Local actor in spotlight

By Michael Picarella pic@theacorn.com

Brian Napolitan

As a teenager, Westlake Village actor Brian Napolitan, 24, said he often felt self-conscious about being overweight and often would act like someone else to feel better about himself. He has since used acting as a form of therapy for life’s hardships.

A Northern California native, Napolitan has already starred in two feature-length movies, several short films, commercials, corporate videos and a documentary. He’s worked as an actor for the past seven years without the help of an agent, but he’s now seeking one to represent him.

"I’ve worked as an actor by myself to the point of knowing what I’m doing, and now I’m ready to take my acting to the next level," Napolitan said.

Napolitan said he was a fat kid. Weighing in at 235 pounds in high school, he was often the butt of jokes his peers and some family members would make.

"I just hated myself," Napolitan said. "I used to imitate Chris Farley (a comedian from ‘Saturday Night Live’) and everyone would always laugh—that always made me feel better. So I was rarely myself. I ways wanted to be someone else."

When Napolitan wasn’t acting like someone else, he was playing hockey. He planned to be a professional hockey player and, by 1997, hockey slowly took over his life. That’s when Napolitan realized he’d have to get into better physical shape to compete with other players. He set a strict workout routine for himself and stuck to it. In under six months, he lost 65 pounds and went from a "joke" in school to one of the popular kids, he said.

"As I worked out, I really started loving it," Napolitan said. "And then I got addicted to it. Not just because it felt good to work out . . . but also because people were starting to like me and girls actually started to take an interest in me."

"Before" and "after" pictures of Napolitan could compare to Jared from the Subway sandwich shop advertisements, Napolitan joked. Jokes aside, he said his shoe size shrank almost two sizes.

With his slimmed body and newfound self-confidence, Napolitan expressed an interest in acting professionally for the first time.

In his first "real" attempt at acting, Napolitan said, he played a Mexican gangster in a movie he made for a high school Spanish class. His brother Steven, who had just begun film-directing classes at the Academy of Art College in San Francisco, directed the short film.

"I had so much fun on that project," Napolitan said. "I found that I still enjoyed acting . . . but this time I wasn’t really trying to escape myself."

Napolitan enjoyed acting so much that he took roles in the movies his brother was making for film school. Eventually he found more passion for acting than for hockey and dedicated his life to the craft.

Napolitan’s experience as a co-star on his first full-length movie, "1 2 3" (www.123themovie.com), was a huge lesson in acting and film production, he said. He worked a grueling 10-day shooting schedule, sometimes 20 hours a day. Since the movie was very low-budget, Napolitan often helped the crew when he wasn’t acting.

His performance in "1 2 3" landed Napolitan the lead role in his next full-length movie, "Punchcard Player" (www.punchcard player.com). The movie is currently in post-production.

"Punchcard Player," a dramatic comedy about a young suburbanite working six jobs at the same time to live up to expectations of his family and friends, pushed Napolitan the way hockey pushed him to lose weight, the actor said.

"I figured I had some time before we were going to shoot the movie, so I took as many jobs as I could to be like the main character in the story," Napolitan said. "I was going to school, I worked at Applebee’s, Chevy’s, I was editing weddings for my brother’s production company and I was still interviewing for more work by the time we started shooting the movie. . . . I wanted my character to be very believable."

After "Punchcard Player" wrapped, Napolitan planned to move to Southern California, find an agent and become an established actor. A lack of money held him back. But on his 24th birthday, he said, reality hit him like a hockey puck to the face.

"To be honest, I just felt myself getting older, and I said, ‘If I don’t move down to L.A., I’m going to end up wasting my life,’" Napolitan said. "‘And my acting career will go nowhere.’"

In February, Napolitan made his move. He spends his days in Hollywood seeking an agent and acting jobs and working at the Applebee’s eatery in Westlake Village. That’s the same restaurant where, a few years ago, Agoura Hills actor Perry Shen took a job as a waiter. About three hours into his first day of work, a movie company tracked him down and asked if he would act in a film called "The New Guy." Nine hours later, Shen was on a movie set in Austin, Texas.

Napolitan has come a long way since being a "fat" kid who didn’t like himself, he said. But he’s grateful for the experience and hopes for more life-changing events.

"I think that every actor should tap into their personal life or personal experiences for them to get to a certain place when portraying a character," Napolitan said. "That’s what keeps me going and keeps me growing."

Napolitan can be reached at (818) 585-5486 or by e-mail at briannapolitan@yahoo.com.