I’m Jose Yantin Jr. I am 24 years old and I am an actor. I was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. I studied for 2 years at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Los Angeles, California, to pursue a career in the acting industry. I graduated from the academy this past May of 2023. Following graduation, I booked a role in a short film that I did over the summer and will hopefully be going into the film festival circuit soon. Not long after, I got a small part in a student short film that I auditioned for and received an email a few weeks later offering me a role. It was a modern retelling of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein novel. These past few months, I was shooting my first lead role with a friend of mine; he wrote and directed it. It is a black-and-white romance with Wes Anderson’s qualities.

I started acting when COVID hit. No one could go outside, and everyone stayed home. I was a year and a half out of high school, and I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. I dabbled in things but never really enjoyed them. I always enjoyed film and TV; that was all I ever did growing up – watching movies or my favorite shows. I did improv for credits in high school, not expecting much to come out of it, but it was something I ended up enjoying, and it got me out of my shell. I did that for a semester until the class got canceled, and I never really thought of it again until after high school. During COVID, when everyone was in quarantine, I decided to take acting Zoom classes with my first acting teacher in Chicago. She had me work on monologues and read plays, but that was all we could do given the circumstances of the world during that time.

During one of my sessions with her, she brought up the idea of applying to a drama school in Los Angeles called the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. I wasn’t so sure about the idea at first; it was terrifying to even think about something like that. It was a big decision to make. At first, I told her I didn’t know if that was right for me, but I only said that out of fear. So she told me not to make a decision now, to think it over, and decide. So I did, and I had a long talk with my mom about how we were going to make this work financially. After all those talks, I told her I wanted to apply. So we spent 7 months prepping for the audition process of getting into the school. I needed two contrasting monologues, one dramatic and one comedic. So, after all that preparation, when the time came around to audition, I did my audition on Zoom with one of my future teachers, whom I didn’t know at the time or know she would direct me in a play, and we ended up having a good relationship. She asked me questions, and after that, it was done. It only took 1 hour to get an email back that said I’d been accepted, and the rest was history.

Being accepted and going to this drama school was the scariest but the best decision I’ve made in my life. The people that I’ve met and the amount of growth I’ve made as a person and an artist are unbelievable. If I went back in time and told myself I had all this in store for me, I wouldn’t believe it. My time at drama school was filled with experience and amazing teachers who taught me everything I know. I came to California incredibly excited but also nervous. I didn’t know what to expect, but I did know there were going to be so many people who had been doing this longer than me, and that gave me a feeling of not being worthy to be there. But I also knew there would be people just like me who were new to the acting world and were curious and motivated to learn, just like me.

Being an actor has allowed me to tap into parts of myself that I didn’t know were in me. It was something that was incredibly scary but also very cathartic. I’ve always admired actors like Joaquin Phoenix, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Timothee Chalamet, these were all actors I looked up to and in a lot of ways wanted to be. But I’m a firm believer in your best work coming from you and not you trying to be someone else. I was incredibly shy when I first started out acting; I didn’t know what I was doing, and I was watching so many people better than me doing incredible things in class and on stage. I had great support along the way and it shaped me as the actor I am today. I had a lot of people in my corner, friends, and teachers who believed in me and saw something in me even when I didn’t see it myself.

I’ve always been interested in human behavior, and that was something that translated well to acting. I also liked watching crime shows or psychological movies. That was just something I was drawn to, and seeing how everyone behaves and reacts in so many different ways and doing what they do, good or bad, was interesting and made me curious. That correlates in a lot of ways to acting; when you’re playing a character, I believe you have to find a way to bring yourself to this character and their circumstances and justify their actions, good or bad. You cannot judge it; you have to have an open heart and be compassionate.

Being an actor and going to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts has allowed me to connect to my artistic roots, and I’m so glad I am because I wouldn’t know where I’d be in my life if I hadn’t. It is vital for me as a person to have a balance of art and social life. And then most of the time, I would need to recharge and be by myself for a few days to be around people. Whenever I feel off balance, I know I need to change something, and sometimes that can be very scary because it can be something small or big. I am a very private person with a small circle of friends I trust, and that’s something I’ve come to realize is one of the things that keeps me balanced and focused.

Since having graduated last May and now with the strike being over and things starting to pick back up with auditions, I look forward to going out and immersing myself in projects and am looking forward to what’s next.