Today we’d like to introduce you to Khoi Le.
Hi Khoi, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I grew up in a small townhome in Gaithersburg, Maryland with my mom, my two sisters, and my brother. We lived in Montgomery County which is a pretty well-off county, but me and my family personally lived in a low-income housing unit. My mom was a single mother taking care of four kids and she was working two jobs just to put food on the table. We didn’t really have much time or resources for any art, pop culture, TV or cable or anything of that nature. We mostly were thinking about food and survival. My mom was trying her best to take care of all four of us. It wasn’t until I took an acting class when I was 26 that really opened my eyes up to creativity. I grew up very shy, insecure and had a real struggle with social anxiety and when I got to my tech job I had to give presentations, and now money was on the line. In high school whenever we got an assignment for presentations, I would beg the teacher if I could just write a paper instead just because whenever I was placed in a situation where I had to public speak, I would just crumble. My heart would race, my hands and even feet would get sweaty; I would stutter, so when I got to my tech job, I knew I had to get over this fear, so I tried an acting class with no aspirations of becoming an actor. I was absolutely horrible, but when I finished that first class I just felt so liberated because I did something that terrified me. I moved to LA shortly after.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Oh, it definitely wasn’t a smooth road there were a lot of obstacles I had to overcome mainly stemming from my own preconceptions and thought processes of how the outside world worked, mainly in conjunction with people and social environments. That’s what really affected me more than anything else I was always worrying about what someone else thought of me, and that really dictated how I would navigate the world and just social interactions in general. I would find myself judging myself and replaying every single social interaction that I had experienced that day. You can imagine how consuming and overwhelming that would be, and I would just crumble. I would just fall into a deep hole of despair and embarrassment and awkwardness when in reality the people that I was having interactions with, including my friends, weren’t really thinking about it. You know it’s all in our own heads, and the struggle was really what shaped me into who I was. I was just so shy and worried and burdened by how I would be acting in front of people and I see now that these thought processes I had actually helped me become very self-aware.
I’m always checking in with myself I’m always introspective that’s just me by default, and it’s because of the struggles that made me who I am today. I’m very proud of who I am today because of those issues that I used to define as weaknesses. I see them as strengths now. I see those attributes as a strength now because I check in with myself, I check in with others, and it helps me be confident in who I am because I am self-aware and I try to be kind and patient and now that I love myself it’s a lot easier to be those things to other people so it definitely hasn’t been a smooth road, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. I think it’s shaped me into who I am today. I grind, I push myself, I’m always trying to grow, and if it wasn’t for the struggles, I wouldn’t have these attributes I have today where I continually push myself, and I just believe even five years from now, I’m going to be a completely different person I’m just going be a better person overall with the whole core of just being kind to myself and being kind to other people.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
On top of being a software engineer, I’m also a working actor but even more so I consider myself a creative. An artist now. When I was growing up, our household was just so full of strain and tension and struggle that most of the time we would just be thinking about food. I was just always so hungry we just never really had the funds to you know even have dinner every night. It was kind of rough but because of that we didn’t have time to be creative we didn’t have time to have color or art or even pop-culture, we didn’t have cable you know our Internet was here, and there we didn’t always have it throughout the year but now that I’m older now that I’m in LA this whole creative world and aspect to human culture and human nature is so brand new to me that it’s so freaking exciting. I paint now, I write now, I cook now, and I see creativity everywhere honestly the word creativity is now my favorite word in the entire world.
All of this came because I chose to get over my fear of public speaking and take an acting class. Acting is my main passion but because of it, it opens so many new aspects of who I am that I see creativity in the way a person dresses, in the way a person walks, so really I specialize in just creating, whatever that means. I really feel like I’m an artist now because I see life and vibrancy and passion in those who choose to take a risk in themselves and put themselves out there. I think that’s what sets me apart. Even though I’m an actor, I have more going for me than you know my bookings in commercials and films. I have paint literally littered all over my place, I have oil sticks, and I have canvases. Right now I’m working on a piece that’s on a circular wooden canvas and I am finding it so challenging because I’ve never worked on a wooden canvas that’s a circle you know with square canvases you have a specific orientation that you work off of and it’s very easy to read, but with circular canvases, you have to make the whole thing symmetrical, and I have no technical skill in painting, and so this challenge is actually really frustrating but the same time very enlightening.
Before we let you go, we’ve got to ask if you have any advice for those who are just starting out?
Yeah definitely for those who are just starting out, I would find what really makes you happy. As cliché as it sounds all the creative things that I do is literally fun for me. It’s me playing, you know as adults we don’t nearly play as much as we used to or get to when we’re kids and when you’re playing you’re your most free your most creative so instead of looking at the end goal or what you want out of it just go ahead and create because it’s fun. Time goes by quicker, energy levels skyrocket, love and passion come out, so for people who are just starting out in whatever creative endeavor that they want make it something that they really enjoy. Then it becomes so easy. I have to work while I’m doing my creative pursuits but I’ve learned to like work because it helps me fund my creative pursuits and so life for me isn’t too stressful because I’m doing what I want to do.
I’m fortunate enough to be able to choose what I want to do and I think that’s freaking awesome. I don’t do anything I don’t want to do and I think as a creative when you get to do what you wanna do you create good sh*t. One thing I wish I knew when I was starting out was to just take the pressure off. I was always catastrophizing everything. I still take things too seriously and I believe it makes me a better person and more productive you know in the whole societal definition of productive but I also take things too seriously and it stresses me out a lot of the times when in reality life isn’t too serious like I’m going to be OK you’re going to be OK all of this is supposed to be for fun so one piece of advice that I wish I knew when I was just starting out was just to take things easy, take things as they come quit putting so much pressure on myself. Just be chill about it.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @khoitrulyle
Image Credits
Juanita Lai
