Hey, it’s me again.
Justin here. As a NYC-based actor, writer, mental health advocate, and filmmaker, I’m best known for my short film You Look Great and the feature film Myth (now available on Amazon Prime). But that all comes later.
I’m originally from the suburbs of Central Jersey – or the southernmost part of North Jersey if you want to fight about it. Before obsessing over my future SAG name, I received my MFA in Creative Writing from the New School and thought I might end up professoring. Fast forward through depression, writer’s block, and an aimless career and you’ll find me at my very first class at The Barrow Group in New York City, an experience that changed everything. It was there, in their warm, welcoming Midtown theater, that I discovered not only the liberation of performance, but the confidence to know that I am enough just as I am.
In my spare time, I visit the local dog park (even though I don’t own a dog), suck at every video game, hunt for the best sweets in NYC, anxiously redecorate my apartment, write poetry, and learn Russian. Это очень трудно – ой!
I am a Leo and a poet, so naturally I have more to say.
Everyone asks, “Justin, why do you love sad shit so much?” Which is a fair question, honestly. While you might think I self-indulgently enjoy depression and depressing art, the truth is that I feel a visceral, life-affirming connection to the spiderwebs of drama – and it’s been that way since as far back as I can remember. When I watch stories that feel like mirrors, where I can draw parallels between my life and the film’s circumstances, conversations, and catharsis, I feel heard and seen.
Of course, I have my own set of unique, lived experiences, and the specifics of every character couldn’t possibly align with my own, but that’s the point: they don’t have to.
There are such beautiful, baffling, universal ways of communicating, and when a film presents me with a phrase I’ve uttered or an emotion I’ve passed through, I feel ignited. Because I’ve experienced love and loss, triumphs and tragedies, joy and despair – and now here’s someone else reflecting that back to me, as if they ripped the words, relationships, and pain straight from my life, straight from a breakup or a new love or a funeral or a graduation, whatever I myself have also worked through.
So why not do that myself, and for someone else?
It has taken me a while to find the vulnerability and courage, but I want to use my autobiography and artistic lens to make people feel a little less alone in the world. Because we are all worth hearing and seeing. So if illuminating my years of struggling with mental health will help someone seek help... if I’m able to make a broken heart feel whole by sharing the puzzle pieces of my own broken heart... if my wobbly tightrope walk between people-pleasing and honoring myself and my boundaries can make someone else take their first step off the ground... then I have done my job.
I used to consider it a chip on my shoulder, but I am now incredibly grateful that it took me longer to find acting, because it allowed me to spend so much time observing myself and the world around me. My experiences outside of the craft – in my creative writing studies, in my years of therapy, in job after job of thankless office work – have shaped my work as an actor, and ultimately for the better. I have always been an observer, and the experiences I’ve been blessed to observe have given me a well-rounded, non-performative perspective, one which I believe makes me more equipped to authentically take on the lives of others.
So until we meet somewhere out in the wild, thank you for being here. Thank you for hearing and seeing me.
– Justin
