From the time he was a wee lad of 4 and made his professional debut on ROMPER ROOM, GUIDING LIGHT’s Ricky Paull Goldin (Gus) has been fortunate enough to find steady work in show business, whether the roles be in commercials, theater, film or television.
"I did over 150 commercials, four of which won CLEO Awards," notes Goldin, who began trying out for television ads while in early grade school. "When I started auditioning for commercials, my mom would tell me, ‘You have to go in and be yourself and don’t give a damn about the cameras or the people. Just have a really good time.’ And I would just get them. I would get them like crazy. But I think that’s because I was kind of precocious!"
The Education Of Ricky
Before he even realized it was happening, Goldin’s career had begun to snowball — and he was barely out of junior high! "The stakes just kept getting higher and higher," he chuckles. "An after-school special came in here and there. I did ALF for a year as the daughter’s boyfriend, and KATE & ALLIE for a year as Jenny’s boyfriend. I was pretty much a bad boy in all my roles!"
Yet as successful as Goldin was, it was extremely important to his mom that he get an excellent education. "She would yank me from the business to [take me] back to school," says the actor, who primarily attended prep and parochial schools. "Going back to school helped refill my arsenal and let me become a real human being. For a while, I was trying to do both simultaneously. I’d always cut from school and go on auditions. Then I’d get the gigs, and I’d miss so much school. My mom would get fed up with that and yank me out of acting for a year at a time!"
Mother Knows Best
Thanks to his mother’s determination to give him as normal a childhood as possible — even if that required taking young Ricky Paull away from the acting he loved — Goldin still got to experience life as an everyday kid. "I got to enjoy childhood," he claims. "I’m very glad in many ways that I didn’t end up with my own series as a child."
Had he starred in a series a la DIFFERENT STROKES or GROWING PAINS, Goldin muses, he might not be continuing to work today. " I’m glad I didn’t peak when I was a child actor because not a lot of them made that transition [to adult roles] very well." — Michelle Ann Moro
Ricky Paull Goldin
