Meet Quinn Quinnell

We recently connected with Quinn Quinnell and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Quinn, really happy you were able to join us today and we’re looking forward to sharing your story and insights with our readers. Let’s start with the heart of it all – purpose. How did you find your purpose?

How did I find my purpose? This is a loaded question, so I’d have to return to the beginning, hoping to have an answer for the end…

I must have been about seven or eight years old. My mother had a mixed cassette tape full of old 50s classics that she’d always play in her red Neon while driving. There was a particular song called “Sherry” by Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons that I would make her play on repeat. Something sparked a profound curiosity when I heard that song. The vocal bending falsettos, backing vocals, and organic texture of the music brought internal questions like, what is this beautiful melody? Why do I like this so much? This was the thing that turned the pilot light on for me.

The pilot light was on, but the flames did not start burning on high until I came across a sketch comedy album my mom started playing in the car called “What The Hell Happened To Me?” by Adam Sandler. It was 2004, 7th grade, and an inspired class clown emerged. Trips to the principal’s office were a common occurrence. I often had to sit facing the front corner of the classroom with my back toward everyone. I also had to sit in the hallways with my nose against the wall. If my nose left the wall, I had to start my time all over again. I was humiliated and ostracized because I thought differently and liked to make people laugh. What can I say? The attention was nice.

A childish love then developed for this girl in my class. I couldn’t fixate on anything else. I gathered the courage to ask her out, and to my astonishment, she said yes. I then found out she loved a band called Green Day. With twenty dollars or so from my mom, I walked two hours to an HMV, a popular music shop back then. I bought the first album I could find by the band. The cover had a hand holding a heart-shaped grenade. “American Idiot,” it was called. I asked her if she had that album as it sat in my pocket during a date at a movie theatre. She said she already had the album, so I never gave it to her. Instead, I went home and listened to it on my stereo. It blew my mind little 7th-grade mind and ignited the flames even higher.

A few years of music obsession, clownery, and daydreaming had passed. Bands like Sublime, My Chemical Romance, and Fallout Boy would be on repeat — sketch comedy albums by The Jerky Boys and Adam Sandler along with them. In 2008, I started to learn the guitar and found Rock N’ Roll through someone I became close friends with through local parties. The Doors, Pink Floyd, Fats Domino, Jerry Lee Lewis, Jimi Hendrix — The list goes on and on… I knew music was for me. This was my purpose: to be a great performer and songwriter.

Before I knew it, the parties came. I got really messed up through my late teens to mid-20s. Skateboarding down hills at high speeds, ragdolling my body across concrete at 70 km/hr, jamming in homes of squalor, and playing the occasional show with a two-piece band I had called “The Manic Lounge.” Drugs, alcohol, philosophical conversations, and women hanging around scantily clad. Home-wrecker parties that were reminiscent of Animal House and Lords of Dogtown type of stuff. I did it all. Things that you’d only see in the movies. I almost lost my life multiple times because I didn’t know how to slow down. Being hard on my body, along with heavy labor jobs over the years, ended up destroying my back to the point that I could hardly walk for a whole year. I was suffering from a bad herniated disc at 26 years old that I eventually went into surgery for. At this point, I lost my way… I lost focus and had no clue what to do.

Anyway, with all that being said, I can’t forget to mention film and television. It has always been in my blood, lurking in the background. My dad and grandfather were huge movie buffs, so I’m not surprised. I remember going to the theatre at 1 pm for the matinée and being there until midnight with my dad. We would nap there, waiting for the next film to start because we didn’t have much money to do other activities that were usually quite costly. Movies were affordable. Well, they used to be affordable… Tons of hours were spent in Blockbuster, accompanied by late movie nights at home on the living room floor. Junk food, jokes, and banter between my father and his friends always got me laughing uncontrollably. My dad was a hilarious person. I was subjected to things I shouldn’t have heard or seen at such a young age, but what can you do? Don’t get me wrong, my parents succeeded in ways but dropped the ball in many other ways. Nobody is perfect, I guess. By the way, my mom and dad split when I was about ten years old, but that’s a different story… I thought I’d slip that in there.

Okay, let’s get back on track here. While isolating from substance-fueled benders, recovering from surgery, or any downtime I had, I’d binge-watch films. Quentin Tarantino, Martin Scorsese, Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, Jim Carrey, Adam Sandler, Eddie Murphy, Mike Myers, John Belushi, Chris Farley, SNL, or Mad TV. The list can go on forever. Along with the women, music, and drugs, movies were always a nice way to escape from the loads of rejection and my chaotic upbringing. Disclaimer: I never did fit in, even with the outcasts. It’s not by choice; it’s just always been like that for me.

