Hello everybody, and welcome back to English With Dylan! You’re listening to Episode Four: My Life as an Actor. I hope you’re having a great day so far, and that you enjoyed episode 3, in which I talked about the Canadian school system. If you’d like to have some input on the topics of future episodes, be sure to follow my instagram, @englishwithdylanpod, where I regularly post polls asking for ideas! For today’s episode, I am really looking forward to talking about my story as an actor, however I also received a lot of great questions on my last instagram poll, which has inspired me to create a new structure for my episodes. For every episode, I’ll choose the main topic, either based on your questions or just a topic that I really want to talk about. But, from now on, I will add in one additional, really important “question of the week” to the beginning of each episode. Does that sound good? I feel that this way, I can always talk about topics that interest me (which will therefore lead to higher quality, more engaging content for you guys) while still addressing any of your concerns and questions that may not be related to the main topics of the episodes. 

So, for the first ever question of the week, I had many people ask me what they should do if they do not feel confident speaking English, if they have a fear of speaking in a foreign language. I wanted to address this question simply because it is so important, and I’m sure many of you struggle with this, it’s totally normal. I, for one, used to get nervous when I had to speak a foreign language with someone that I didn’t know, someone that I wasn’t comfortable with. I’ve never been ashamed of making errors with my friends. However, when I was in the process of applying for my French student visa I often dreaded the idea of getting on the phone with the government agents. Also, the fact that the French are known for being a little bit harsh with foreigners who try to speak their language certainly didn’t help at all! But nowadays, I rarely feel nervous going into a conversation in a foreign language; on the contrary, the idea always excites me! So, what can one do to overcome this fear?

The truth is, I feel that this is one of those questions that we try and find a magic answer for, when in reality, it doesn’t exist. Let me ask you this: how many things do you do every single day of your life that you are genuinely afraid of? That you don’t feel comfortable with? I’d be willing to guess that in general, the answer would be a very low number, if not zero. And this is no coincidence, guys. I think it’s fair to say that there is a clear link between the frequency with which we do something and how comfortable we feel with that thing. Do you see what I’m getting at? Maybe it’s not the answer that you were hoping for, but I truly believe that the most effective (if not the only) way to truly overcome a fear of ANYTHING, including speaking foreign languages, is just to do that thing until it no longer scares you. 

Nervousness is often a product of uncertainty. Have you ever noticed that a lot of the time when you’re nervous to do something you find yourself asking “what if?” questions in your head? “What if I make a mistake?” “What if they laugh at my accent?” “What if I don’t know enough words?” “What if I mistake the present perfect for the simple past?” What we often end up doing is making excuses for ourselves. So in the case of learning a foreign language, one might determine that they simply need to study for one more week, or need to review the subjunctive tense, or need to do this or that, and THEN they’ll be ready to start speaking. We do this to avoid the answers to these what if questions that scare us. But I’m going to let you in on a little secret: you ARE going to make mistakes. Your accent WILL be quite poor, at the beginning. You WON’T know enough words for a perfectly smooth, fluent conversation. You WILL mistake the present perfect for the simple past. And all of that is FINE! Guys, no one ever said that learning a foreign language is easy. And no one expects you to do it easily (at least no one that knows a single thing about foreign languages)!

You see? I’ve just taken away all the uncertainty for you. Now you know the answers to all your what if questions. Now there’s nothing to be afraid of, because, well, you already know that grammatical mistakes, thick accents, and missing words are simply a part of learning a foreign language. It is absolutely necessary to give yourself the opportunity to make these mistakes in order to learn. Because when you do make these mistakes, someone will correct you (or you might even correct yourself), and with time you won’t make that mistake anymore. It’s as simple as that! So please, I invite you to not be afraid! There are no what ifs, so no surprises. If anything, you may actually surprise yourself with how well you do! Sometimes people get so nervous that they never actually give themselves the chance to see that they are very talented! What you’re doing, taking on a foreign language, is an extremely brave and admirable pursuit. Part of this pursuit is forgetting about your ego, being ok with imperfection, and above all remembering to be kind to yourself. You’re all doing so great, I’m proud of you! And I know that with time, you’ll all be able to speak English with no anxiety. 

I hope that this question of the week was interesting for you, and that my answer of the week was helpful! Without further ado, let’s jump right into today’s topic: My Life as an Actor. I’m going to take you back to the very beginning, when I first got started in acting, and over the course of the episode I’ll take you through the years that I’ve been doing it, the different projects I’ve done, and how they’ve affected my life. So sit back, relax, and enjoy the story!

