Life & Work with Dontrell Griffin of Los Angeles

Today we’d like to introduce you to Dontrell Griffin.

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I was born in Detroit, Michigan and raised by my mom with my siblings. Every summer I’d come to California, Panorama City specifically, to visit my grandma and great grandma. We went to church every Sunday in Pacoima, and even back then when people asked what I wanted to be, my answer never changed. I wanted to be an actor like Denzel Washington & Will Smith. I didn’t know how I’d get there, but I knew that was it for me.

When things got really bad in Detroit, and I mean bad, we lost our house, lived out of our car, to couch surfing at people’s houses, my grandma came and got me and brought me out to Oxnard to give me a better chance to succeed. That move really changed my life at the right time because I was becoming a teenager. I found community, people who became like family, and I got to actually be a kid again. I tried everything out there, sports, music, writing, theater, broadcasting, and started figuring out who I was.

After high school, I lost my great grandma, and that hit me hard. I didn’t really know what I was doing or where I was going. But one of the last things she told me was to go after my dreams and that God would be with me. Literally two weeks later, I saw a casting call flyer at a mall in Ojai. I waited 3 hours at the casting call, got seen, and ended up booking as a background actor in Easy A and later got upgraded to featured. That’s where I got my SAG card and really got my foot in the door.

A casting director named Brandi Hawkins from that project kept encouraging me to move to LA, so I did. Once I got out here, things started moving pretty fast. I signed with an agent, started booking national commercials with brands like McDonald’s, Garnier, Chase, and got roles on shows like Wizards of Waverly Place and the film Act of Valor. I was also getting into music and just exploring different creative lanes.

Then the pandemic hit and everything stopped.

I had no income coming in, residuals dried up, and the industry shut down. I had to pivot. I went back into real estate, helped lease up a new development during COVID, and ended up getting promoted a couple times into an executive level role. But eventually I realized I didn’t want to build someone else’s vision forever. I wanted my own. So I got licensed, bet on myself, and started building my real estate business. In a few years I crossed over 14 million in sales across Southern California with Epique Realty, now as an Area Leader for LA.

At the same time, being a creative never really left me. I started stepping back into it, booked a couple national commercials, and in 2025 I signed with ATN Entertainment. I got back in class, back in rooms, and ended up booking NCIS Origins.

Around that same time I felt like I needed to stop waiting for opportunities and just create one. I wrote and produced my short film, “A House Left Behind”. It’s about family, grief, and how 3 estranged siblings deal with the loss of their father in different ways. That story came from something really personal. My grandmother was diagnosed with dementia a few years ago, and that kind of loss is different. You’re watching someone fade over time, and it hits you over and over again. This is still a pain point for my own family but we’re working on it in our own ways.

That pushed me to tell something real.

Once the script was ready, everything started lining up. I brought on a co-producer, secured funding under my production company, Dream Group Productions, got a great director from the CW network attached, and built a team that really believed in the story. Seeing the finished film, something I wrote and starred in, is still kind of surreal but the nerves are gone and now I just feel proud. We’re planning a premiere in Hollywood and aiming for the festival circuit.

I also wrote an original song called “Take Care” and recorded with my producer friend David Je’, who was nominated for a Grammy. This song lives with the film and expands on the same themes as well as losing in love. It can be streamed everywhere now.

Through everything, starting over, losing people, career ups and downs, having to pivot, I’ve learned you just have to keep going. Both real estate and entertainment are unpredictable, but I really believe even when it feels like nothing is happening, something is being worked out in your favor. And I apply that to EVERYTHING.

Right now I’m in a season where things are building up again. I’ve got new listings coming, a national print and commercial campaign, a series I’ll star in is in the works, and I’m just continuing to build, stay grounded, and be present with the people around me.

This is really just the beginning.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
It definitely hasn’t been a smooth road whatsoever. For the longest time, I felt like I was cursed to just have to struggle all the time. Moving across the country away from the family I was used to was very hard especially in my teen years. Then moving away from the friends that I grew up with to then pursue dreams that I felt like nobody could really understand. I’ve always been different and that’s not always easy when you just want to be able to connect to people.

I’ve overcome a lot of obstacles in my life and I feel like its my job to share my testimony because life can be extremely hard and the world can be a scary place. Some of us are really dealt a what looks like a losing hand, but ultimately it doesn’t have to end that way. It starts with you believing in yourself and being resilient! No matter who isn’t supporting or isn’t believing in your vision yet.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I’m a realtor, actor, writer, producer, model, and songwriter. My main passion is creating art.

I’ve always been into psychology and the idea of why people are the way they are and how they grow, or how they don’t. So with that fascination plus being an artist, where you convey an emotion or a feeling and perform it so that people can connect with it, there’s no feeling like it. I love playing grounded characters that feel truly human. None of us are perfect. There’s something about collapsing yourself into someone else and seeing through their eyes and feeling through their emotions outside of your own and then having people watch it and feel for that character, or hear that song and feel for that singer’s experience.

I think the thing I’m the most proud of today is that I’m not afraid to take risks anymore. I’ve always been a kid that felt if I can do something, then with the right focus and training, I could. That was instilled in me from my great grandma and has stuck with me even as an adult. Only now the difference is, I’ve gone through enough life and ups and downs to not allow fear to keep me in a box. I’m acting, I’m writing, I’m producing, I’m singing, I’m selling homes and doing everything that young boy from Detroit would fantasize about. I just hope that kid’s proud.

What does success mean to you?
I don’t think success is just money. I think success is when you go after something you actually care about, put in the work, make the sacrifices, and are able to build something real from it. Whether that’s your career, your relationships, or your purpose, if it fulfills you and you’re proud of it, that’s success to me.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.dreamgroupla.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dontrellgee/
• Other: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm4917598/