You may have heard the phrase “the acting bug,” well I got bit particularly hard by it
when I was 16. From the moment of
that initial discovery, I never stopped. School plays, college improv troupes,
summer theatre apprenticeships. Acting was my passion, my obsession,
my motor, my mistress and eventually, my wife. My plan following graduate school
was to be a New York stage actor who did the occasional Law and Order.
But circumstances took me to Los Angeles where when I was 29
I did a pilot for a television show called “How I Met Your Mother.”
Until that point, I had been an intermittently successful, though relatively working actor.
Then the pilot got picked up, the show went out into the world and everything changed.
The strangest and most disorienting of those changes
was that suddenly a lot of people knew me. Well, they didn't know me, they knew my
face, they knew this character that I was playing. By some strange coincidence, the character
and I looked a lot alike. So suddenly, I had this new,
weird, vertigo-inducing dimension to my reality. People had been spending a lot of time with me
and I was unaware of having spent time with them. Now as the show continued to grow in popularity,
I realised that if I wasn't careful, if I didn't cultivate a strong group of friends I could trust
and a life philosophy that I could lean upon, I was gonna get into some trouble.
So, I had to ask myself, given that this public thing was, at least now, for the time being,
a feature and fact of my life, what kind of public person did I want to be?
I had bought into the not uncommon notion that when I taste success, when I get over there,
then I'll be happy.
But the strangest thing happened. As the show got more successful, I got more depressed.
And I kind of had to keep that to myself. The circle of people that whom
you can complain about being on a hit television show is unsurprisingly small.
A lot of people think getting famous will save you.
That it will grant you the life you feel you're owed and
spare you certain indignities. I was pretty bummed to realise
that rather than lessening or eliminating my insecurities and least attractive qualities,
I basically poured fertiliser on them. The upside was that I could really see them.
How competitive I was, how much I compared myself to others,
how vain, anxious and self-conscious I can be in my least attractive moments, the list goes on...
And I saw that if I wanted to live with myself, I was going to have to work on myself.
At some point, I realised that all of this was providing me with an intense
and fruitful spiritual practice. Fame could be a terrific teacher
if I agreed to the lesson plan. In my more awakened moments, I try to
remember that everything that comes my way is potentially my teacher.
Everything is an opportunity to go against my tired habits and practice something new.
When a reporter misquotes or quotes me wildly out of context, I can practice surrender.
When a fan behaves strangely around me, I can practice compassion.
When a beautiful woman approaches me with a big smile and says,
“I've never seen your show, but my boyfriend is a huge fan
and he was too shy to come over and ask, but can he have a picture with you?”
I can practice acceptance. When the girlfriend's camera
on her phone won't work and I'm standing awkwardly
shoulder to shoulder with her grinning boyfriend for what seems like hours,
I can practice patience.
When I feel overwhelmed with attention or scrutiny, I can practice gratitude.
When no one knows who I am or cares what I'm doing, I can practice humility.
When people say all manner of offensive things in the guise of a compliment such as,
“you're much more attractive in person,” or “you're much thinner
than you look on television,” I can practice everything.
The other options available to me in those instances are
anger, frustration, resentment, disappointment, and a feeling of hopelessness and victimhood.
One choice gives me some agency in my life, the other does not.
One choice moves me forward, the other does not.
Life is constantly offering up these fork in the road moments
and I've realised that which path I choose is a really big deal.