Let’s head back to early 2008. I wasn’t even four years old yet, but I was already what they call a “social butterfly.” Because I wasn’t even in preschool, my mom would take me with her to a coffee shop called Starbucks nearly every day so that she could get her coffee and we could have some mother and son bonding time. The only problem was, I often spent more time socializing with random people than with my mother! It sounds unbelievable for a three year old, right? Trust me, I get it. I was a weird kid! I hardly remember a lot of this stuff because it was so long ago, but if I really strain my memory, I can picture a man with whom I spoke a lot, who also went to Starbucks every day. As the story goes, I would walk around the whole café, approaching people and saying, “hi, I’m Dylan, what’s your name?” If I remember correctly, my mom would usually follow me around, probably amused and a little bewildered at how odd her son was. I don’t know guys, I suppose I just loved talking, connecting with people, and that’s a quality that has stuck with me through the years. I’m not sure about others, but as I mentioned, there is one man in particular who I remember speaking with, who became quite familiar with my antics. If I recall, he was a little older and very kind to me and my mom. I remember he never stopped smiling, or at least not with me. I suppose I would have a good laugh too if I knew a three year old who was so interested in talking with people! 

One day around this time, my mom must have been driving somewhere when she heard an advertisement on the radio: “Is your kid the next CHILD STAR?” the advertisement said. It must have been for some kind of acting course or talent agency that was searching for young children to get into the acting business. As my mom tells me, my parents had never really thought about putting me into acting before that moment, just sports like hockey (which I also played). But as soon as she heard that ad on the radio, the idea made perfect sense in her head! To be fair, I was apparently a three year old who for some reason had more social confidence than most adults. And mom knew that you have to be confident to be an actor. So a little while later, my mom and dad took me downtown to this event that the people on the radio had advertised. They did their best to explain to me where we were going and what I was going to be doing, and I was apparently quite enthusiastic about the idea (I was 3, though, so I doubt I fully grasped the concept). I don’t remember anything about this, but they tell me it was a big conference room, filled with dozens of other parents and children and with a stage at the front. At one point, the hosts of the event asked if there were any children who wanted to volunteer to come up on stage, which I guess I didn’t hear (I was probably distracted by something) so my parents tapped me and said, “hey, do you want to volunteer?” and I told them sure, probably without even knowing what I was volunteering for. That’s the spirit that I had back then though, I was enthusiastic about anything and everything new, and I do my best to carry that spirit with me even today, as an “adult”. So, as the story goes, I raised my little three-year-old hand as high as I could, and the speaker pointed at me, inviting me to the stage. I got up out of my seat (without mom and dad) and walked up on stage. My mom tells me that I was very brave on my way up to the stage, but that when I arrived and turned around to see so many people staring at me, I started fidgeting a little bit. I suppose that was the first time my social confidence was really tested! The lady asked me a few basic questions, like my name and age, and I guess she really liked me and the way that I interacted with her because later in the day, I was invited to do a little test in front of a Camera. I suppose they wanted to see if I had the same confidence in front of a camera as I did with people. And I must have met their expectations, because at the end of the day my mom, my dad and I were invited into another room with the organizers of this whole event. They told my parents that they liked me so much, they wanted to offer me an acting course that would make me a star as fast as possible. The price? Just $10,000! 

At that point, my parents realized that the whole event had been staged to sell some outrageous product to people who were desperate for their children to be stars. Luckily, my parents were never and have never been those people. On the contrary, they genuinely believed it could be a great activity for me, and I was as enthusiastic about the idea as I could be, with my limited, three-year-old understanding of the world. So after the whole $10,000 course fiasco, they decided to do some real research into safe, genuine ways to get me started in acting. And what they discovered was that I would need an agent. An actor’s agent is the one who finds auditions for the actor. They submit the actor’s photo and resumé to casting directors and if the casting directors like the look of the actor, they inform the agent that the actor can come in and audition for a role in their commercial, play, tv show, or movie. My parents looked up reputable agencies in my area, and submitted my photo along with some basic information to several agencies across Vancouver, telling them that I wanted to get started in acting. And by the way, for anyone listening who is interested in becoming an actor/actress, this is my biggest piece of advice to you: find an agent! Finding representation can be tricky, but getting it done is the biggest first step that one can take towards becoming an actor. Today and forever, I thank my lucky stars **for the fact that** a woman named Lissa Lloyd and her husband, Tom Gusway, who run Lloyd Talent Management in Vancouver, British Columbia, decided to invite me and my parents in so that they could interview me. In their response to my parents, they told them to have me prepare a “skill” that I could present to Lissa and Tom. My mom laughs when she tells me about this. She thought that it was kind of funny, as I was 3 years old and so obviously I didn’t have many skills. The only thing that she could think of was the fact that she had recently been reading me a bedtime story called “The House That Jack Haunted”, and I, after having heard it several times, had completely memorized the little book from beginning to end. I suppose that, since actors have to memorize and recite lines, it was the only possible relevant thing that I could do at age 3. So my mom took me to Lloyd Talent’s office, where we met Lissa and Tom, and I recited “The House That Jack Haunted.” And the rest is history! They signed me as a client, and it was agreed upon between my mom and my new agent that I would take my first step into the acting world by auditioning for commercials. My mom asked me if that sounded good to me, and as she tells me, my answer was something like “yeah, sure!” as always. 

