Kevin Rahm: This ‘Mad Man’ just wants to keep working

Kevin Rahm doesn’t want to be a star; he just wants to be an actor with a steady gig.

“I’m lucky in the sense that I haven’t become famous,” he said, going on to explain that “being a star isn’t a goal, but I love being an actor. I’ve consistently been working on TV shows – which is a pleasant problem to have – and there is nothing better for an actor than knowing you have a summer off when you know you have a good job waiting.”

The 1989 Atlanta High School graduate ended up on the small screen, by way of a drama class at Brigham Young University. “I was studying pre-law, thinking I wanted to be a lawyer. Then I realized I just wanted to act on LA Law.”

He changed his major to drama and in 1994 won the Irene Ryan Award for best college actor. In 1995 he won his first role in a USA Movie of the Week titled Out of Annie’s Past. Then, in 1996, he decided to leave BYU for the Hollywood Hills and an acting career. Kevin auditioned and won several parts in both movies and TV series, but in 1999 the one that gave him a reason to quit waiting tables was the TV series, Everything’s Relative.

“Before that I had played a Trill in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - which was really cool - besides dozens of other characters in shows and movies” he said. Those other shows include Beverly Hills 90210, Touched By An Angel, Silk Stalkings, and many more.

When his role in Everything’s Relative ended after four episodes, he was given the role of Dr. Danny Kozak on Jesse, a TV series starring Christina Applegate. Since that show, Kevin has seamlessly rolled through parts in Judging Amy (Kyle McCarty), Desperate Housewives (Lee McDermott), Mad Men (Ted Chaough), Bates Motel (Bob Paris), Madame Secretary (Mike B) and Fox TV’s Lethal Weapon (Captain Brooks Avery). Sprinkled throughout those recurring roles are guest-starring roles in Grey’s Anatomy, CSI: NY, CSI: Miami, Friends, Scrubs, and The Mentalist, to name a few. His 20+ movie credits include Alfie, LA Blues, Nightcrawler, and Clinical.

Even though Kevin has been acting steady since 1995, not many people in Atlanta, Texas realized just who they were seeing on their screen. According to Atlan good friends and had a great time participating in UIL One Act Play competitions. We mostly made fun of each other and goofed around, but he was clearly more talented than the rest of us. I saw him perform on stage in LA about 20 years ago, and he was charmed. Obviously, Ted in Mad Men is my favorite character of his, but his theatre performances are special. My son is pursuing acting now. Kevin has been very kind in advising me on protocol of auditions and acting terms. I am so happy to have known him back then. He is a generous friend and accomplished actor.”

Of all the characters he has had the opportunity to play, Kevin says his role as Lee McDermott on Desperate Housewives was his very favorite. “I loved being able to play a silly role,” he explained, “and it was a great ensemble full of great actors.”

Kevin brings a comedic delivery to most of the roles he plays, adding a light touch to even the heaviest of roles. “All of those guys are in me,” he says. “It’s just a balance of what they [the writers] have written versus who I am. Lee and Mike B. were the easiest to play.”

While Kevin has worked with many well-known actors, there are a few that have left impressions on him. “Elizabeth Moss [Mad Men] and Vera Farmiga [Bates Motel] are just so good they actually took me out of the scene for a moment,” Kevin explained. “I had to work to hold it together.”

“Jon Hamm and Tea Leone are two actors that are similar in that they make everyone around them better,” he said, describing the stars of Mad Men and Madame Secretary. “They are really good at elevating others around them, and understand that the better everyone else is, the better they look.”

If Kevin had a chance, he says The Walking Dead would be a show he would “love to have a role on.” The one actor he would love to work with, he said, would be Jeff Bridges. “He brings so much to everything he is in – he’s like the rug in a room – he just brings it all together.”

As far as watching movies, rather than acting in them, he favors anything directed by Stanley Kubrick and anything about Vietnam. “As a young guy raised by women, I guess that’s my connection to masculinity,” Kevin reflected.

But it was more than just a connection to masculinity. It was a connection to his father, Captain Arnold John Rahm – a helicopter pilot with the 1st Airborne Stingers – who was shot down in the Spring of 1972 over the Michelin tire factory at Binh Duong, during his second tour. Captain Rahm was 22 years old when he died, and Kevin was only 16 months old at the time.

As a young actor at the age of 22, Kevin played the role of a Vietnam Prisoner of War in the Hanoi Hotel, and the irony wasn’t lost on him. “I was playing a Vietnam soldier, but my dad lived it,” he said. “My whole life has been colored by that.”

Soon after his father’s death, his mother, Sue, moved him from his birth place on the base at Mineral Wells, Texas, back to their families’ hometown of Shreveport, LA, where both of Kevin’s grandfathers had been stationed at Barksdale Air Force Base. There, Kevin attended Loyola Prep High School, then an all-boys Catholic school.

Even though he attended a Catholic school, his mother was raising Kevin as a Mormon, and member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints – which there were not a lot of in Shreveport at the time.

“I had met a lot of Mormon teenagers in the Atlanta, Texas, area through church events, and I saw that they were able to be popular in school and still keep their Mormon values,” Kevin recalled.

“I was being a typical boy and getting into some mischief, so I thought if I moved to Atlanta I could be a better Mormon. So, my mom moved and enrolled me in Atlanta High School my junior year.”

Even though he strived to be a good Mormon, went on his two-year mission, and attended Brigham Young University, he didn’t feel completely satisfied. “My father had converted to Mormonism just for my mother, so I always felt like I was taking up his cause, if you will,” Kevin stated. “But the time came when I just didn’t feel like I had to do that anymore.”

These days, when not in front of the camera, you can find Kevin in his Sacramento, CA home spending time with his six-year old daughter, Hunter, and wife, Amy – a cardio-thoracic surgeon. Kevin and Amy wed on a Hollywood soundstage in 2012, and she can be seen with Kevin on the red carpet during the award season. It was because of her career they moved from Los Angeles to Sacramento.

In early 2019 he founded “The Rahm Celebrity Golf Tournament” to raise money for St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital. Last year the event was virtual, but he still managed to raise $700,000 for his favorite charity.

While Kevin hasn’t made it back home in a few years, his half-brother brother, Tim Marrs, still lives in the area; and half-sister Kelly Gruel lives in Georgia. “Tim is four years younger, and Kelly is eight years younger than me,” he said, “so we were really spaced wide apart growing up.”

Currently, Kevin is in pre-production work for an HBO Max series he has been cast in with the working title of “Vegas High.” The show is a 1990s-set coming-of-age story about Laura, a girl who’s caught between two worlds: The fast-paced lifestyle of Las Vegas and her strong Mormon faith and community – a conundrum Kevin knows something about. And for now, that’s enough to keep this actor working steady – and that’s all he really wants.