Chris Carmack said he had an “uncomfortable” introduction to fame while starring in “The O.C.”
“I remember when it first came out. I was doing my laundry at the laundromat, and people started pointing from the windows outside. And they started gathering as a crowd looking in,” he told Page Six in a recent exclusive interview.
The actor, 44, admitted he was “very uncomfortable” with the attention, noting that this was before iPhones, when fans would take a picture “and there’s sort of this kind of more quick and respectful way to share your space.”
“Back then, it was just mayhem! So I grabbed my laundry out of the dryer, threw it in my bag and high-tailed it out of there.”
When Page Six jokingly asked why Carmack didn’t just send his laundry out to be washed, he confessed that the thought hadn’t occurred to him.
“I was driving my used car and living in my cheap apartment,” he explained. “I had a lease that had been signed for the rest of the year. I had no intention to leave.”
Carmack had been a model for Abercrombie & Fitch before his big break on “The O.C.” and says one of his “biggest challenges” while posing moodily was not squinting.
“I have very blue eyes, and keeping my eyes open on a bright outdoor day can actually be really hard,” he shared. However, now things have improved for him because “a lot of times they care enough to put a shade over the top, so you don’t have to squint in the scenes.”
Carmack went on to star in “Nashville” and currently appears in “Grey’s Anatomy” as Dr. Atticus Lincoln.
He joked that his stint playing a doctor means he’s picked up some medical skills.
“I’ve secured a lot of bones with braces and screws and, you know, I don’t know that I could close very well with the sutures, but once I’m inside, if the anesthesiologist did a good job, I might be able to — I might be able to stick some bones back together,” he said.
Carmack will soon be seen in the film “The Stranger in My Home.”
The thriller, based on the best-selling novel of the same name, also stars Sophia Bush.
He described the movie as “dripping and juicy, full of that kitchen sink kind of drama,” but promised that it “does morph into a really fun action-packed thriller and then is, kind of, becomes horror adjacent at the end.”
“So it’s full of, it’s full of surprises, and it was a lot of fun to work on,” he gushed.
“The Stranger in My Home” is available on digital on June 24.