We were lucky to catch up with Harsh Gupta recently and have shared our conversation below.

Harsh, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?

I am a filmmaker & actor. I used my knowledge of the craft, combined it with my passion for food and started my own restaurant venture which is a theme cafe called Breakin’ Brew inspired from the popular Netflix show Breaking Bad. Now I have two successful restaurants running in India and we are looking to expand soon to other parts of the country as well as the world. This has enabled me to remain an independent artist and focus more on creating the work I want to create rather than making something just for the sake of survival. This has enabled me to put my time and efforts into making more films which have been doing well in film festivals all over the world.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Harsh Gupta is an actor, writer, director and entrepreneur currently based in New York City. Born and raised in the cultural hub of New Delhi, he is in constant search for truth and honesty in his work. He first started acting in Delhi theatre groups where he worked with renowned actors and theatre directors including Shilpi Marwaha and Arvind Gaur. He then went on to study The Method at The Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute in New York. He studies in depth the work of Lee Strasberg and Konstantin Stanislavsky.

As a filmmaker, Harsh has found success in film festivals all over the world where his work has been recognized and awarded in numerous categories. At LSTFI’s own festivals, he was honored with the “Best Actor Award” at the Lee Strasberg Film Festival in New York and went on to win “Best Editing” and “Best Smartphone Film” at the LSTFI Los Angeles’ 3×5 Film Competition. Harsh runs an international production company, FA-36 Productions, and firmly believes that cinema has the power to initiate conversations, challenge stereotypes, and foster societal change. He recognizes the critical role that filmmakers play in bringing marginalized stories to light and addressing them with sensitivity and authenticity.

As a teacher and mentor, Harsh has been invited as a guest speaker and led masterclasses in acting at reputable universities and acting institutions. He is currently teaching at “The Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute, New York”.
He believes that acting is a process and that the actor should always keep training to rejuvenate their creative process.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

It was the March of 2020. I was supposed to fly back to New York City after taking a break. Just 2 days before I was supposed to fly, the pandemic went raging! My city went under lockdown, flights got cancelled and I had to stick to online classes hoping everything would be okay in a few days or week at max. It turned out to be a two year hiatus from my journey as an actor in New York. But what I did in those two years, define my resilience the best. I shot 2 award winning short films under lockdown with just my phone and my laptop, I wrote 4 other scripts, I learnt how to use editing softwares, I learnt the ukulele and along with all this, I designed and created my own restaurant, India’s first Breaking bad inspired place ‘Breakin’ Brew’. We opened door in November 2020 and as of date we are planning to open up a third. That restaurant became a massive success and I came out of the pandemic a better artist, an entrepreneur and ready to back in New York.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

I believe the independent artists need to be supported much more than they currently are. The reason the grind to be an artist is so difficult because artists who do it full time and are not yet big, can’t even get a basic living out of it! Take actors for example, every beginning actor is expected to perform for free, once they have stuff on their resume, they are expected to “charge nominal” and if you are very experienced, you have to be “understanding of the budget”. And its a vicious circle, it just doesn’t end at actors, the indie directors, producers are all struggling with the lack of support when they are smaller productions and hence the art slowly dies. As a result most indie artists call it quits before they make it. The ones who carry on, keep learning and keep improving and achieve the success that we later on support. I would say there should be grants on the base level for which artists could apply. There should be elemental education about the arts, specifically performing arts, other than just dances. The more support young artists get from the society the better their understanding of art shall be in the future and the better society would be made in turn.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.actorharsh.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/hkg_harshofficial
• Linkedin: https://in.linkedin.com/in/harsh-gupta-127b7b202
• Other: www.fa36productions.com