When he was entering the seventh grade, actor-singer John Michael Finley was positive he was going to be a missionary or a baseball player. The athletic son of a Baptist minister, Finley says he had absolutely no interest in performing.

That’s a bit ironic because today Finley finds himself repeating the role of Bart Millard in the sequel to the hit, “I Can Only Imagine,” opening Friday, Feb. 20. Based on the biographical original, “I Can Only Imagine 2” is about what happens when dreams actually do come true.

Finley says he fiercely resisted the idea of performing in the school chorus in junior high. “They put me in choir for whatever reason, and I did everything I could to get out of it,’ he says. “I remember spending time in the office that first week of junior high, ‘You gotta get me out of this. This is not what I signed up for. I’m not interested!’”

But he was out of luck.“I just remember shutting down and folding my arms and didn't want to participate.” Fortunately, the choir director was savvy to the ways of teenage boys.“He took all the guys outside in the hallway. He chewed us out for five minutes ... and all I remember was the last thing he said as we were shuffling back into the room.

“He said, ‘Don't forget, guys, girls LOVE guys that can sing.’ And apparently that was all I needed to hear. I remember going back in the choir room with a renewed vigor and knowing that I was trapped there no matter what, and I just fell in love with the culture.”

He was so in love with the culture that after studying at a performing arts college and marrying his sweetheart, music director Elizabeth Doran, he and his wife decided to try their luck in New York.

“We both had decided to hit the pavement and do whatever it takes to get on Broadway,” he recalls. “And before we even packed up and moved we both had been offered Broadway jobs. So that was the dream come true. But the aftermath of that is we never did the grind. So the grind came after. I was living my dream. I was on Broadway. I was in ‘Les Miserables.’ I was playing the lead role. And in many ways, I had never felt worse.”

He says he felt despondent because his dreams were suddenly coming true. “I was cashing paychecks bigger than I'd ever cashed before, and was living with my dream partner, my beautiful wife, and had never felt such a tug with my mental health and had never really felt the clouds over my head until that moment. And that was quite a confounding moment for me to be achieving my dreams, and at the same time, really struggling either with mental health or with physical health and other things.

Among those “other things” was the loss of his older brother, who was killed in Afghanistan.“I was a freshman in college at theater school in Chicago. And I moved away from home, and I kind of left my family to deal with the aftermath of losing a family member,” he remembers.

“So I think what it was for me was kind of trying to reconnect with that. I'd almost run away from that. From Chicago into New York to pursue my dreams and left my younger siblings and left my parents to deal with the trauma of losing a family member.”

He says he had been propelled by his passion for performing.“I’d moved from the Ozarks, the middle of nowhere to Chicago, living downtown in the Loop, going to a performing arts college. And for me that was rocket fuel – I was kind of running away from that trauma. I think running away from your past and running from your problems can be incredible rocket fuel,” he says.

“I also had the rocket fuel of chasing my dreams. I had high aspirations for Broadway, for film, for whatever it may be. And having both of those boosters really elevated me to a certain point. And then everything just kind of comes to a halt. The pandemic hit, and my past caught up with me,” he sighs.

“And it's not that my future dreams were dashed, but the history came to a stopping point and the world stopped. And we were all trapped inside together and it really forced me to deal with a lot of the things that I had been ignoring.”

Now the father of a 4-year-old boy, Finley says he still misses his family connection.“We're not surrounded by grandmas and grandpas and aunts and uncles and cousins, and it sometimes feels like we're bushwhacking through the rainforest on our own and trying to create our own path. And that can be really challenging — to not reject your culture but to move to a different culture and try something new and blaze a new trail.”

Laura Dern stars in new drama

Fans who loved Laura Dern in films and shows like “Lonely Planet,” “Palm Royale,” “Jurassic Park” or “Enlightened” will be pleased to find her in a failing-marriage drama with Will Arnett, “Is This Thing On?” The film is streaming on Prime Video, Apple TV and Fandango at Home and will hit 4K Blu-ray and DVD March 17.

As her marriage crumbles Dern’s character is forced to consider the sacrifices she has made for her family while her husband tries to find meaning in the New York comedy scene.

Fans may not realize that Dern began as a child actress executing her first role in “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore” when she was only 7. The daughter of actors Diane Ladd and Bruce Dern, she credits her parents for keeping her grounded, but admits that there were stresses on her as a teen.

“I think unfortunately kids and teens have so much pressure on them now, culturally, the information highway, and things on the internet that we didn’t have to deal with,” she says, “that they have a loss of innocence too. But in a different way now.

“I think mine would’ve been that I was anxious at 12 to 16 — not just about making the track team or challenges with friendship and all of that — there was also this added thing of getting jobs and work and handling a career and balancing it with other areas of your life.

“Luckily for me I had both my grandmother and my mother particularly, both my parents. But I was living with my mom most of the time. She had a real longing to make sure I was very involved in school. So I was lucky in that, for me, it worked that I was never home-schooled. I was always in school, had to be involved in two activities or I couldn’t do a job. It was like swim team and president of whatever club or something like that, and classes and play dates and over nights.”

Auditions set for new 'Baywatch'

Unpack that bikini and the board-shorts because the folks over at Fox are holding an open casting call for their updated version of the evergreen “Baywatch.”

Auditions will be held Wednesday, Feb. 18, at the Marina Del Rey Marriott hotel, 4100 Admiralty Way, in Marina Del Rey, California. Filming is scheduled to begin next month at the historic Venice Beach and at the Fox Studio lot in Century City.

Swim on over to www.baywatchcastingcall.com.

Fox is hoping a whole new generation will devour the drama series that began in 1989 and became the most watched show in the world.

It catapulted David Hasselhoff and Pamela Anderson to giddy stardom and provided a launching pad for actors Carmen Electra, Jason Momoa and Yasmine Bleeth.

Of course, part of the show’s attraction were the gorgeous women in their skimpy red bathing suits. But Hasselhoff insists, “At times it’s difficult to buy beautiful women in bathing suits, but I can actually show you L.A. County lifeguards who are top class in their swimming, who are very attractive and really good at what they do.”

Wahlberg returns to Boston

Donnie Wahlberg has slipped into Boston for the second season of the CBS series, “Boston Blue,” which returns to TV on Friday, Feb. 27.

Wahlberg, who’s 56, admits that the schedule and the grueling action scenes can be tough, but says, “It’s such a great cast, and so many new stories we get to tell, that it really isn’t a problem. It’s probably a little exhausting, but I would never complain about it. It’s literally what I’ve worked for my whole life — to be able to perform and do concerts and to act and have a show that’s successful and on the air.

“And I’m so blessed and so grateful that to even see it as any form of burden would be criminal, and my dad would come down from heaven and kick me right up the butt if I ever complained.”

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