese), who is brash, funny and remarkably savvy, said he was not nervous about appearing before the cameras with Alexander and other acting pros like Robert Klein, who is also in the show. "When the director says, 'Action,' I don't see Jason Alexander, I see Bob Patterson," Guidice said. "I don't really get nervous. And when we appear once a week before a live audience, I love it."
Alexander, who gained fame over nine seasons as George Costanza in "Seinfeld" and is the executive producer of "Bob Patterson," said, "This was not an easy role to fill. We needed a kid that didn't look like your average TV kid. We needed a kid that could go head-to-head with me."
Alexander said that many young and seasoned actors tried out. "We were getting pretty desperate because we couldn't find the kid," Alexander said. "Then we had the open audition. We saw James' face. And we heard that thick New York accent. We flew him out. He'd never been on a plane before. Nothing rattles this guy."
Guidice admitted that he had long been a bit of a showoff but said he never considered an acting career. He thought of attending college to study psychology.
The young actor, whose parents are divorced, has been accompanied to Los Angeles by his father, James, on leave from his job as a truck driver for Drake Bakeries. "I'm more nervous than he is," the elder Guidice said with a laugh.
Before winning the role, the young Guidice was about to enter his senior year at Edward R. Murrow High School in Brooklyn, a school for students interested in the arts. (He was admitted because he plays the saxophone.) Now he has a private tutor and is thinking of studying acting when he goes to college.
How the young Guidice was hired seems improbably simple. A friend of the family, Deborah Moore, who is a television actress, saw the ad in Backstage and told him about it when she had dinner with him, his mother and sister in July.
He showed up at the casting call with more than 200 other young men. "They were all like me, short and overweight," he said.
Guidice had at least one advantage. "The casting lady looked at me and said, 'Finally a genuine 17-year-old.' A lot of the others were 20 or 25."
He recited some lines from the show's script with a casting agent playing the Jason Alexander role. The next day Guidice received a phone call asking him to go to ABC in New York for a screen test and a further audition. Four other candidates were present.
Several days later he received another call telling him that ABC wanted to fly him to Los Angeles for a final audition. At this audition — in which he competed with three other finalists — he met Alexander and read lines with him before some ABC executives and the show's producers.
Shortly after the audition, Guidice and his father were told that Alexander wanted to see them. "Jason's first words were, 'Your life is just about to change,' " the young Guidice said. "That's when I knew I had the part. I was in shock. I hugged Jason; I hugged my father."