Acting Career Lost

Bipolar Soulmate

Episode 5

Acting Career Lost

This episode is going to sum up a lot of time here.  Shortly after graduation I got an agent. I was one of the lucky ones. The problem was, I was sick. I was in a constant state of psychosis(which I didn’t know, this felt like intense nervousness), and no doctor could tell me to do anything other than to try and relax.  I was very thin.  I wanted to act in soap operas badly as they seemed to be steady work and were cast all over the city. I had the face for it, but my body was not in good condition. I was ashamed of it.

I lived in Harlem at the time with my girlfriend and we both lived like true starving artists. This was the worst place we could’ve lived.  All we did was watch actors all day long and look for day jobs.

My agent finally called and said, “I need the headshots you had taken weeks ago on my desk.” I called the photographer and she said they were almost done.  But to wait until tomorrow. That tomorrow would be one of the most traumatic days of my life.

When I was 17, I said for the first time, that there was an actress who I thought was the most beautiful woman in the world. She was my age. For everybody’s sake I’ll leave real names out of this.

On the day that I was picking up my headshots(June of 2001, I was 21), on my way up the stairs, I saw her getting changed in the corner of the small studio. Now, in this studio, on this day, was the photographer, this actress and me.  I looked awful. The photographer said “Hey Pat, we have been looking at your headshot, and you look good. Pat, this is “Zara” to the young actress

Now as I said, I looked terrible, also I had no money, even for a coffee, so I wanted to get out of there. I looked at her and said, “Hi Zara”. She in return gave me the nastiest look and said, “Nice to meet you”. I walked away. And wouldn’t you know it; she chased me yelling the word “No”.  I stopped and looked at her and said, “You will be just fine Zara”, and I left.  To this day I have no idea what that transaction was about. But it was a trauma that I blocked for 40 years. It wouldn’t be until I had a full schizoaffective episode that I would remember.  I need to say it is the biggest regret of my life. That I didn’t turn to her and at least ask why she seemed angry or that I thought she was the most beautiful woman in the world or just say… something. This is something I will carry to my grave, sadly. Only three people in world know about that day, or who it is.

I wrote a pretty long paragraph for a transaction that lasted 2 minutes.  But lately it has been haunting me.

I said goodbye to acting a few years after that due to some things that will be discussed later. But it was this incident that, at 45 during a 2-year schizoaffective episode, affected me most.  My brain went back to a woman I had the biggest crush on in the world, and it latched onto it. I will never watch another one of her movies again.

The next 4 years are a blur. I moved into an eastside apartment that I liked. I worked retail jobs and took more acting classes with a well-known acting teacher in NYC.  The teacher is a wonderful man and became like a father figure for me. He does shows at the studio, and by my second year I was ready to perform. It was called A Taste of Honey.

At this time of my life, I had been in psychosis for 6 years. I was thin, exhausted, and burnt out from everything.  But I had things to prove.  The director of the show and I did not get along. I worked differently than he did, and he began to abuse me.  I could not do the caliber of work I was trained to do.  I wasn’t eating, I wasn’t sleeping well, I wasn’t thinking right. The abuse tore me apart. I muscled through the show. I had good nights and bad. But when it was done, I was done. 

I never mourned acting until this year.  I left it 24 years ago.  I had told my teacher, “I am done. I have nothing left to give” He begged me to see a therapist. He would be the only one in my young life to ask me to do that. 

As I write this entry I am in tears. This terrible disease cost me my art. Which was my voice. I don’t know if I’ll ever get another “voice” at anything again.  Acting was me. It was me pulling myself out of myself.  This is the most important thing I have said yet: This disease takes ALL. It is not all that different from Cancer. It takes the best of you away from yourself and directs you to a path that the disease is comfortable with. I never stood a chance.