Today’s Notable Young Professional is actor Alain Chanoine, who stars in the highly-anticipated horror feature film Evil Feed, making its world premiere during the 2013 Toronto After Dark film festival on Wednesday, October 23…
Elevator Pitch: Describe your job in a nutshell.
I’ll describe it a little like Meisner: I’m an actor. I take words off a page and live truthfully under imaginary circumstances in front of a camera or on stage. I’m also a stunt performer. I substitute actors when a scene in a movie requires stunts.
Why did you start working at your company? What was the inspiration for this career route?
I started working professionally around 2002. It took years before I could quit my regular job but it eventually happened. I always wanted to be an actor; I used to play that I was a character in Miami Vice in the 80s. I didn’t think it would be actually possible to do this for a living before I actually booked my first part years later. I’m still not sure what created that initial spark for film, but I remember, before I started in the industry, having this sickening feeling of missing out on something great every time I heard of a movie shooting around my hometown. Like it was missing in my life.
What is the best part of what you do on a day-to-day basis? The most challenging part?
Being an actor is about bettering yourself as a human being. It’s all about knowing yourself, your flaws, your wounds, and healing them by exposing them constantly. I guess the best part of my job is training. Training to be better; a better actor, stuntman, human being.
Where do you see yourself in five years?
Having my own production company, producing films I want to produce the way I want to produce them.
What does success look like to you?
Success to me is loving what I do, getting paid doing it, all that with my family and friends on my side.
What is the most memorable milestone in your career?
To this day it is still my first audition. It was a weird thing; I was getting changed after a football practice in college back in Montreal, when I saw a sign that said “Auditions.” I asked what it was about and if I could audition, and they told me to come back next week. I was there the following week waiting in line reading the lines they had just handed me and it was about King Arthur and the round table. The dialogue was very eloquent and I remember thinking, “There were no black people around the round table.” So I walked back to the subway. Until this day I know that if I had taken that train I would not be sitting here talking to you. I wouldn’t even be in the film business. I walked back to the audition and booked the lead role. Funny enough, the film was never made but I moved to Vancouver because that’s where the film was supposed to shoot. While waiting for production to start I took acting class, was doing extra work, got an agent and started booking parts. I remember being on set as an extra watching the stunt performers fight and fall, and I was like, “I can do that… I want to do that.” So I worked for it and never looked back
Do you have any advice for other young professionals?
Be yourself, work hard and don’t try to impress anybody but yourself. The same way you live your life is the same way your career will unfold.
Do you support any charities? If so, which one(s) and why is that important to you?
My family and I help a lot of people in Haiti. We send food, clothes and money. I want to start my own charity raising money to open schools in Haiti. That’s one of my main goals in life. The more successful I am, the more I will be able to help out people around me. I guess that’s my way of making a difference. My family is from Haiti, and I am where I am because one day someone helped my mom. Maybe it is just time to pay it forward.
What to you is notable?
Integrity. It is hard to stay truthful to yourself in a world that wants us to be all the same. So I’ll admire integrity no matter it’s form if it is truthful.
Blackberry, iPhone, Android, or Other?
iPhone. I really love it, but I’m open to change.