Kent Shocknek

Because of the length of his career, the duration of his newscasts, and breaking news events, Shocknek is believed to have logged more hours anchoring news than anyone else in Los Angeles.
Shocknek was the original anchor of the first early-morning newscast in Los Angeles, KNBC's "Today in L.A.," starting in 1986. He continued anchoring morning newscasts at KNBC, then at L.A.'s "CBS2 News" without pause until late 2013, before moving to prime-time newscasts on Los Angeles' CBS TV-owned "KCAL9 News at 8 and 10 PM.".
On January 10, 2014, the City of Los Angeles officially proclaimed "Kent Shocknek Day," in honor of his decades of dedicated service.
An avowed fan of James Bond movies, Shocknek's first non-news role was as an extra, playing a fisherman in the San Francisco Fisherman's Wharf scene of the 1985 007 film, "A View to a Kill." (Now) producer Barbara Broccoli recognized him near the filming site, and invited him to be part of the background action.
Years before working at the NBC Studios in Burbank, Shocknek snuck onto the lot and backstage at The Tonight Show while still a student to meet Sean Connery. Not wanting to be caught loitering while Connery wrapped up a conversation with someone else, Shocknek turned to the nearest person and started talking with ... Michael Caine.

Playing completely unrelated roles is a newer opportunity, but I'll never complain about appearing as a newscaster: after all, half the word 'typecast' is 'cast.'
Shooting an episode of "The Purge" in New Orleans 20 minutes after a drenching storm, we waited for a water truck to respray the street and a jazz band on a nearby riverboat to stop playing, so I could deliver my lines about the... eerie quiet. I realized I'm in the craziest business in the world.
I thought CBS provided a real service by having (Michael) Weatherly introduce the virus episode on-camera to explain it was filmed a month before the Corona Virus lockdown. The script was so timely and had so many parallels, it was eerie.
"Very Close Friends" was so far out of my comfort zone, I've asked my friends not to watch it. But if I wanted to show the world I could act against type, I needed to do it; even if it meant shredding my image as a character who's always dependable and trustworthy.
When I was whining to (Steven Spielberg's mother, Leah Adler) that he cut me from 'The Terminal,' she just looked at me and said "Honey, he cut me from 'Catch Me If You Can.' His own mother!" We shook our heads in unison and went back to eating lunch.

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