We were lucky to catch up with Jed Rowen recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Jed, thanks for joining us today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.
I think it’s very important for an actor to do stage work. Actors, even the most successful ones, can get lazy. Bad habits, lack of discipline are all too common for ‘name actors’. A phenomenon which has surprised me over the years. Knowing your lines, backwards and forwards, being under pressure and even in terror in front of a live audience where there is just one ‘take’….I think every actor should go through that. Pay your dues, do free theater, get that invaluable training and experience. Then when it comes to performing in a movie you can hold your own. You’ll even upstage the ‘big’ actors. Taking classes, workshops, all of that, don’t ever think you’re above that. If you have the means, do it all because when it comes down to it, to use one of my tired sports analogies, you’re gonna have to throw a 95 MPH fastball. You’re in the Big Leagues when it comes to Show Biz.
Jed, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I’m in a lot of movies in the $5 bin at Walmart. Is that still there? Maybe not. Come to think of it, jokes about retail and DVD’s might not fly anymore. But I’ve been in some notoriously bad movies, all of which I’m proud of. Too many to list here. Proud of my performances, proud of the other actors (at least most…okay, maybe some of them); proud of the hardworking directors (okay, maybe some of them); producers (okay maybe some of them); and crew (okay, maybe some of them). I’ve done a lot of schlocky, no-to-low budget horror and I’ve proudly, over the decades, made my bones in this world. There’s parts of me in guerrilla filmmaking locations all over the world. Okay, I know I’m being a little dramatic here. I’m an actor, what do you expect?
What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?
Society will never support artists and creatives. Any creative ecosystem is an anomaly. It can have a nice run before it attracts the wrong kind of attention from the powers that be. You know, the real estate developers, politicians, private equity firms, corporations, shit even the fucking taxpayers. Accept this. Know that ultimately you’ll have to go against a tidal wave of all of this. So be a non-conformist. A rebel. A warrior. Go against the grain. Once you’ve just accepted this, you can enjoy any odd phenomenon where society enables creatives to thrive. Then it realizes it must crush this to make us all fall in line. And then you’ll have to dig in and resume battling the million things going against you as an artist. L.A. is the closest thing I’ve ever seen as a creative ecosystem. There’s an infrastructure and some remnants of a show biz industry here and that’s why I’ll never leave. But there’s a war against artists in LaLaLand, too, and they’ve pulled the rug out from under most of us lately. Oh well. Big surprise. Keep getting up, keep fighting. It takes a warrior to do this. Sorry. Just stating facts.
Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?
Yes, there is. Being true to yourself. That sounds trite and self-important, but it’s not. Staying true to yourself, to me, is the closest thing to being godly. There’s a purity to it. Try it, you might get into it. Societal status, materialism, respect from the normies, these are all illusions. They’re meaningless. Nurturing the creative within all of us, and battling onward with that, to me…is literally divine. Move forward with that, and you’ll have crazy wonderful experiences that you’ll smile on your deathbed with, instead of a bunch of regrets.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/actorjedrowen/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jed.rowen