In Which a Wannabe Actor Searches for Meaning, Love, and a Callback, and Instead Finds What He Needed All Along

I want to be useful.

Ever since I almost died in my teens, I’ve felt like I’m on borrowed time. I’m acutely aware of the ticking clock in the crocodile that is coming for me, and this has filled me with an urgency to be useful. I don’t want to be rich, or socially elite, or even particularly happy. I want to use whatever time I have left to do what I was put here to do. 

But lately, it’s felt like I’m not the only one running out of time. In the wake of the pandemic, reality has become too absurd to continue. We have reached the edge of the map and the world, itself, seems to be standing at the end of time. This sparks more urgency but along with it, confusion as to what useful even means. I’m living in a satirical dystopia in which both I and the world seem to be facing imminent oblivion. What do I do, and how do I spend my time? What can I do that would be meaningful?

To know how to live at the end, I go back to the beginning. 

When I was a child, my favorite thing to do was play pretend with friends. We would go into the woods and spin stories and dialogue out of thin air. We were the last defenders of the Alamo, orphans on the frontier, minutemen, and cowboys. I didn’t realize it at the time, but this was acting.

Many of the people whose life’s work I most respect are actors: Johnny Depp, Natalie Portman, James Dean, Marilyn Monroe. They achieved breathtaking levels of honesty and showed us what it means to be human. They gave their lives on every inch of film. They are martyrs – saints and sinners of whom the world is not worthy.

Acting is the work I most love and respect. It’s why I left home hundreds of miles behind to live in a city where I didn’t know anyone. It’s why I did it three times. It’s why I’ve been living in New York City for the last year and a half – through the bitter cold of winter, the boiling heat of summer, the dirty subways, noisy streets, prohibitive cost of living, inconvenience and brutality. Because I love this and I believe in it. 

I have to remind myself of this because I haven’t actually been acting for the last year and a half; I’ve just been trying to. What I’ve been doing is survival work: retail, event promotion, and food services.

I’ve been thinking about John Krasinski lately. He, too, came from a middle class background and moved to New York City to pursue acting. After two and a half years of waiting tables, he was ready to quit, move back home, and resume a middle class life. Three weeks later, he landed a lead role in The Office. He’s living a life so unimaginably different from the life he almost had – married to Emily Blunt, acting in juicy roles, writing and directing movies. I think about all the other John Krasinskis who didn’t get The Office, who did move back, and are now living comparatively dreary lives. 

I wonder which one I am. Because it turns out, I do want to be rich, socially elite, and particularly happy. I want to create art at the highest level and reap all the plunder that goes with it. I want my face in GQ and my name in lights. The affirmation, adoration, money, sexual opportunity, and the feeling of significance that what I do matters. I want it all. 

But I have none of it, and it’s hard to live without. I’m bussing tables right now – work that is not meaningful, that I do not love and respect. It does not come with money, affirmation, or opportunity. I am unseen and unwanted. Even family and friends have a hard time understanding what I’m doing, and it’s becoming increasingly difficult for me to remember.

There’s little I can do to change this – to become the Krasinski who made it rather than all the other Krasinskis who didn’t. The problem with acting is it is inherently collaborative. You can write and record music on your own, but in order to act, someone needs to cast you, direct you, act opposite you. So I knock on the door of agents and casting directors, and ask them to let me do my life’s work. And I am not patient.

There are so many of us, who’ve come from all over the country to live in this city for as long as we can, who pour coffee and serve food. We live like gypsies – broke, transient, and expendable. It sounds bohemian, but it’s just hard. We are like salmon fighting our way upstream, knowing most of us won’t make it. We will wash out or get eaten by bears, and only a lucky few will make it through. Those who try and succeed are praised and rewarded, while those who try and fail are not, even though the action is the same. It’s not easy to put in the work without the reward, or even a good chance of getting the reward. I don’t know if I’m three weeks away from everything I ever wanted, or thirty years away from working at the same restaurant I’m at now.

It’s hard to do on a good day. But these are days when life is strange, and the world is ending, and I stand on the precipice of turning thirty. And I am not patient. 

I want to make it as an actor, but the truth is, that’s not what I need. There’s a Promised Land awaiting those who make it in the industry, but according to everyone from Jim Carrey to King Solomon, it’s just a mirage that leaves one as empty and unfulfilled as when they arrived. I don’t need the money, the status, the affirmation, or adoration. 

What I need is to go back to the beginning. 

Acting is the work I love and respect. There isn’t a reward on the other side of that. That is the reward. I believe in my bones it is worth doing – not just acting, but the trying. If enough of us try to act, some of us will be able to. I want it to be me, but it doesn’t have to be. I am proud of Austin Butler and Alden Ehrenreich and I am proud of Kaleb Michael Fair and Sophie Aknin and a thousand other names you haven’t heard yet and maybe never will. I’m humbled to be one of them. For however long it lasts, whatever comes from it, and whatever comes next, it has been one of the great privileges of my life to be a part of this.

A beautiful friend and fellow gypsy told me I was not a failure. I almost cried because I knew she understood. She said if this is the calling, than it matters that we do it. The world needs us to take our place against the current and try our bloody best. And even if we never make it, our efforts are as valuable and worthy as if we did. We will have been useful.

I’m not writing this to convince you, but to remind myself. Martin Luther said, “Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.” Even if the world in general or my life in particular are ending, this is what I want to be found doing. Maybe I never get to do it. But for now I get to try, and for now that is enough.

J.

Oct. 11, 2024