Matthew Del Negro - 10,000 NOs

The truth inside me rose up, grabbed me by the throat, and got my attention. Uncharacteristically, I skipped out of all the classes I was supposed to be taking and, instead, found a patch of grass in front of a small church in Perugia where I dumped all of my jagged thoughts into the journal my sister had given to me prior to my trip. It was as though there was an angry artist inside of me, no longer allowing me to put a muzzle on him, writing it. He told me that I couldn't continue to go down the path upon which I was traveling. It was an exhilarating yet frightening experience. That journal contains the first traces of my desire to act and write. I look back on this period as fortunate now, but it is no exaggeration to say that, at the time, I feared I was going to die in Italy with no friends or family around to witness it.

“I went back to my room, pulled my pistol out and put it in my mouth and was getting ready to blow my head off. Thankfully, I had a picture of my wife and kids on the desk across from me. I saw that as I was sitting there with a gun in my mouth and thought, ‘What're you doing?’ So I put my gun away and I went and sought help for the first time. And I'd love to say that I woke up. I didn't. I stayed on the X for a while. I still played the victim. I tried to convince myself, ‘You're being thrown under the bus. You're doing the right thing.’ But it literally took me about five months. I hadn't hit rock bottom yet.”

Jason Redman, Retired Navy SEAL, New York Times Best-Selling Author

The result of this breakdown/breakthrough was that the following spring at Boston College, after a brief period of going back to lacrosse and the beaten path I had traveled for so long, I quit the team, stepped out of my comfort zone, and auditioned for a play. After losing out to my roommate, who was also auditioning for the first time, I gave it another shot and scored the lead in a one-act play. It was performed in a lecture hall, rather than an actual theater. But despite the humble venue, I enjoyed the experience so much that I told anyone who would listen that I was going to be an actor. While this may sound dramatic and grand, over a year later, after that one-act play, I had not done any more plays.

Upon graduating, I moved back home with the plan to save enough money to move to New York City and pursue a career in acting. I had taken an acting class my senior year and added a Film Studies minor to my English Literature major, but I had not acted aside from that lecture-hall production. On top of this, after 27 years of marriage, my parents decided to split that summer, so moving back into the house where I grew up without my Dad living there was an adjustment. There were many thoughts swimming through my head, but the primary one was how I could turn my new dream into a reality.

There is no standard how-to manual containing a list of the first steps in becoming an actor, because the how is unique for each individual. Classes can be attended, mentors can be sought out, and the skills required to excel can be attained through training. But the why is the fuel that will propel you. A strong why will obliterate all of the inevitable blockades and barriers you will undoubtedly face no matter what field you choose. If your why is not aligned with your innermost joy and your biggest dreams, you may find success, but eventually you will experience some version of the breakdown I had in Italy. It may not crumble your life or turn you 180 degrees the way it did me. It may not cause you panic attacks. But there will be cracks in your facade. Eventually, if you're not careful, you'll look back wondering whose life you lived.

“I drove a cab for years, I proofread in law firms, I worked in a factory when I kind of dropped it all out and went out to Colorado. I cleaned Greyhound buses on Eleventh Avenue from eleven at night ‘til seven in the morning in summers while I went to school. No, I didn't start making a living for real until my son was born.”

—Richard Schiff, Actor, Emmy Award Winner, The West Wing

That experience in Italy, when everything bubbled out of me, made me certain that I wanted to pursue something that required all of my faculties. I wanted to somehow relieve the knot of emotions and unfulfilled desires tangled in my gut. Thus, my why was a desire to express myself psychologically, spiritually, physically, and mentally and the way I guessed I could do that was through acting. But just because I'd found my why , did not mean I knew exactly how to start.

The challenge for me to begin my pursuit as an actor was that I had almost no experience. Everyone needs to start somewhere and I was no different. The pain of not acting , for me, outweighed the fear of falling on my face in front of others. I wanted to start as soon as possible, so I scanned a local paper and found a casting notice. A community theater a few towns over from where I grew up was doing the musical The Mystery of Edwin Drood . The audition required each hopeful actor to sing 16 bars of music, accompanied by a pianist. I called the phone number and admitted that I didn't have 16 bars of music to sing. I explained that I could play a little piano, even less guitar, and I could carry a tune. When I asked if it would it be okay if I just “sang some Billy Joel” there was a long pause. After what felt like an eternity, I heard, “Sure. Just bring the sheet music.”

The following week I drove over to the theater after a full day of my summer job laying patios with a mason. I'd had time to shower and change, but my choice of wardrobe was hardly appropriate for a musical set in the 1860s. I entered the theater in jeans, a white t-shirt, and a pair of beaten up, low-cut Converse Chuck Taylors. To say I stuck out like a sore thumb would be an understatement. I looked like I was headed to a frat party while the rest of the hopeful actors wore some semblance of period garb similar to the setting of the musical. The way the audition was set up—which I have never experienced since—was that every person who went up on stage to sing did so in front of everyone else waiting to go. Once you were done, you were free to leave. Suddenly, I wished that I had showed up late so there would be no one else to watch this potential debacle, but I hid my insecurity and sat seemingly confidently in the back of the theater waiting for my turn. Heart pounding underneath my increasingly sweaty t-shirt, I began to coach myself. Running through a list of things I'd accomplished up until this point in my life in a desperate attempt to quell my nerves and convince myself this was nothing I couldn't handle, I began to find my confidence.

This lasted until the first girl got up on stage. She was beautiful and blonde, a few years younger than me, but she appeared older because of her formal period wardrobe and the way she carried herself. She handed her sheet music to the pianist as though she'd done this a million times before. The pianist began to play. When this young woman began to belt out her tune, all my insecurities came rushing back. She was amazing. I sat questioning my decision to volunteer for this torture and wondered why I thought I deserved to be here. Somehow, by the time her 16 bars came to an end, I had convinced myself that she was just a fluke. I told myself the rest of the auditionees would be normal, like me.

This theory crashed to the ground when the next person was called to the stage. This young man, dressed appropriately in a suit, was also classically trained. He had the kind of voice you hear on Broadway, and as his song hit its climax, I realized they might all be like this. That realization proved to be true when the next three or four actors, even those who were considerably younger than me, blew the doors off the place. I was looking around for the exit and thinking about sneaking out when my name was called.