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I am fortunate enough to have many experiences that didn’t go well, to come to some conclusions, come to some successful coping mechanisms. Probably the biggest movie I acted in, was a, a superhero movie. I was doing press for the movie, meaning doing, like, interviews for the movie where I played the main villain. It was, like, the coolest part I ever got. I loved it so much. And I don’t read reviews of movies I’m in. So the way I found out that it was not being well-received was doing an interview on camera about the movie and hearing like, “Hey, why do you think so many people don’t like what you’ve done?” And like, you know, it’s kind of a shock to hear you work on a thing for years and everything, especially a movie of that scale. It was, heartbreaking, mortifying. I mean, I cried the rest of the day. You know, I called my dad like a baby and cried to my dad that this superhero movie, that I was in, that people didn’t like me in it. It sounds so petty as I talk about it now to call your father and cry on the phone that people didn’t like you playing a superhero.
But, you know, when your heart is in something, it is heartbreaking. You care like anybody else who works on anything how the thing is going to be received. Sometimes for an actor, it’s heightened that much more because when somebody doesn’t like something, tons and tons of people don’t like something, and the only, only, only thing to do is move forward. The only thing to do is say, “Well, how can I do better on the next one?” Maybe this superhero thing, maybe that’s not right for me as a performer. Maybe I’m somebody who belongs more in this style. You know? How can I learn from this? And how can I do it as quickly as possible so I don’t stay mired in this awful feeling?
That’s been helpful to me, but it still feels bad. Still, sometimes people say to me on the street, “Hey man, I thought you were okay in that movie.” And they say it as like almost an apology and it makes you feel even worse because you’re like, I don’t want to be consoled by a stranger. You know what I mean? I didn’t know that was at issue here, at, Joe’s Pizzeria.