We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Matt Christian. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Matt below.
Matt, 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?
It was a slow burn for me. Some people have grand stories where it was like a lightning strike and all of a sudden they just knew. My experience was more gradual. Like a bunch of little lightning strikes that culminated one evening. One of those small lightning strikes was growing up loving movies, another was getting signed with my first agent, and yet another was starting to work regularly with my first acting coach. But the moment I knew I wanted to pursue this professionally and there was no going back was actually a quiet night where I went to the movies by myself. I had a free ticket to see Pitch Perfect 2 of all things back in the summer of 2015. None of my friends were free that night so I decided to go by myself. I had just signed with my first agent a few months prior and was beginning to think about whether or not pursuing an acting career was actually a viable possibility. I went to see the movie, enjoyed it, and as I walked out the front door of the theater, I stopped in the middle of the parking lot for reasons I cannot explain and turned around to look at the “Now Showing” posters lit up on the side of the building. At that moment, I felt a rush of electric energy and had the thought “I’m going to be up there someday”. It was this completely random thought that just felt like this inner knowing, not triggered by anything I had been thinking about before that moment. I got to the car and just sat there in this excited, electric energy for a minute just absorbing what I had just experienced before driving home. That energy stayed with me for several days after. That was the moment I began to give it everything I had and run full speed toward my dream.
Matt, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
Of course. How I ended up in the industry is a terribly long story, but I’ll do my best to make it concise. I’m an actor, writer and improviser who started my career just about as far from Hollywood as one can get. The moment I just spoke about happened where I grew up in a little town in Ohio. No one I knew had any connection to the entertainment industry and even considering a life in the arts made people look at you like you just sprouted a second head. I got signed by a tiny talent agency who would bring in guest speakers to give workshops every once in a while, and it was there I met my first coach. I remember going up to him after one such workshop and simply telling him that I wanted to learn how to act. I asked if he gave lessons and we set up a time the following week to start working one on one together. That lasted for two years before he pulled me aside after a night of working on monologues (by this time he was teaching a full blown class) and told me that my work that night was not only the best he had ever seen from me, it was the best he had seen in the entire class. He then told me about the household names he had worked with in his career and finished off by saying “You’re ready. Go to LA.” That was when I started making plans to move across the country.
After a couple years of finding my footing in Los Angeles, the pandemic hit and I found myself back in Ohio. By that time I had a decent amount of experience working on short films, student films, taking classes and doing background work. I was tired of waiting for someone to take a shot on me and decided to take my destiny in my own hands by learning how to produce and write myself into SAG-AFTRA. I started my own production company, hired my brother to DP the project and shot the cheapest, smallest web series you can imagine. But it did the job and I came back to LA in 2021 with a SAG card in my pocket and the knowledge that I could write my own parts and produce my own work. Not long after, I began working on another project that I had been dreaming about since I first started acting professionally, which was to play the actor James Stewart in a biopic about his incredible life. Since roles of that size are rarely given to an actor unless they have proven themselves capable, I decided to simply start doing the work. I ended up studying, working and honing for an entire year and put together a screen test full of recreated footage of Jimmy in radio spots, interviews, iconic scenes from his movies and even a World War II PSA. I’m thrilled that an actual biopic of Jimmy is in the works right now and that I have already been able to connect with the filmmakers a bit. I’m continuing to go deeper with work on this project and will be releasing more recreated footage in the coming months.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
I think every artist’s life is one long story of resilience. You face so much doubt and rejection and there’s no map telling you which step is the right one to take next. It’s like you’re following this invisible string that’s tied to some unseen destination that you must blindly walk towards. The only thing that’s going to keep you going are your own two feet, so if you don’t develop a pretty strong sense of resilience, you’re not going to get to where you want to go. One of the biggest examples of resilience in my own life is simply how long it took to be able to stay in LA. I had to come and go three different times before I was finally able to settle in this city for good – which meant moving across the country a total of 3 times. The first time I made the 2500 trek from Ohio was in 2017. I was here for a grand total of a month before having to go back home due to a family member’s illness. I came back in 2018 and managed to stick around until March of 2020 when myself and a couple friends who had moved out here with me flew back home to ride out the pandemic. Cut to summer of 2021, I packed up my 2005 Dodge Neon with everything I owned and made my final cross country venture back here for good (alone this time). One move like that takes so much out of you, let alone having to do it 3 times. I knew that final time had to stick because I didn’t have it in me to go back and forth again. Without a healthy dose of resilience, I never would have made it back after that first time, let alone the third.
What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?
When I first began training seriously as an actor, I bought a notebook to take down feedback and what I wanted to work on each week. In the front cover I wrote the three goals I had for what I wanted out of my creative career:
1.) To make a living as an actor
2.) To make good art
3.) To work with people I admire
Throughout all the ups and downs I’ve experienced in the industry so far, these three goals have remained consistent. This creative career and lifestyle are so difficult that they will not hold up if they’re built on a foundation of desires like fame or money that can result from it. Those things are byproducts that can (not necessarily will) happen if you keep your focus on what actually matters: being good at what you do and making art that you’re proud of with people you admire. If your end goal is the work itself then every day you show up, you’ve made it. I try to keep my eye on those things. Doing so makes the work better, it makes my personal experience better and ultimately it makes the entire project better.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.officialmattchristian.com/
- Instagram: @realmattchristian
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cenFxAR8ug4
- Other: Purchase Matt’s book “Dear Artist: 75 Letters from One Struggling Artist to Another” at the link below:https://www.amazon.com/Dear-Artist-Letters-Struggling-Another/dp/1736075500
