We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Matt Christian a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Matt, so happy to have you with us today. You are such a creative person, but have you ever head any sort of creativity block along the way? If so, can you talk to us about how you overcame or beat it?
Creative blocks come up in every artist’s life. It’s never something to feel bad or ashamed about. The timing of when creative blocks show up says a lot more about you and where you are in your own headspace than it says about the actual quality of the work you’re doing. In my experience I find that most creative blocks revolve around fear of some sort. Either of not being good enough or of how you’ll be perceived by others. Working through those fears is about learning to see and connect with yourself. That connection is what opens the channels and allows you to tune into the frequency of the flow state, because when you’re doing things from that connected place, you can actually begin creating the things you want to create in the ways YOU want to create them because you’re not trying to create for anyone but yourself. You’re playing with house money.
The second aspect of working through blocks that I’ve found is by simply doing the work. This is where it’s important to have a technique that you can fall back on so you can continue to create even when inspiration is absent. Inspiration comes and goes, it’s not something that you can rely on to carry you through a creative career or a creative life. But when you know your craft so well and have a system of working in place you can utilize that allows you to put one foot in front of the other and still show up even in the dry times, you set yourself up for creative longevity.
That might sound mechanical, but sometimes the mechanics are what take us through. They are the engine that allows the thing to continue moving even when we find ourselves unable to connect with the flow state as we’d like.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
I am an actor first and foremost. Acting is the great calling of my life. I feel most myself when performing or preparing for a role. I’m also a writer and improviser. I published my debut book for struggling artists back in 2021 titled “Dear Artist: 75 Letters from One Struggling Artist to Another” and am constantly performing live shows around LA’s comedy scene.
There are two main projects I have coming up that I’m incredibly excited about!
Ever since I began acting I’ve had this pull to play the actor James Stewart in a biopic recounting his amazing life – which is interesting because when I first got this impulse, I hadn’t seen any of his movies, except for maybe one or two growing up. But through the years I spent training, becoming a professional actor and moving to Hollywood, the impulse to tell his story never left. A few years ago I decided to simply start doing the work since roles of that size are rarely given to an actor unless they’ve already proven themselves capable. I ended up studying, working and honing for an entire year before putting together a 10 minute screen test full of recreated footage from Jimmy’s incredible career. Things like radio spots, interviews, a World War II PSA and several scenes from Jimmy’s most iconic films. There’s an actual biopic on Jimmy’s life in the works now and I feel incredibly grateful to have already connected with the filmmakers a bit – each of whom are incredibly kind and gracious – and I’m extremely excited to know just how much they care about Jimmy’s story and honoring his legacy. I’m continuing to put work into this project of becoming Jimmy and will be releasing more recreated footage in the coming months.
I’ve also been cast in an upcoming horror adventure film that I’ve been working on for several months now and am enormously excited about!! My involvement has not been announced yet, so there’s not much I can say at the moment, but be on the lookout! This is an incredibly fun, well written project that I’m so excited for the world to see. Stay tuned and keep an eye out!
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
1.) A willingness to learn 2.) Persistence at any cost 3.) Adaptability.
When I first made the decision to pursue my creative calling, I knew it was not going to be easy. I lived in the midwest and didn’t have the opportunity to attend drama school or anything like that. What I had at my disposal were movies and books written by the great acting teachers of the past. I studied the works of Uta Hagan, Stanislavski, Sanford Meisner and Stella Adler just to name a few, and I would watch through the filmography of my favorite actors in chronological order to study how they improved and see what they did differently from one movie to the next. Up until I started working with my first coach (who I met attending an acting workshop), these movies and books laid the foundation for the technique that I would later develop.
After those first few steps of my journey was where persistence and adaptability came into play. Anyone who has ever pursued a dream knows how valuable both of these skills are, and even though I had counted the cost and thought I was prepared for how difficult the journey was going to be, there are always things you just can’t anticipate. In the dark days when friends I had around me were giving up and moving back home, I couldn’t get a job to save my life and things didn’t seem to be working out, these are the two skills I relied on the most to carry me through to brighter days I didn’t believe would come. In those times, all you can do is put your head down and stubbornly soldier on. It will not be easy, and oftentimes you will be alone, but if you can weather the storm long enough for daylight to break (and no matter how dark things are, it always will), you will come out the other side stronger, with a better understanding of yourself and more determined than ever before. If you’re in that place right now I want you to know that I see you and understand how hard it is. The best thing you can do for yourself is just keep walking.
How can folks who want to work with you connect?
Absolutely! I’m always looking to meet and collaborate with like minded partners who are trying to get things made! Whether it’s artists who are looking to produce our own self generated work, improvisers who are looking to make fools of ourselves and play together on stage or writers who want to sit down and discuss ideas, I believe that the only way we’re ever going to achieve our dreams is if we link arms and pursue them together. I’d love to meet and talk with anyone who wants to do the same.
You can reach me through my official website www.officialmattchristian.com or on Instagram @realmattchristian. I’d love to connect!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.officialmattchristian.com/
- Instagram: @realmattchristian
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cenFxAR8ug4
- Other: Purchase Matt’s book “Dear Artist: 75 Letters from One Struggling Artist to Another”
https://www.amazon.com/Dear-Artist-Letters-Struggling-Another/dp/1736075500
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