Today we’d like to introduce you to Matt Lewis.
Matt, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I’ve been an actor for most of my life. My Dad was a theatre professor, actor, playwright, and director, so I grew up around the theatre. In elementary school, I spent many summers at work with my Dad, watching rehearsals for plays he directed or sitting in his classroom while he taught.
There wasn’t extra money on hand for a sitter, so my brother and I just went to work with Dad. By the time I was in middle school, he had founded a small theatre program in North Carolina at Guilford Technical Community College, which he ran for twenty-two years before he retired in 2010. I benefited greatly from the small size of the program in its formative years because my Dad often had to put me in his plays to fill out the cast.
My first experience was playing Ellard in a play called The Foreigner at age 11, and that got me hooked. I went on to study in the high school theatre program at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. After graduation, I went back to Guilford Tech as an actual student and then transferred to Appalachian State University. I eventually dropped out and moved to Atlanta in 1998 and I’ve been here ever since. I took a break from acting in my twenties. I bartended and sang for a hardcore punk rock band called Clocked In. We signed with Radical Records and released a full-length album called Tied to the Mast in 2001.
Eventually Clocked In broke up and I decided I wanted to return to acting, so I finished my B.A. at Kennesaw State University and went on to earn an M.F.A. in Acting at The University of Alabama. I returned to Atlanta after graduation in 2012 and since then I’ve performed with theaters all over the city, including the Alliance, Theatrical Outfit, the Aurora, Georgia Ensemble, Atlanta Lyric, Dad’s Garage, and many others. I landed my first film/tv agent in 2014, and since then my focus has shifted somewhat to on-camera work. I still love doing theatre, but I find on-camera work extremely fulfilling, and the industry in Georgia is booming right now. I’ve been able to appear on shows like Cobra Kai, Ozark, and The Resident, and I have some projects premiering in 2019 that I’m really excited for everyone to see, including a recurring role on Michael B. Jordan’s new Netflix show Raising Dion, and a really fun role as Natalia Dyer’s Dad in Karen Maine’s next film Yes, God, Yes.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Certainly, there were struggles along the way. I stumbled a lot in college before eventually dropping out. I did fine in my theatre classes for the most part, but I couldn’t figure out how to responsibly commit to my other classes, or anything else really. I think spending that time in my twenties singing for Clocked In and working in bars and restaurants helped me sort out some of my crap and grow up a great deal. My wife and I got married then too, and she’s always been a really supportive and positive light in my life. I feel like I really hit a good stride in grad school and I’ve just been here grinding ever since. I’m a pretty lucky dude. Work’s been really good lately, I have an amazing wife and two sweet little kiddos, and I really feel like I’ve landed in the right place at the right time in terms of the film industry boom in Georgia.
We’d love to hear more about your work.
The most challenging but also the most exciting aspect of being an actor is that all my efforts are reactive and responsive. I’m continually waiting for things. Waiting to hear if I booked that commercial, waiting to get that next film audition, waiting for that next residual check, waiting for that television episode to drop that I shot six months ago… The day to day of it is, my amazing agents Taylor DeThomas and Alexander White send me auditions and then I have to self-tape them. The deadlines are often tight, and sometimes I may get seven or eight in the same week. A self-tape involves quickly learning the scenes I’ve been sent and then filming them while a friend stands on the other side of the camera and reads all the other lines with me.
Thankfully my best bud Travis Smith is also an actor and has a taping set-up at his place, so most days we’re over there working. I know a lot of actors don’t enjoy self-tapes, but I love them. I get to work up a scene and really make a role my own. The odds are not in my favor, as I’m often being considered among hundreds of other actors for the same role, but I find that really liberating. I’m saying, “Here’s me and how I’ve interpreted this text. I’ve made specific choices and I did my very best.” If they pick me, awesome because I’m the only “me” out there. If they pick another actor, well, that’s out of my control. I just wait for that next audition and keep grinding!
What were you like growing up?
I was a little punk rock skate rat. Growing up in Winston-Salem, NC, we had this really incredible D.I.Y. music scene. We had little ramshackle underground music venues, and we were all in bands. We made our own T-shirts and fanzines and put out our own records. I had a really great group of friends I ran around with in high school. We were all latchkey kids, and we had so many crazy experiences and adventures.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.mattlewisactor.com
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattlewisactor
- Other: imdb.me/mattlewisactor
Image Credit:
Stacey Bode, David Woolf, thereasonilove.com
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