NEW YORK — If there's a lesson to be gleaned from the arc of Murray Bartlett's career, it may be this: Never underestimate the power of a really great mustache.
A decade ago, the actor was grappling with professional doubts after a stint as a series regular on "Guiding Light" and a flurry of one-off parts in shows like "White Collar." Feeling restless, he decided to spend a few months in Cairo with his then-partner, who is Egyptian, during the height of the Arab Spring, and grew a mustache to fit in better with the locals.
Out of the blue, he got an audition for an HBO series about a circle of gay friends living in San Francisco called "Looking." He put himself on tape from Cairo and landed the part of Dom, a sexually magnetic waiter with a retro Tom Selleck 'stache. The quietly groundbreaking series, never a major hit, was "one of the first times where I realized that work could be like pure joy," says Bartlett on a sunny fall afternoon at Diner, a culinary mainstay in the shadow of the Williamsburg Bridge that he frequented during nearly two decades as a Brooklynite. "I like to think they liked other aspects of the audition, but the mustache was pretty pivotal in getting that role."