My very first booking was a commercial for the company Fisher Price, which makes toys for babies. However, I was just a backup on that commercial. So, for commercials in which the main actors are kids, casting directors would often choose to hire their first option as well as a second, “backup” kid that could take over the role if the initial kid was having issues (remember, we were 4 or 5 years old, sometimes we misbehaved)! On that particular occasion, though, I assume that the child who was “option #1” had a great day, because my mom and I simply spent all day sitting around, until it was time to go home! Apparently, I was not very pleased. But that was ok, because within a few weeks, a now 4-year-old Dylan booked his first principal role in a toy commercial!! The company was called Hasbro (I would end up working for them several times over the next few years) and they had created a board game called Candyland Castle. From then on, I was hooked (addicted, infatuated) because I had such a fantastic time on set! Think back to the toy commercials that you would see as kids. Many of them show kids running around, playing, laughing, and yelling which creates a fantastic advertisement. Well, that’s basically what my days on the sets of commercials were: 8 hours straight of running around, laughing, yelling, and having an amazing time. The way I saw it, it was just like having fun in real life, except for the fact that there was a camera on, and the director would tell me when to start having fun and when I could relax! My mom has told me that for many years, right up until I was 10 or 11 years old, I would always fall asleep on the car ride home after a day of work on set. My days were exciting, action-packed, and long for a child, so it makes a lot of sense! But I always had so much fun. 

For the next 6 years, acting became a bigger and bigger part of my life. I continued doing commercials as often as I could, and I am so thankful for the fact that I started with commercials at such a young age, because it gave me so much time to just learn and gain on-set experience before starting with bigger roles in movies and tv shows. Now I want to clear up a notion, or a misconception that you might have. A lot of people hear the words “child actor” and assume the worst: that we are abused, that our parents force us to work so that they can steal our money, that our innocence and lack of awareness is exploited to help old people make money, I mean, I’ve heard it all! And unfortunately, it’s true in some cases. In my 14 years in this business, I’ve seen first hand several child actors who unfortunately fit into some or all of those categories. It’s very sad. The acting business can be a harsh place, particularly for children. But I am so lucky to be able to say that I always had the right people by my side to make sure that that never happened to me: my parents and my agent. So I will go right ahead and clear up any “child actor” things that you might wonder or assume: I have never been and am not currently forced to do this job (on the contrary, I love it, and I’d like to spend my life doing it). I have never been abused or even slightly mistreated, neither by my parents, nor by people that I have worked for/with (on the contrary, I couldn’t ask for kinder, more loving parents, and I have always been treated exceptionally well by the people on the sets I’ve been on). I understand that the fact that I am able to say these things makes me one of the lucky ones, and for that, all I can say is thank you to my parents, my agent, and to all of the people I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with. 

About 6 years after I started acting came the biggest turning point that I’ve had so far in my career: I booked my first series regular role in a tv show! A series regular role is sort of an ambiguous title, because sometimes series regulars are in every episode, while others they may be in three quarters of the episodes, or half of the episodes, something like that. Actually, when I first booked the role of “Victor” on “The Returned”, it was only defined as a recurring role. All that recurring really means is that you will show up in more than one episode. At the time of booking the project, they told me that I was going to be in three episodes. After a few weeks of working with me, I suppose that they liked my work, because they made me a series regular and told me that I would be in seven episodes! After all was said and done, I actually ended up being in all 10 episodes! The Returned was a huge turning point for me as an actor. I was 10 years old, and had spent the last six years mostly doing fun, energetic, exciting toy commercials (I did have a few small credits in a couple small movies and tv shows, but nothing like this). Suddenly, I was Victor: a 10 year old boy who had been murdered in his home 29 years ago, who came back from the dead with supernatural abilities that he often used for evil things, such as killing his next door neighbour. Certainly a far cry from Candyland Castle! That’s right, it was time for me to really act. 

