Daily Inspiration: Meet André Hyland

Today we’d like to introduce you to André Hyland.

André, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, where as a child I bounced between a number of grade schools due to my dyslexia. The frustration it brought me as a kid keeping up in school lead to a number of outbursts, included running away from school a few times. In just a few years I attended a variety of schools, public school, private school, church school, and eventually landing in home-school from 4th-7th grade. Which I’m very thankful for now, because it was during home-school that I started making home videos with my siblings. Many of our days were filled with walking to the store to buy 2-liters of Dr. Pepper, meatball subs at Subway, and most importantingly making videos together with our home video camera. Home-school ultimately became my favorite educational experience in a lot of ways. My life now is actually still pretty similar, I still go to Subway on occasion (mostly for coookies) and I’m still making videos, but on a much larger scale (and sometimes still with my siblings). In 8th grade I went back to a more traditional school experience. All through High school, I was making videos, and on the later end I delved into Street art/graffiti too, which became a large part of my creative output as well.

After high school I went to art-school at the university of Cincinnati’s DAAP college where I majored in Fine Arts with a concentration in Electronic Art. During that formative period growing up in Cincinnati I spent as much of my time as I could making videos with friends, I’d act, direct, edit anything I could. Plus I also spent a healthy amount of my artistic diet painting, drawing, graffiti, performing as comedic characters in live shows, gallery shows, punk shows, open mics, I made a fake church band with some friends that we’d put on a real church cable access channel. I was constantly busy making things as often as I could, I was incredibly hungry to create and share.
After college was followed by a brief stint in NYC that didn’t seem to stick at the time. I went back to Cincinnati, where I worked at a pizza spot for about a year, and I’d also sell my artwork at live-painting nights at Hip-Hop club, with the money I had saved from that, I moved out to LA, where I’ve been for the most part ever since.

After my first couple of years in LA began to focus more on TV, film by way of comedy mostly (but not limited to). I began regularly performing at alt-comedy venues, gaining attention for live shows, and hidden camera street segments I’d shoot. Which lead to me segment producing, acting, and directing comedy sketches for a show called Stupdface on the now defunk’t Fuel TV. All this work lead to me being featured in the 2008 LA Weekly “People Issue”, which then lead to me getting a manager, then me selling a number of TV pilots I created and starred to places like Comedy Central and FOX, the first of which I co-created with Bob Odenkirk (he’s great, and was very supportive of a lot of my first big industry projects). Then came agents, and things kept growing from there.
Eventually one of the many many things I made was a short film called FUNNEL, was selected by Sundance in 2014. Funnel was my first of four films I directed, wrote, edited, and starred in that would go on to premiere in Park city over the next few years, including my first feature film, THE 4TH. In the years since, between directing TV, and my personal film projects I’ve been even more active on the acting front, landing a variety of starring, and recurring roles in film, and streaming series. Mostly recently with a role on the FX / Hulu Series The Lowdown, with Ethan Hawke. (Great show by the way!).

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
The roles and projects that the public actually gets to see, seem to go pretty smooth. Once you book something as an actor, most things are sort of taken care of (In general). When it’s something I’ve written, and sold it’s a lot of work, and can be stressful because I always want it to be as good as it can be.
For acting, I won’t say all the jobs are easy, but getting the jobs is usually the hardest part.

As for the struggles, besides basic cost of living rising/ personal life stuff/the world being a crazy place… I’d say the notable struggles consist of getting really close to particular dream jobs, then not getting them, like auditioning for SNL at studio 8H, not getting it, then doing audience-extra work when I got back to LA a couple days later (that was a bummer). All the rejections, auditions I didn’t book, pitches I loved that nobody bought, getting hit by a van while riding my bike to work (that really sucked), getting dropped by reps, shows getting canceled, pilots not getting picked up, spending years making a film for it to be rejected by festivals, your role getting edited out of the final cut by air time, riding out the general insanity that the industry has been the past ten years (not that it was ever sane…but it used to be less insane), missing time with my family in Cincinnati, film financing that fell apart, and all the other days where your ego and sense of talent get philosophically kicked in the nuts can be rough. Lots of high highs, and low lows.

But I love film, TV, comedy, and art, so here I am. I don’t like the struggles, but to me they’re worth it, because when it’s going great, it can be amazing, and theres no other careeer I’d rather be doing. Also, the struggles I just described are not unique to me, if you meet anyone with any level of success, they’ve likely experienced some or all of these struggles as well.
Life in the entertainment industry can fluctuate quickly from being a very well paid dream job to feeling like your career has been reduced to an expensive hobby. But again, this is what I’m good at and love, so what am gonna do? Things don’t often happen as quickly as I’d like , but they do keep happening, so I’m still here.
Seems like most of us have to eat a few shit sandwiches along the way, just make sure to brush your teeth and keep smiling.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
What do I do? Im a writer, filmmaker, actor, visual artist, and comedian.
What do I specialize in?
-As an actor, I’d say improvising.
-As a writer-directior, I’d say creating tonally naturalistic comedy films, and voyeuristic hidden-camera character driven comedy TV segments.
-As a visual artist, creating bright, graphic street art/graffiti with bold noodle like characters and lines that range from playful and funny, to grotesque and funny.
-As a comedian I’d say I’m most known for my celebrity interviews, the Bengal Barrel (Google it), hidden camera street character segments, my Jesse Miller character in particular, and for hosting my long running stage show, “The Jesse Miller Talk Show”.

What am I most proud of? That I’ve made a career out of my creative endeavours, and along the way I’ve gotten to work, and create projects with loads of people I’m fans of, friends, cats, and loved ones.

What sets you apart from others? My sense of humor.

Can you talk to us a bit about happiness and what makes you happy?
Cookies, cats, laughing, going to movies, friends, warm cookies, communicative relationships, walks, blueberries, stray cats, dvds, thrift stores, conversations, The Cincinnati Bengals’ helmet design, music, rain walks, staying up late, Adriatico’s Pizza, over hearing snippets of conversations in public, hanging with my family, traveling, Skyline Chili, In N Out burger, going to the movies, my cat Lionel, performing live, sleeping in, drawing, painting, being on set, Subway cookies, Via 313 Pizza, being on a studio lot, taking photos of interesting/stupid things I see on a daily basis, I could go on and on, so I’ll stop.

Why does it make me happy? Not sure, maybe I was born this way, maybe it’s Maybelline.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1CIGKiz8xo
• Instagram: TheAndreHyland
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/andre.hyland
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/bLoNdcHiLi
• Other: https://www.dsgncllctv.com/merch/p/lepniqs0w3nxbzsg7btzp1kkqhowk7

Image Credits
Black and White photo by Suitcase Joe