Today we’d like to introduce you to Adam Walker Federman.
Adam, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I grew up in western Massachusetts and I always loved playing pretend, but didn’t realize until much, much later that playing pretend was a legitimate line of work people were allowed to study and pursue. I was doing “acting” stuff as far back as elementary school — I remember being in kids shows at my town’s little church, I was in a school play about the life of Rosa Parks, I was always the first to volunteer for any reading aloud in class…but I definitely never thought of it as acting, I had no concept of that. Both of my parents had careers in journalism and my mom taught English as well, so there was always major emphasis on reading. It made me a big reader at a young age, which must have made me confident that I could do a (hopefully) good reading of whatever was written on a page. I was not an extrovert, I was mostly a shy kid, but I DID feel comfortable reading text in front of an audience in the way I thought it was supposed to go. It was probably obnoxious of me, but I think I felt pretty strongly about it. I got involved in my high school’s theater department and in my junior year, got the chance to be the lead in a big play written by a really talented classmate. It was a wild experience — all of the sudden I had a huge responsibility and it took up all of my time. I loved it and was aware of how much I enjoyed being in the theater and acting, but I’d never thought about taking it further. You hear a lot in high school about skill sets, career choices, etc. — I was very slow to realize that the acting thing counted as something I could “do” with my life. I didn’t realize that a whole industry of people out there make their living with the skill set I was developing. I thought people on TV were in a special club, I never made the connection between what I was doing on stage and what they were doing. So I went to college in Ohio and studied history and filmmaking.
In college I took a lot of acting and writing classes. Filmmaking, acting, writing — I guess even my history major — were all bundled into one pursuit of the arts. I didn’t do as much performing in college — I auditioned for a couple plays and short films, but I think I held back a lot because of that whole imposter syndrome thing. I thought I was going to be a historian or maybe just waltz into a veterinary career. Two minutes in a college biology class killed that idea. I had an internship with the State Department and spent a summer at the U.S. Embassy in Panama City, but that somehow turned into acting and filmmaking too. I don’t remember what my original job there was supposed to be, but I got them to let me use my time there making outreach videos aimed at improving the embassy’s relationship with the local population. I tried to depict the U.S. embassy, of all places, as a hip spot to hang out be cool. I don’t think it worked. I studied acting and filmmaking for a semester in Prague, but still didn’t see myself as legitimate enough for any acting community. Like I said, imposter syndrome. But at the same time, I was reading all these acting books in my free time — Meisner, Mamet, Adler, Hagen, Strasberg. Those authors were so dead serious about acting, it was life and death for them, and I think it cracked open that mental door for me to gradually understand there’s no special decree from above required to pursue an acting career, there are just people who are serious about it and people who aren’t. There’s a lot of competition, so whether you choose to be devoted, focused and curious about it is up to you. Some people get that notion very early on, and I am envious of them, but ultimately I don’t wish anything went differently for me than it did.
I moved to Los Angeles after college and stumbled my way through different jobs, some in the industry and some not. I did the bar-back thing, worked in the deli at a Ralph’s, drove for Uber, substituted at LAUSD elementary schools…I did a lot of PA work too, but I had some experience with that before moving to L.A. so it was easy to hit the ground running. My first industry job was a PA gig on a feature film in Ohio right out of college and on day one, they sent me to Columbus to get OSHA certified to operate a crane. I spent that summer 60 feet in the air aiming a giant 14K spotlight and peeing in water bottles. You don’t know the full range of insect life in Ohio until you spend 8 hours harnessed to the biggest light for miles around. And the light burned hot enough to melt my gloves, so it was a sweatbox up there. After that first gig, no PA job ever felt too difficult. I spent a few months doing similar work on a feature in Lake Tahoe and I was hired as a grip on this reality TV show about muscle cars and drag racing for the better part of a year. It filmed in Ohio and New Orleans. That, and the other production jobs, first exposed me to the structured chaos that is filmmaking. I worked in an L.A. casting office for a while and, for a few months, found myself as the 2nd A.D. on a Netflix feature in Las Vegas. There was also one year working for a couple of talent/lit agents who taught me a lot. It all informed my larger grasp of this industry and what goes on behind some doors that are typically closed to actors. The best part was meeting actors over the years. I got a glimpse into what it means to be an actor on a day-to-day basis, off-set and outside of the audition room. I got to know actors whose stories were similar to mine and actors who might as well have come from a different planet than I. I learned that actors come from absolutely every walk of life and are usually plucked from some other path they thought they were on before embracing acting.
