Regarding Henry

Duane Henry Didn’t Have A Home. But He Had A Plan.

- Ryan Devlin

IT WAS 2013, AND THE FUTURE NCIS CAST MEMBER HAD just landed in Los Angeles from his native England. Most actors, when they finally make it to Hollywood, are so eager to hit the ground running that they would jump into a role in a community theater adaptation of The Fast and the Furious if it meant exposure and enough loose change for a few meals at In-N-Out Burger. But Duane Henry spent his first year going to zero auditions—on purpose.

“I didn’t even want to sniff a script,” says the cut, überhandsome 32-year old, who plays MI6 agent Clayton Reeves on the top-rated crime drama. Instead, he spent his first year in Los Angeles in a sort of self-imposed sabbatical, working on getting his body to the level of a Marvel superhero and perfecting his American accent for to-be-determined future roles.

It was all part of the plan.

“I plotted it all out when I was 14,” Henry says of his calculated—and at times puzzlingly constructed—journey. “I’d go to drama school for two years, and then when I turned 17, I’d move to London. I told myself, ‘10 years in London no matter what, and then on to Los Angeles.’ And that’s exactly what I did.”