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Fame may have effects on family life
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Written by Olivia Slagle, Staff Writer
It was the summer of 2006 when M.C. Gaylord drove her son out to Los Angeles. Christoph Sanders was 18 years old, but he wasn’t going to college. He was going to film on the set of Hounddog, acting alongside Dakota Fanning. Just a year before was his role in a series of General Mills commercials, the role where he decided he might actually like to go into acting. Sanders was beginning a new part of his life, but his mother was ending part of hers.
“It wasn’t like he was going to college; he just grew up instantly,” said Gaylord, the administrative director at Flat Rock Playhouse. “We all drove him out to Los Angeles and it was very sad to leave him because even at 18 it was mighty young for him to be out there by himself.”
Sanders is a 23-year-old from Hendersonville. He currently stars with Tim Allen in ABC’s Last Man Standing. He plays Kyle Anderson, Tim Allen’s young co-worker at Outdoor Man. Gaylord is just like every other mother: worried about her son’s safety, his eating habits and whether or not people have good intentions for him. The only difference is that she can see Sanders every Tuesday night on TV.
Gaylord said that watching his show is her favorite part of his career. His body language makes him a great comedic actor, and the part he’s in now involves a lot of that.
“On this last episode of Last Man Standing he fell from a ladder,” Gaylord said, “and I hadn’t done this with any of his shows, but on the DVR I just kept reversing it because it was great.’”
She had seen his potential for acting from an early age. Sanders started taking classes at the Flat Rock Playhouse when he was 9 years old. His first role was as Tiny Tim in A Christmas Carol, and he continued to perform in main stage productions at Flat Rock.
“He had an agent in Charlotte and the first job he got with him was commercials for General Mills,” Gaylord said. “The actress that was in that was interesting because she’s become kind of big, too. It was just the two of them, so we went to Atlanta and stayed for a week. He got a big pay check out of that so he was excited.”
This was when Sanders decided to act as a career. His auditions hadn’t always worked out this well. His agent in Charlotte, who had been recommended by someone at Flat Rock Playhouse, would set him up with jobs, and they sometimes would be a lot more stress than they were worth.
“Because we were in Hendersonville and that was in Charlotte, we didn’t go out on very many auditions,” Gaylord said. “Some of the auditions would be in Wilmington and a lot of times we would get there and they wouldn’t be appropriate.”
Like maybe it would be for someone who was 15 years old, but they really wanted a 23-year-old to play 15 years old.”
Gaylord said she doesn’t know how they could have managed his acting without home schooling. His brothers, Alexander, 27, and Konrad, 16, were also both home-schooled until Konrad’s 9th grade year, and his parents were therefore able to work around Sanders’ schedule.
“Some years he was in a lot of plays and then he did the commercials and after that he was in Talladega Nights and then he was in a movie called Hounddog,” Gaylord said. “Hounddog was the movie that really got him out to Los Angeles because he got a lot of connections through Hounddog.”
He got a manager and a place to live, and he was very fortunate for all of that. Everything was going very quickly for him.
“We found out a lot since he’s been out there about how he’s been really fortunate having both of those going out there because there are people who are there for years and they don’t have an agent or a manager,” Gaylord said. “Especially the manager, so that was very fortunate.”
While his fast moving career was great for Sanders, it was very strange for his mother. Being the parent of a celebrity is hard. Along with all of the joy and pride you get from seeing your child “make it big,” there’s a lot of stress and worry. Gaylord said Sanders has to cook for himself, an activity he enjoys, but he is also responsible for paying his own bills and buying necessities for his apartment.
“I felt like I had to separate myself from him a lot quicker than I probably would have,” Gaylord said. “These were all decisions he had to make on his own, so as a parent it was very sad.”
It’s also not easy to live so far away. Gaylord said all of her sons have stayed very close, and Konrad stayed with him in Los Angeles for a week last year. Gaylord, on the other hand, doesn’t like to fly, and the next time she will see her middle child will most likely be in July. These days though, keeping in touch isn’t a problem.
“His brothers go out to visit him,” Gaylord said. “And because of communication we’re talking to him all the time even though he’s all the way across the United States.”
Gaylord said she sometimes wishes he had gone to college. Sanders took classes at Blue Ridge Community College his last two years of home-schooling through a program called dual enrollment. She was glad that he had a year of college behind him before going to Los Angeles, Gaylord said.
“I hope still one day that he’ll go to college and I don’t know why,” Gaylord said. “I think that as parents with children you always feel like they’re going to go to college and I just feel like he’s missed that part.”
Sanders has thought about going back to school one day. Gaylord said he’s always been very mechanically minded, and he had dreams of being an engineer. When he was at Blue Ridge he took classes like math and drafting that fit with that dream.
“[College] isn’t out of the question for him either,” Gaylord said. “He just said maybe one day there’ll be a lull in there or something where he could go back to school and he doesn’t know what he’d study but he kind of understands that feeling that it would be fun to go to college.”
Despite all of the worry and crazy schedules, Gaylord could not be more proud of her son. When asked what she was most proud of him for, instead of naming a TV show or movie, Gaylord said the friends he has made. Sanders has continued taking acting classes after moving to California, and he’s made some really good friends. Even though he’s grown up a lot in the five years he’s been away, Gaylord sees her son as the same good person.
“These people are just down to earth, and they get together and there’s nothing wild about them, there’s nothing pretentious about them,” Gaylord said. “I guess I’m proud that he’s really the same person.”
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