Really, you just gave me what I needed. I've come to a place where, and of course I'm insecure. I'm an artist and I get in my head sometimes. But I do try to just, you know, be proud of what I do, know that I've brought all I can give and that I'm always open and adaptable, if that makes

sense. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So how did you get from being on stage doing a very child to being the Joker's henchman on a Batman movie? Yeah, that was your first film, wasn't it, I believe? It was. It was. Tell us about how did that happen and how did it feel suddenly to be working with Chris Nolan on a major, major movie? So, you

know, hold on to your passions, you know, cling to them, love them, nurture them since I was a young boy in spite of great opposition. I had a deep love for comic books and graphic novels, science fiction, fantasy, superheroes, horror genre. It's just a space that I've loved and felt safe in since I was a boy going to the comic shop collecting Batman comics. The Joker was always my favorite villain. I thought DC had the best villains of all the publishers. And then I, as you know, moved into this very serious theater training where I was doing a great deal of Shakespeare and classic, you know, Russian and English and American drama and even some international drama. And sadly, you know, during those years growing up because of the environment in which I was raised, I just didn't have the support system or the opportunity to get the mental health resources that I really needed struggling as a young man with depression, suicidal ideation, anxiety. So for me, the path became the use and ultimately abuse of opiates. And I was this really bizarre case where I was a high functioning opiate addict who could use what I needed to to get myself kind of mentally well by about 6 a.m. in the morning. And then I could go and have an intensely productive day, you know, building sets, rehearsing plays, doing theater and getting all the way till 11 o'clock at night where I would go crash and then rinse and repeat. And you'd never see yourself becoming, you know, Claude Raines and the Invisible Man by experimenting with all this stuff until all of a sudden your Claude Raines and the Invisible Man and your and your and you've and you've become possessed by this stuff. So it's a bit of a long story, but I think it's important for people to hear, especially if they're out there struggling with any of these issues. I just gave up at a certain point. I was on stage, one of the best theaters in America coming into a career that would is very promising and the addiction and my reluctance to deal with the mental issues that I needed to deal with and my fear and my anxiety and my deep self-loathing led to me leaving acting altogether. And I spent a number of years, you know, sleeping in a car, being a full-time drug addict. I used to sleep off of a war bash in a parked car and sometimes at a Lincoln park in my car and was shoplifting and, you know, lying and doing everything I could to put together what I needed to stay afloat until I finally just gave up and decided I needed to leave the world. And fortunately by miracles, whether you believe in them or not, I believe science is a miracle as is the power of community and family and love. I was saved. And as hard as I tried to end my life, I couldn't, I didn't and I was given a second chance at life and through recovery, I spent about five years just working in a cinema. I was a, I was sweeping popcorn and helping talk to the projectionists up in the booth who would smoke cigarettes and they were union guys back then. This is in the early 2000s and I was going to see movies or renting DVDs every night and I worked as a telemarketer during the day and I bought my comic books and I never, ever imagined I would act again. And by a miracle again, a friend who was a great theater director was putting on a play and another friend, same thing, they came to me and they said, we need to get you back on stage. And I did a couple of really neat pieces with a company called Caffeine. I did an Oscar wild play called Salome and I proved to myself that not only was I able to act again without triggering my need for opiates, I was a

better actor.