Meet Robert DiTillio

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Sed ut perspiciatis unde.

Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Robert DiTillio. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Robert, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Did you always know you wanted to pursue a creative or artistic career? When did you first know?

When I was in High School, I did very well academically but I didn’t think much about what I wanted to do in the future. I spoke with guidance counselors a few times, but never really explored any career possibilities with them. I just planned on going to college. I guess I thought I’d figure it out there. Even though I loved movies since I was a little kid, a passion shared with my mother and brother, I didn’t consider film school as an option. My parents said business school would be a safe and practical choice, so that’s where I went. NYU business school. After three uninspired years, I graduated, next to the young adults who attended Tisch School of the Arts. I’ll never forget the feeling I had, standing with my quiet, proper business school peers while looking over at the sheer joy and insanity of the Tisch graduates. I just made the biggest mistake of my life! That was the first time I realized I could have studied something related to entertainment.

In the following two years, I became more miserable as I realized I did not want to pursue any kind of corporate job despite my dual degrees in marketing and management. Finally, I knew I needed to make a life change to preserve my sanity, so I went back to NYU’s School of Continuing Education and enrolled to study filmmaking. I’ll never forget my first night in class. I received my textbook, simply entitled “Cinematography,” and after that three-hour class ended, I knew that I wanted to spend my life pursuing a creative, artistic career. Shortly after that, I also enrolled in Greenwich Village’s famed HB Studios to study acting and, again, as soon as my first class ended, I felt inspired, invigorated and absolutely certain that I wanted to be an actor as well as a filmmaker. Better late than never!

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Though I started out studying both acting and filmmaking, I quickly found out it was too difficult, time-wise, to pursue both careers. I decided to focus on acting which I found constantly exhilarating. I booked my first paying acting gig on a low-budget action/horror film called The Occultist in 1987. I consider this the beginning of my professional acting career. For the next five years in New York City, I worked in several music videos, frequently with rap artists, and about a dozen indy films. I also performed live with a murder mystery troupe and in off-off Broadway plays, most notably two rarely produced works by Joyce Carol Oates. I also did some production work in NY including building and working on film sets. But my main goal was to develop an acting career in film and television. After establishing a considerable resume of non-union on-camera work, I realized I had gone as far as I could in NYC, so I decided it was time to move to LA where there was a lot more production happening. In 1992, I made the transition. Within six weeks, I booked my first Hollywood job playing Bill Black, Elvis Presley’s original bass player, for a reenactment of Elvis’ life on the news magazine show, Hard Copy. That got me into the Screen Actors Guild.

After that, I continued working on television shows in co-star and guest-star roles in the 1990s such as NYPD Blue, Babylon 5, Sliders, Profiler and more. I had guest roles in the soap operas Days of Our Lives, Port Charles and General Hospital. On TV, I’ve played a lot of cops and gangsters, but I was also a prizewinner on America’s Funniest People for a sketch I co-wrote with my friend, K.C. Marsh. In the 2000s, my on-camera career took a turn and I started to work more in independent films, both features and shorts, while still making occasional TV appearances. Some of the more notable features I worked on include playing a juicy role in Dragon Fighter with Dean Cain, which is currently streaming on Amazon Prime, appearing multi-dimensionally in the remake Night of the Living Dead 3D and doing a memorable part in The Mean One, a Christmas horror parody that had a super successful theatrical run in December 2022 and will be returning every Christmas for, probably, ever! The Mean One is currently available on DVD, Blu-ray and for purchase on streaming services.

I’ve also appeared in dozens of short films including award winners Attack of the Film Festivals, Happy Hour, Tip Toe and Moving Violation. Online, I’ve been on various web series including the Facebook Original series Turnt, The Rose Chronicles, for which I was nominated as Best Actor in a Comedy Web Series, and the award-winning live performance Zoom drama, Now, Now, Now… I’ve also done a few commercials and some voice over work.

In 2014, I joined a filmmakers collective called We Make Movies, mainly to act in other people’s projects. But, WMM inspired me to revisit that earlier, second part of my initial creative ambition, to make films. Since being with them, I’ve become an award-winning writer, as well as a director and producer. My talented wife, Christine DiTillio, whom I frequently work with, wrote a short film script called The Book Club which became a finalist in a We Make Movies Film Challenge. We eventually produced and starred together in The Book Club which is currently making film festival rounds. In 2019, I was one of the winners of another We Make Movies Film Challenge for my short horror film script, Easy To Scare. After a two-year Covid delay, we shot Easy To Scare in 2021 with a wonderful cast including Christine in very memorable role, and me in the director’s chair. Easy To Scare is also now on the festival circuit and was nominated for Best US Short and Best Ensemble at one of those events.

