Q&A with Ben Curtis: First, Self-Care
I’ve written on this blog before that discipline is kind of my jam, and I’ll admit that self-care decidedly is not. As I reflected on in an earlier post, I have a tendency to keep my schedule packed and my to do lists impossible. It’s dawning on me that this way of life can make it difficult to be creative at all. Starting projects from a place of feeling burned-out is, spoiler, not good for my writing or for me. This week’s Q&A was a much-needed chat with actor and coach Ben Curtis, who is all about self-care as the starting point for any creative process.
Ben started his career playing Steve the Dell Dude (as in, “Dude you’re getting a Dell!”) in Dell Computer commercials from 2000-2003. The height of his fame as the Dell Dude coincided with his experience of 9/11, which he witnessed from his first apartment in Manhattan. He’s been on a healing journey ever since, believing that connection is more important than anything. Ben studied acting at New York University as well as The Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute and the Atlantic Theater Company. Since his days as the Dell Dude, he’s acted both on stage and on screen, including in the TV series The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, the movies Spy and Echelon 8, and the stage plays Joy and Take Me Out. He also plays harmonica, banjo and guitar in the indie folk band Dirty Mae and leads an active life as a personal freedom and performance coach.
When Ben and I met over Zoom for this interview, he was running late because he and his wife were caring for a stray kitten. If you know Ben, this is not at all surprising. As he says below: “I make it my mission to bring more love and sensitivity and compassion to everything I do.”
Q&A with Ben Curtis, actor
Q: What is your creative process like?
A: It’s a life process. One thing that I look at with creatives is what the actual tool is. What is the object you use to create your art? For an actor, it’s challenging because your vessel is your body. So, my creative process for any role is a lifestyle in which I take care of my body, my mind, and my energetic boundaries—because if I’m living a life based on playing and getting into other roles and psychologies, it’s important for me to take care of my own psychology, for me to have my own clear boundaries so that I don’t take this stuff home with me and into my relationships. That’s been a lifelong process. I’ve always been performing. I came out of the womb ready to perform. My father was an Episcopal minister and an artist, and my mom was a teacher, so there was a lot of self-expression around me growing up. My creative process has been about serving my soul and making sure I’m doing what I love. Because when I’m not, I can go through periods of depression. One of the challenging things about being an actor is that most roles end, so there are always highs and lows. I’m also a musician and a coach, a yoga teacher and a meditation instructor. I do everything to facilitate my creative process. It’s all about self-care—taking care of your instrument, whatever that is.
Q: What’s the process of getting an acting role like?
A: My creative process as an actor involves auditioning, generating work for myself and being in touch with my agents, and carving out time to get familiar with a piece of material when I get it. An audition is like a cold read: you get something right away and basically you have within 24 hours to figure out how you’re going to get your lighting and sound set up, what you’re going to wear, carving out time in your day for the prep work. If it’s a TV show, I have to look at how long the TV show is. Is it 30 minutes or an hour? Is it a drama, comedy, a sitcom? This relates to the style of acting and the camera work. If it’s on-camera I make sure that all my technology’s charged and ready, I’ve got a quiet space set aside, and I’ve taken care of myself that day by warming up my body physically and vocally. And now I also need to get my wife or a reader to read with me, so there’s a lot of extra components behind the scenes. Then you submit it—you upload it along with hundreds of other people. And you only hear from someone if you get booked. If you get booked, you basically get the script when you walk in. But you’re the person! They’ve hired you, they want you—so that’s the cool thing. It used to scare the shit out of me. But then when I got to realizing, “Oh my God, they’re choosing me!” I knew that I am enough. And I can ask for help. If I book a movie or a TV show, that can be a long process. I’m rehearsing with the team. I’m seeing my character’s journey through the literature. And I start to eat, sleep, breathe, and think like the character. Often creatives are deep empaths, so when we’re trying to create art together, taking care of your heart is a big process too and that’s always challenging for me. The process is really specific to the role and to the kind of project. I did Marvelous Mrs. Maisel a couple years ago, and that was two days on a set. I only saw a few paragraphs of dialogue. I was basically in a trailer the whole time. I had a night to prepare it. And it was kind of like all systems go—you just jump into a working set with all of the leads you admire and it’s kind of like “Whoa!” The creative process there is “hurry up and wait” because you spend all day doing nothing and then it’s just like, “Go!” and you do it from 20 different angles and it’s over. It’s not always emotionally fulfilling; it’s very technical, actually. But it’s an exciting process.
Q: When you’re acting, how do you know if you’re doing it well?