And you know, it’s funny. I’ve done quite a few interviews in my life, and I’ve just realized while writing this that not a single one of the interviewers has ever asked me how I approached such a dark, difficult character when I was ten years old. The truth is that, being 10, I would say I had a very simple approach. I did my best to gain an understanding of how my character should be feeling and reacting in a given scene by reading the scripts carefully and listening to the directors. Then, I would choose one or two words such as “angry” or “evil” to focus on in my head, and just do my very best to imagine and embody those feelings and sensations in the best way I could. I remember one specific scene during the fifth episode in which my character, Victor, confronts one of the men that broke into his house on the night that he was killed. Imagine that! You die, you come back to life, and you come face to face with the man that did it! My word for that scene was pure, red-hot “rage”. I remember picturing my body in my mind’s eye, standing there in the grass face to face with a killer, my killer, and just seeing a bubble of red surround my body. That was the type of thing that helped me, a very happy and carefree 10 year old, get into such dark, twisted mindsets. 

My experience on The Returned was such a positive one that I told my mom and agent that I wanted to try and work on tv shows from now on. I still did a few commercials after the fact, but my focus had most definitely shifted. I owe so much to the people on The Returned, because they were the ones that made it a pleasant and amazing experience. If I had not had so much fun on set, I might not have wanted to go back to tv shows, and I might not be where I am today. The actors and crew were all so kind to me. I was the only kid on the entire show, but all the adults were so patient and kind that it didn’t matter. For example, at the time, I was very interested in Greek mythology (having just read the Percy Jackson series) as well as video editing (having just started my Minecraft youtube channel – that’s right, I once wanted to be a Minecraft youtuber. I was 10!). I worked most closely with an amazing woman named Sandrine Holt, and Sandrine would sit there for hours, listening to ten year old me me talk about the Greek gods or watching the little videos that I had edited using iMovie on my iPod touch. I really cannot thank her enough for the way she treated me, and as luck would have it, I recently spent some time in the city that she lives in, and we met up a couple times to have food. It was so crazy and wonderful to see her after 8 years (although I’m sure it was even crazier for her, because I went from a little boy to nearly a man!). 

Within two years of The Returned, I got really lucky and booked a series regular role on A Series of Unfortunate Events in which I played two characters, Duncan and Quigley Quagmire (two out of three Quagmire triplets). ASOUE is still one of the most popular shows I’ve been in, having worked on it until the third and final season in early 2018. It was the first show that garnered me significant attention on social media, and what a crazy experience that has been. I said earlier that I would talk about how acting has affected my life, and the one element of my job that has probably changed my life the most is the public attention that it has gotten me. The thing is, acting is all I’ve ever known. I’ve literally been doing it since before I can remember. So if I had spent my life continuing to act, maybe doing it more and more every year, that wouldn’t have caused any sort of change or huge effect on my life. But the fact that, as a thirteen year old, I started getting hundreds of comments and messages per day from strangers, being written about on news websites, and even recognized in the streets – all that has definitely had an effect on my life. And it’s been great, for the most part! As I went through my teenage years, I was fortunate enough to have roles in a few tv shows that were really popular, and as a result, my social media following grew steadily. To this day, I still feel an immense sense of pride whenever someone recognizes me in public and asks for a photo. It means the world to me to know that someone has watched (and enjoyed!) the work that I have done, because I’m passionate about my job and I am always trying my best to improve. The truth is, having a couple hundred thousand followers on instagram was cool for a while, but in my experience, you get used to it very quickly and it just becomes the new normal, it’s nothing really that special. I remember when I was 14, I was having a sleepover with my friend on the night that A Series of Unfortunate Events season 3 came out. I went to bed that night with just over 100,000 followers and woke up with nearly 200,000! My friend and I had a little laugh about how crazy that was, but then we just went upstairs, had breakfast with his family, and talked and laughed as usual. Do you see what I’m getting at? It has just never really mattered that much at all to me, the social media side of things. Don’t get me wrong, I am so grateful for the fact that I can reach so many people, and that there are so many people in this world who would take the time to follow me. I appreciate every single one of them more than you can imagine! But really, I’ve always just wanted to be a normal kid first, and I have been very lucky to have great friends and family who have raised me and kept me that way through all of this. As grateful as I am for everything that I have, I don’t think getting wrapped up in the idea of followers and likes and comments is healthy for everyone. And luckily, I was able to avoid that.

