Five years after Justin H. Min began pursuing acting by Googling “how to pursue acting,” he thought he was getting the hang of it. He had made a viral commercial, and he was in contention for three major roles.
He landed none of them.
“I was not nervous and I did everything I wanted to,” Min recalled of the auditions. “And that’s the most devastating because you’re like, ‘I guess I just don’t have it.’”
It was in this less-than-healthy head space that Min decided to pivot to a different unstable profession: travel writing. He had caught on with a British magazine and it seemed he might cobble together full-time work as a freelance writer if he got on a plane to London.
So Min told his manager he was moving. But rather than beg him to stay (as Min had secretly hoped), the manager gave his full blessing. Before Min could head for the airport, though, a fellow actor urged him to reconsider — timely encouragement that set Min, now 34, on the path to “a star-making performance,” as a critic for The Times put it, in the new comedy “Shortcomings,” as well as fan-favorite turns in the Netflix series “Beef” and “The Umbrella Academy.”
“This sounds absurd, but I don’t think I’ve really ever struggled with failure until I started to pursue acting,” Min said in a prestrike interview. “So I will absolutely savor this.”
INDEED, EVERYTHING IN the first 20-ish years of Min’s life had come to him with relative ease. He concedes this only very sheepishly and with many disclaimers about how fortunate he feels.
In Cerritos, Calif., the predominantly Asian suburb where he grew up, Min felt little sense of difference. He found that most success was attainable through application. Min was class president all four years of high school and elected king of the winter formal. He was so good in speech and debate competitions that he won thousands of dollars in prize money that helped pay for a Cornell education. Given his gifts, he thought he…
Read the full article here