Though my focus was on film and TV when I moved to LA, I never did give up on stage work. I joined an improv troupe in 1992 and fell in love with that art form. Over the years I’ve done improv comedy with The Wild Side Theater, LA Connection, Rogue Improv!, Community Improv, Hardly Working and my own troupe, Are Ya Talkin’ Ta Me?, which performed frequently at The Comedy Store. There was also scripted stage work in LA including the hit comedy Crappie Talk at Group Repertory Theater and Death Unit at Hollywood Fringe Festival. For three years I was president of First Stage, one of the earliest script-reading writer’s development organizations in LA, something that is now commonplace.

I’ve been fortunate over the years to have gotten several opportunities to appear in print as well. I wrote an article about my experiences filming Dragon Fighter in Bulgaria which was published in Fangoria Magazine. I was interviewed by Jodi Nelson for the book Confessions of a Working Actor, which is available on Amazon, and by Sam Weisberg for his website, Hidden Films, which chronicles rare and obscure movies, such as many of the ones I did early in my career.

And you know what? I never really gave up working in film production either. Over the years I’ve worked as PA, grip, lighting, prop master, costumes/wardrobe, set builder, set dresser, stage manager, cameraman, editor, writer, producer and director. For Easy To Scare alone, I’ve done a lot of those jobs! I’ve sort of come full circle from where I started.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

When I was in NY, I did only non-union work and after a couple of years felt I was ready to move up to union jobs. I joined AFTRA (before they merged with SAG) because it was a potential way into SAG. In NYC, I worked background on a soap opera called Loving with the hope that they would give me a line which would make me eligible to join SAG. I worked on that show six different times and often asked for just one line, one word even, to make me SAG eligible. Though I was very reliable and always available to work, they wouldn’t do it. I remember one scene in particular when they had me playing a security guard and one of the principals on the show was speaking directly to me, asking me questions. Instead of allowing me to answer him, they told me to just nod yes or no. He asked me about four detailed questions. It was ridiculous that I couldn’t respond! After that, I didn’t seek any more work on the show because I realized it would never amount to anything more than being an extra. To clarify, there is nothing wrong with doing background work if that’s what you want to do. In fact, it was a great learning experience every time I did it and I would recommend that every actor do it at the start of their career. But, it’s not a stepping stone to getting speaking roles. That’s a myth that some people in the industry perpetuate. Though it could happen to some one-in-a-billion lucky actor, the chances are about the same as winning millions in the lottery. It’s not a solid career plan. Another time, I was actually booked to work on a feature film called New Jack City, which eventually became a cult classic crime movie. I was supposed to be a member of the Italian gang in the film. This would have made me SAG eligible immediately. I spent a week speaking to production daily on the phone, going over things like wardrobe, location, call times, etc. The night before I was scheduled to arrive on set, they called and asked if I was in SAG. I said no, I thought you were going to make me SAG eligible. They said sorry, we can’t use you and hung up. I was devastated. My hopes and dreams were crushed. I cried that night. But that was the final straw that motivated me to move to Los Angeles so I could have the career I wanted. And six weeks after moving, I had a speaking role on a network television show and my SAG card.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

There are many wonderful things about being a creative artist. For one, it never gets boring. It’s true that sometimes it can be scary as there’s a lot of uncertainty to it. Most of the time you don’t know how often you’ll be working, when you’re going to get another job or, frankly, what’s going to happen from week to week or, sometimes, even day to day. But that’s the excitement of it! Not knowing what’s coming next is frightening, but also invigorating. It keeps you fresh and frosty all the time. What a great way to live. For me, it’s much better than wilting in a job that’s the same, day after day.

The other aspect that I love is being creative all the time. Making something that’s never been seen before, or interpreting something in a totally new way. There’s incredible joy in the rehearsal process when you’re coming up with new ideas, and then in the performance part where you get to perfect everything you imagined. I need to be creative as much as possible. When I’m not, it feels like something is missing or off. That’s the point where I start to search for the next project or idea.

Lastly, I find it extremely rewarding to work with other creative people. Most artists are empathetic, emotional and interesting to be around. They think outside the box. They’re open to new ideas and viewpoints. They have dreams and ambitions they want to share. There’s nothing more thrilling than working on a project with others who share their love of life and creative energy with you. And when they’re your friends and you’re working together to make something beautiful, well, there’s nothing more satisfying than that

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Meet Robert DiTillio

Meet Robert DiTillio

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Robert, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Did you always know you wanted to pursue a creative or artistic career? When did you first know?

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

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