We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Dick Colligan. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Dick below.
Dick, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?
Learning acting and comedy were two different things for me. Acting I took lessons from a few different schools until I found The Acting Center which worked well for me. But the biggest part of acting for me is practicing and working on it as much as I can, then reviewing my work to see how I can improve. This has been monumental for me.
Comedy I learned completely on my own by watching others and that’s something I’m very proud of. But no matter what I’m working on learning is critical and I love learning as much as I can every day.
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?
My story is pretty unique. I was on Wall Street for nine years and had no plans to leave. During that time I had started doing standup comedy on the side and in 2020 got a manager who started submitting me for film and TV roles. As we all know, Covid also came around in 2020 and that changed everything for me. My job was going to require me to stay in New York City and get a shot, which I was not about to do, so I decided to make the move full time into acting and comedy.
I’ve been doing it ever since along with running a guitar business called MaxGuitars.com and I have to say I find both projects very fulfilling
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
One big one is the standup comedy industry in general. It is not necessarily hard but it took me a while to learn the craft of comedy and I fell on my face many, many, MANY times. Each one was incredibly humbling but I learned a great deal at the same time. I found this experience very important in developing drive and persistence and am grateful to have had them.
Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?
To give people the kind of experiences I had growing up watching film, TV and standup comedy. I got such joy from movies like Star Wars, Apocalypse Now, Lawrence of Arabia, and comedies like Old School and Animal House, but now I notice a real lack of this kind of filmmaking which is sad to see. So I want to bring back more authentic stories that focus on entertaining the audience without being beholden to an agenda.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://dickcolligan.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dickcolligan
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DickColligan/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dickcolligan/
- Twitter: https://x.com/dick_colligan
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@DickColligan
Image Credits
Reinaldo Vandres