Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1546062
56 SAG-AFTR A | Summer 2026 | sagaftra.org on set in a very professional environment where there's not only adults working with you, but adults working really hard with you and expecting a kind of level of decorum and professionalism" to be particularly satisfying. Likewise, O'Connell relished all the hard work involved in doing a four-episode stint on the final season of Glee in 2015. "We would go to dance rehearsal in the morning for a couple of hours and then be on set, and then sometimes at night we'd wrap, and then they would send us to a recording studio to do the vocal for the thing that we were shooting the next day." It was exactly the type of intensive program O'Connell craved. "I think I kind of [was] wishing for something that intense." Never one to rest on his laurels, with his Glee wages after the show wrapped, O'Connell realized he could afford to book studio time and make an EP. While O'Connell's experience as a young performer was positive and he praises the on-set protections for people under 18 made possible by union contracts, the recording artist-composer- actor concedes that, "You should never force your 11-year-old into this." In fact, the O'Connell family took a cautious approach to seeing if performing was something their children really wanted. When O'Connell asked to have a meeting with his parents' agent, they waited to see if he would mention it again in the subsequent weeks. Only when O'Connell kept begging to take a meeting or go to an audition, they became certain that he had a genuine interest in pursuing a career in entertainment. O'Connell enjoyed a pair of big breaks in 2015. Nine months after his Glee character's swoon-worthy kiss with the football jock played by Marshall Williams, O'Connell paired his sister's vocals with his own composition on "Ocean Eyes," a song he'd previously written for his high school rock band. The ethereal, deeply melancholic track accidentally went viral after they uploaded it to SoundCloud, and the siblings' careers officially blasted off. Sticking the Landing Staying grounded in the aftermath of such immediate, skyrocketing success came naturally to O'Connell. After all, he knew the reality of being a working-class performer. Already in "career panic" at 18, after having decided not to pursue higher education like his peers, he knew how important it was to not squander the opportunity. "Because even when you're in that moment of success," O'Connell said, "there's always that concern about is it going to continue? How do you maintain that?" Maintain it, he has. Being a Multi-Hit Wonder The youngest person ever to win a Grammy for Producer of the Year, Non-Classical, and the youngest man to win two competitive Academy Awards, O'Connell has applied his work ethic not