2014 rolled around. I kept watching SNL reruns on YouTube, especially Chris Farley’s sketches. I could relate to his chaos, energy, and disregard for his well-being. I saw myself. It was also another form of Rock N’ Roll to me. A classic fuck you to everyone and everything around. It made me realize that all art and performances are the same thing. It’s a way to connect with people. A way to inspire and motivate them the way you were inspired at a certain point in your life. Why bind yourself to just one “craft” or one “image”? I then had this insatiable urge and decided to do some research. I found out where Farley got his start. A place called The Second City kept popping up, along with countless other names that I looked up to. I had to go and see what Second City was all about. It seemed so out of reach to me though…

After years of setbacks, I finally left everything behind, and in 2022, I flew from my hometown of Abbotsford, BC, to Toronto, ON, at 29 years old, but not before stopping in Thailand for a few months. What a circus that turned out to be. I was extorted by the Bangkok police, harassed by prostitutes, got high with a Thai fire-dancer in a massive treehouse, and even totaled a motorcycle, almost killing myself. This may be a story for another time…
I left Thailand and finally landed in Toronto with only $1500 and a delusional dream, as some might say. Of course, no accommodation was set up, so I slept in a McDonald’s for the first night while looking for a room to rent. It’s all good, though, because I found myself a dingy room out in Scarborough on Kijiji shared with a 60-year-old, ex-male Hollywood prostitute with a blue teardrop tattoo. He was addicted to meth and had mood swings that would scare even the devil himself. I had to get out quickly.

Fortunately, I met a film producer in my level 1 improv class at The Second City. He had a room for rent in Liberty Village…Thank God for freedom! I moved in right away, got a job washing dishes, and cooking food to pay my way through a fuck load of bills… After getting blackout drunk at The El Mocambo a few weeks later, I made some friends and some enemies in the process. I landed a stand-up gig there through an acquaintance I met that night. The only thing is that this was my first time doing stand-up… I bombed big time. I had no business doing my first stand-up show at one of the most legendary venues ever. It’s pretty crazy to think about it in retrospect… I ended up redeeming myself by throwing a legendary rooftop comedy show at my building a few months later. That opened the door to meeting a ton of talent and pushed my name out a bit further.

Eventually, I had to move out and got an apartment in the same building despite being told I was under the acceptable income threshold… As the months went on at Second City, I found that the people there were relatively sheltered, most not having a lick of life experience, or at least that’s how it seemed to me. The classes and shows were delegated in fear of offending others. It was not the fearless endeavor that I had painted in my mind. “Explore your POV, but if it doesn’t fit our mold, we will not accept you.” The whole thing was more like a “No, And…” They even sent multiple emails, trying to intimidate me because I did things outside the box. It left a bad taste in my mouth. The Second City was unfortunately turned into a corporate money-making machine. Put it this way, my relationship with them is a love-hate relationship, to say the least. Cynicism aside, I met some incredible people, learned a lot, and found a scene/community I never knew existed.

I had so much drive and determination to succeed at The Second City despite having zero theatre and acting experience. I was worth my salt in music, music production, and film knowledge; that’s about it. I basically rolled off the couch from a hectic 10-year shit show and ended up doing everything that you could do at one of the most prominent theatre schools in the world. Despite multiple rejections for various auditions to get into higher-level programs, I never took no for an answer, eventually completing their four major certificate programs, writing, performing, and even producing a sold-out show all in a span of 27 months. That’s a win in a life of many losses that I’m willing to take. You only get what you put in, as they say.

Starting over was and still is a scary thing. Being single with no financial help from mom or dad, no loans, no degree, or a padded job tends to show what you’re made of. Aim to persevere where most give up. When backed into a corner, ask yourself, “How bad do I want it?” Never take no for an answer. That should drive you quite far. Go out and take it. It’s there waiting for you.

Right now, I am a represented actor, finishing up a screenplay for a feature film, experimenting with projects under my new company, “Strange Times Productions,” working on an album, and working 50-hour weeks as a pasta chef.

As I write this, I realize that my purpose in life is always evolving. I’m stuck in a constant state of becoming if that makes sense. I like to chase the next best thing and strive to be better than I was the day before. I never wait for things to be handed to me. I can’t pigeonhole myself and be just an “actor,” a “chef,” a “photographer,” or just a “musician.” I write, perform, and create all sorts of stuff. An entertainer seems like a better term for what I do. At least, that covers a broad spectrum of things. The more I think about it, the more I believe my purpose is to be fearless in the moment and in the things where others can’t be. Hopefully, that can create a light for the people struggling in the dark. At the young age of 32, I’ve already lived many lives that have now become stories within stories. Success does not reside within a dollar; it only resides within yourself.

Maybe it’s at this very moment I have found my purpose.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/itsquinnell/
• Other: IMDB: https://imdb.me/quinnquinnell