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Was being born into Show Business a blessing or a curse?
Raised in Rome, Munich and Los Angeles, Clayton Halsey was born into an international showbiz family and, from early childhood, has worked in Film, Television and Music. Starting as Go-fer, at age 12, on the television series The Dukes of Hazzard (1979) and then the feature motion picture, Victory (1981), directed by John Huston, he began a career that has included performing as an actor, singer and musician.
On the other side of the camera, he has worked as a writer, director and producer in film, TV and commercials, as well as an assistant film editor, film editor, sound editor, assistant director and production manager.
In 1985, he began studying Film, Theater, and English at Chapman University in the City of Orange, California. While there, he made many student films and was the first Freshman at Chapman to win the Outstanding 8mm Film Award. He also performed in many plays, winning Best Supporting Actor his Junior year for playing "Ali Hakim" in "Oklahoma!".
After completing his Junior year, Clayton moved back to Germany and began work as an Assistant Editor for Editor Christel Suckow and Director Dominik Graf, on the Feature Film Tiger, Löwe, Panther (1989) (aka Tiger, Lion, Panther). His next assignment was to travel all over Europe as Assistant Director on a German/French/Austrian co-production of the hit action-thriller TV series Opération Mozart (1989). Then, he was hired as Production Manager on two German TV Movies based on The Love Boat (1977). This assignment took him to Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida and Barbados, West Indies.
Before returning to Los Angeles from Munich, he wrote and directed a commercial for Cazal designer eye-wear, which ran in movie theaters and on television in Germany, Austria, England and France. Back in L.A. in 1991, he had to re-establish himself and did many spec. and freebie projects. While working at a post-house, the opportunity arose to edit an unknown artist's music video.
The video, Gerardo's "Rico/Suave" was played in maximum rotation on MTV, hit #7 on the Billboard charts, and began Clayton's editing career. "Rico/Suave" was recently voted as one of the top-ten greatest one-hit wonders by VH1.
In 1992, he had a starring role in the movie Bikini Squad (1993) which he also edited, as well as writing and performing much of the music. Over the next eight years, he worked as an editor for Playboy TV, cut 14 Feature Films, over 20 Music Videos, countless trailers, promos and EPK's. This led to editing Network TV shows as well as production managing a Discovery Channel Documentary about lightning called "Weapons of the Gods", which shot throughout the western U.S. His band, Joint Session, formed in 1991, played all over L.A. for seven years before calling it quits in 1998. During this time, he was also doing free-lance voice work.
Things changed in 2000 when he became Supervising Editor on the first season of Survivor (2000), living on the island in Malaysia for the length of Production. This was the beginning of his "reality" TV career, that since has developed into editing work on countless Network shows where he has also performed as the lead off-camera announcer. He also recently directed and produced a pilot, "Blown Away", a reality show about glass artists on Maui and the Umphrey's McGee 10-year anniversary documentary.
He is the announcer and chief editor for the CBS show, Big Brother (2000) which he has edited for eight seasons and served as the show's announcer for the last five seasons.
Currently, he is shifting his focus to directing his first feature film.
In addition, he can occasionally be seen performing his music in various clubs around the L.A. area.
Was being born into show business a blessing or a curse?
I guess it was a blessing...