A: I try to serve the role. You can get really into your ego and your head about, “Am I doing this well?” but it kind of doesn’t matter what you think. It’s about the director and connecting with the material and listening. A big part of acting is listening. You need to listen to the room and the breath and the energy and the person opposite you who’s also talking. It’s not about you. And that’s why actors can get self-consumed. It’s actually about ‘out there’ and serving the story. And then there is a zone. You can tell when you’re connected. For a play, I know I’m on the way to doing it well if I’ve memorized my lines. Because if I’m trying to think of what I’m going to say next then I’m not actually present. Once it gets off script and starts to get in my body is when I know that I can do it well. I can feel when I’m doing it well when it’s being received well, when I feel connected to it, and I feel like I’m speaking my truth inside of the role. I also try to connect to the intention of why I’m doing it. As long as I’m connected to my intention and I’m not too much in my head, then I feel like I’m acting well.
Q: You were 20 when you started playing Steve the Dell Dude. What was it like to reach that level of visibility at such a young age?
A: Your life under a magnifying glass overnight at that age is so confusing. During that time I was at NYU on an acting scholarship doing what I love, and I also lived at Ground Zero right before September 11th. It was my first adult apartment that I used my Dell money to move into. I was only a junior and I was two blocks from the World Trade Center and I had a view of it. Needless to say, I was there and I’ve been healing from that for a long time. Through all of that, the biggest lesson I learned from the visibility was that it’s really important to stay humble and stay patient and to remember why you do it and to be generous with people. I had to go through this process of recklessness and sabotage to learn and heal. I was in a lot of fear and I would turn down roles, afraid that I was going to lose my sense of identity. I wish I had asked for help more. I had a team, but I was spiraling out and I started getting really heavy into drugs and alcohol. The PTSD from 9/11 didn’t help with that, and neither did the fame. You sort of lose a sense of self sometimes and I felt very objectified.
Q: What did you learn from that experience?
A: Suddenly I had more empathy for women and I understood much more what it’s like to be objectified on the street everywhere you go. That was the weird thing about my fame—it wasn’t like a Johnny Depp who gets to play all these different roles and people may really appreciate him as an artist. I was only the Dell Dude. I was a walking commercial icon. I played this slacker stoner kid who was younger than me, so when I would be serious or on a phone call in the street and someone would want to interact with Steve and I was not in the mood, people would get pissed off and it was confusing! It was really confusing. That all ending allowed me to start my healing process, and then restart a whole new creative process. I was finally able to create my career as an adult not so much in the throes of life but through really asking myself what I wanted. Getting sober was also a big part of my creative journey. I thought I was never going to be creative without drugs and alcohol and pain. Once I got sober, I went through a year of what you might call writer’s block. But after about a year of sobriety, this explosion came out and it was amazing to see that I didn’t have to be suffering to be a great artist. I could use my experiences and call from that pain in a healthy way.
Q: What led you to your work as a coach and what’s the reason for your focus on men and masculinity?
A: From a young age, I was really encouraged to talk about my feelings and I was clearly one of the most sensitive beings around. It was really challenging for me. Girls didn’t appreciate how emotional I was, and it sucked to be a sensitive dude! The only thing I was called in the south was “gay” and it was not cool or okay to be gay. I grew up in Chattanooga, Tennessee and being a sensitive guy was so rare. I remember asking to see a therapist when I was having a hard time as a kid. I knew how to ask for help and I loved helping people. Even my therapist would say, “You’re really good at talking about your feelings.” I always sought out female therapists. I never felt really safe with strong, powerful men or I just didn’t trust men fully. I’ve learned in my work studying the masculine and the feminine that there were energies that I was drawn to and that felt safer to me. As I was an adult I was learning about this process. I love psychology so I took some courses at NYU and I took my first personal development course. I did a course at Landmark Education—it was in the World Trade Center, a month before 9/11—and I had a powerful breakthrough in my connection with my father. Inside of this ongoing healing process I became more and more drawn to help young men and people who suffer in general. Even in the sobriety community, people get strong and healthy by helping each other. I wanted to serve and I realized that my sensitivity—which was my most difficult thing to live with growing up, the thing I just outcast myself for all the time—was suddenly my superpower. I wanted to help other creative men who don’t have the tools to take care of themselves or to really thrive—and really any emotional men who just want to heal so they can love themselves and be a better partner or be a better man in the world, because there’s so much toxic masculinity that every one of us has been programmed with. I make it my mission to bring more love and sensitivity and compassion to everything I do. That’s why I’m a coach and that’s why I really try to do what I love for a living, and help other people do the same. Life is short, and if you’re just trying to make a living to make it somewhere where you can start living, well, you may not make it there. Do what you love now, and if that terrifies you, guess what? You don’t have to do it alone.
Learn more about Ben’s coaching here and follow him on Instagram or Facebook to get in touch.
Judith Weston’s Directing Actors is an excellent read for directors, actors, and screenwriters alike.
Finally, some tips on self-care for those of us who need them. “The more you can work self-care time into your schedule, the better you’ll be able to grow, enjoy your life, and thrive.”
Read more Wild Minds posts here.