There is one interesting experience that I’ve gone through which I think is worth talking about, it’s a very weird one that I guess the majority of people in the world don’t go through. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been at school, a social event, a party, or something along those lines, and gone up to someone to introduce myself, only to realize that they already know me (or think they know me, anyways). And don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining (I’ll never complain about my life, I’ve been infinitely lucky and I am infinitely grateful, I want to make this very, very, VERY clear) but I have to say – and I think I have the right to say – that it can be a little weird when you feel like your opportunity to make a first impression on someone has been taken away! Again, not complaining, just an odd experience! Now, generally, being an actor with some followers on instagram leaves a good impression on people, and so at times I suppose it helps me out. But the thing is, as a young teenager, I struggled a lot with this because I found it hard to be sure that people actually wanted to be my friend. I was worried that maybe they just wanted to hang out with “Dylan Kingwell, the actor”. I also kind of hate referring to myself like that, because I don’t want to make myself sound different or better than anyone else. Trust me, I’m not! But the fact is that some people did look at me like that. And the vast majority of teenagers are very concerned with having as many good, real friends as possible, and I was no different, so sometimes the little bit of attention I had made that interesting or complicated for me. And then, there were the times that my “public identity” made a bad impression on people! In fact, one of my best friends in the world actually didn’t like me at all when he first heard of me. He saw me walking around school, introducing myself to some exchange students that had just arrived, and just figured that because I am an actor and was kind of “popular”, I’d be very stuck up and egotistical. The funny thing is, I didn’t like him either! My only impression of him was also his instagram, where he posted many photos of himself, and the way that he walked around the school, the way he carried himself. And from just that, I assumed that he thought he was better than everyone else, that he felt superior to everyone around him, that he’d be a mean person. You know, humans are funny sometimes, especially when judging other humans: in our heads, we somehow assume so much about a person with such little information. The good thing is, we both realized how wrong we were about each other, how stupid we were being, and he is still to this day one of my best friends. In fact, he’s like a brother to me, and I don’t know where I’d be without him.

All in all, the attention that acting has gotten me has been an incredibly cool experience, one that I am so grateful for, and I wouldn’t trade my life for the world. I love the level that I’m at now. I’m definitely nowhere near being “famous”, but once in a while I run into someone who watches a show that I’ve been in and asks for a picture, and I am always so honoured to do that for them! People often ask me if I hope to be really famous one day, like Leonardo DiCaprio type famous. To be honest, there are some things that come with being very famous which I don’t particularly desire: paparazzi following you everywhere, constant scrutiny in the media – the general lack of privacy is something that I’m sure is difficult to manage. On the other hand, being famous allows someone to reach and communicate with a massive amount of people, it allows them to have a lot of influence. If I was famous, I would be extremely grateful for the opportunity to use that kind of power and influence to support good causes. And of course, it goes without saying that being famous usually goes hand in hand with having a lot of money, which is another thing that I wouldn’t mind. I mean, I don’t believe that money alone can buy happiness, but let’s be honest, it certainly doesn’t hurt! I always tell people that the only reason I really want to be rich is simply so that I can travel wherever I want, whenever I want to, and I really mean that! Now don’t get me wrong, fancy houses and cars are all well and good, I can’t wait to drive a ferrari one day! But I know myself, and I know that the thing that would fulfill me much more than materialistic possessions is seeing as much of the world as possible. Do you have to be rich to do this? Not necessarily. But does being rich allow you to do these things with different, potentially cooler, potentially more comfortable circumstances? Absolutely. And plus, I have a huge passion for sports like hockey and football, so I would use a big chunk of my money to watch as many games as I could. Anyways, when people ask me if I want to be famous, I usually respond that I am very passionate about acting, and I want to reach the very top of my field. One day, I want to be known as one of the hardest-working, most prolific actors ever. I don’t act because of money or fame, and if famous actors made normal amounts of money I can guarantee that I would still be just as passionate about the job. I don’t do any of this for money or fame. That being said, the fact is that all the most successful actors, all the people who are in the positions that I dream to be in, are very famous. So, do I dream of being famous? Well, no, but I do dream of being one of the most successful actors of all time. So make of that what you will!

And there you have it: my story as an actor! Obviously, I was not able to talk about every single thing that has happened during my career and life, we’d be here for days! But I hope that you’ve gained a sense of how I got started in acting, how it’s affected my life, and how passionate I am about pursuing this career. The most important thing for you to know is that I am infinitely grateful for my job. I believe that it is the best job in the entire world and I go to work every single day with a smile on my face, because I am aware of just how blessed I am to be able to do this. To put it quite simply, I love being an actor, and I want to do it for the rest of my life. 

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of English With Dylan! Remember, please don’t hesitate to get the discussion started in the comment section on my Instagram! I love seeing and responding to your feedback and questions. Hope you have a great weekend, and until next time!