When I was in first grade, I had no great expectations. I couldn’t very well plan past how I’d spend my recess each day, let alone what I’d do with my life. About half way through that year my school had career day and the teacher asked us to draw what we would like to become. Well, this was a bit of a thinker for me, since I hadn’t much considered my future. Nevertheless with the same lackadaisical attitude I approached most things at that point in my life, I drew a police officer.
When I got home that day and presented my mom with the picture, she didn’t do the normal motherly thing and congratulate me, while sticking my work to the refrigerator. Instead, she asked me why? Why had I chosen a police officer? Well, my answer was exactly what you’d expect from a seven year old boy. “They get to drive cars real fast and shoot guns and stop the bad guys and save the day.”
She quickly put my foolish misgivings to rest; “you know that’s not what they really do, right? Why do you think being a police officer would be like that?”
“The Movies.”
She smiled and, in just one sentence, changed my life forever.
“Then why don’t you make those movies?”
It was the first time in my life I’d ever considered that that was, in fact, a job. Someone out there got to make movies; people were playing pretend for a living.
Why not me?
Ever since then I have, in one way or another, been doing exactly that. I acted every chance I could, learned to sing, did ballet and shot stop-action movies with my legos. After I finally made it to high school, I started writing scripts and making short films. I kept up the acting, this time on stage and screen. When it finally came time to pick the next step in my life, I opted for high risk, high reward. I moved to New York at nineteen and haven’t done a thing here aside from make movies… well and a fair bit of television, a couple of modeling gigs and one or two small commercials, but who’s counting.