Paul James on Dealing with Adversity & Acting

Paul James, also known as PJ, joins us on this week’s episode of the podcast. After college at Syracuse University, PJ moved out to LA and started his acting career. PJ was in the hit TV show Greek, and he was in a movie right off the bat called Cry Wolf. Today he is on a Netflix show called Soundtrack. You’ll enjoy that PJ is open, honest, and talks about the ups and downs that come with acting as a career. In this episode, we discuss when acting came into his life (5:20), why his dad was a secret service agent (7:40), what he liked about being on stage (9:20), why he wanted to be in a fraternity (13:20), what the theater program at Syracuse was like (17:30), what it was like transitioning out to LA (20:10), playing as an actor (23:30), why he hates auditions (25:30), preparation vs. performance mindset (28:30), where he feels most alive (32:15), how his Dad passing impacted his life (37:00), dealing with adversity (41:20), the story behind his current show (45:00), what he does to mentally prepare himself for acting (47:30), how he responds to failure (52:30), what he’s done for the last two years (54:00), being in the show Greek (56:20), how he stays disciplined with the reactiveness of acting (1:01:10), and how he goes from acting vs. who he is off camera (1:06:20) Thank you to Paul for coming on the podcast. We encourage you to check him out on Instagram and watch his show Soundtrack on Netflix. Lastly, if you liked this episode and/or any others, please follow me on Twitter: @brianlevenson or Instagram: @Intentional_Performers. Thanks for listening. -Brian