During that time I went through four or five acting schools until I finally meshed really well with one school’s curriculum — a two year Meisner program. I put my head down and got to work and…things just started moving. You’re self-taping every day, you’re rehearsing every day, always learning something new, driving your girlfriend crazy with your memorizing, just trying your hardest to meet the next goal whether it’s in class or in the real acting world…suddenly I had a manager willing to take a chance on me and get in the trenches (hi Becky, Brent, Carlos, Nayverk, the whole Kreativ team) and then I had some minor credits. I was auditioning almost more than I could keep up with until the pandemic hit. Throughout Covid, my director buddy and I made a ten-minute, zero-budget short film/skit hybrid that stars me and…my cat…and is now doing inexplicably well in the festival circuit. It’s called Home By Eleven and it eventually evolved into a comedy channel, Grandma’s Attic, that we’ve been slowly growing. Auditions are back in full-swing now that Covid is easing up, but doing your own projects like that help you gauge what work you’re doing that people respond to positively, what work of yours they do not respond to, you keep expanding your network…and you never know what the next day is going to bring. It’s that kind of career and existence — and I love it. I haven’t “made it” by any stretch of the imagination, and this expression is so overused — marathon, not a sprint — but it’s true. This career is always a work in progress and you’re always somewhere different than you expected at the end of each month, so I guess enjoy the moment as much as you can.
I still have this pamphlet from one of my high school career days — you were supposed to score how you felt about each school subject, then total the points to see which career field was right for you and decide your fate from that. Not a great system, but there was one section on the side where you could write in any dream career you wanted and I wrote “actor.” I don’t know why, but I had the seed of that idea from somewhere, I guess it just needed time to grow.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
Definitely. It hasn’t been a cake walk, but I have a lot of privileges that other struggling actors don’t have and I’m absolutely surrounded by supportive, wonderful people. Everyone knows actors are constantly facing rejection, and sure it’s always a challenge to frame those rejections as a reason to keep going instead of a reason to quit, but I don’t think I’ve ever met an actor who hasn’t dealt with that mental war. If you’re doing the absolute best you can every day, you can tell that critical voice in your head to shut the f*ck up. But I’ve lived a pretty charmed life. I have all my limbs.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I’m an actor, writer and the only person I know who liked the ending of Lost. Just kidding…I think. There’s no single piece of work I can point to that defines what I do; stuff I’ve written is out there, stuff I’ve directed is out there, my acting work is out there…even some random voiceover work of mine is out there…so I really don’t know what my acting wheelhouse is yet. I take every acting job I can and see what people respond to when it’s finished. I’ve played dark characters in ultra-dramatic worlds, I’ve done goofy comedy series and surrealistic work, I’ve played white-collar, blue-collar, people close to home, people not at all like me…one time I spent a day on set filming tutorials for Marvel that instructed kids on how to use a new Iron Man toy robot. If I have a type-cast, I don’t know what it is yet, but for now it seems like directors are willing to plug me into different roles and see how it works.
Can you talk to us about how you think about risk?
It’s a win-win! In my experience, at least. Fear of failure can stop you from doing almost anything, but your perceived creative failures don’t need to deflate you if you can see them in some other, more productive way. Grit and resilience feel more important to me than protecting myself from ever experiencing rejection. I don’t know anyone I admire who got to where they are without trying and failing over and over and over again. It’s probably necessary for real growth. I once heard this ceramist say something like “we’ve all got a bunch of bad art inside of us that we have to get out before the good stuff can emerge.” It’s different for everyone, but I like that idea; the image of a ceramist sitting down at her wheel and spinning out all these misshapen pieces — her “failures” — tossing them over her shoulder, clearing the way for the “good” artwork at the center. There’s only one way to remove all that excess clay and it’s by trying, failing, trying again, and then using what you learn to keep building.
Contact Info:
- Email: [email protected]
- Website: imdb.me/adamwalkerfederman
- Home By Eleven: https://www.instagram.com/tv/CIuI2E8pggP/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
- Grandma’s Attic: https://www.instagram.com/grandma_sattic/
- Personal IG: https://www.instagram.com/adamwfederman/
- Other: https://kreativartists.com/
