Today we’d like to introduce you to Teo Cristea.
Teodora, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I was born in Bucharest, Romania. I immigrated to Canada when I was twelve and lived in Toronto for almost a decade. Then I moved on to school in NYC and ultimately landed in LA. There’s a clear trajectory of my life when I think about it this way. My work trajectory, however, is a little more complex.
I started off performing very young at kindergarten and school holiday celebrations. I would do plays and recite poetry because that’s how things worked in Romania at the time. It was normalcy. I don’t recall any of it looked at as “creative endeavors”. So by nature or nurture the impulse to perform and express and to entertain have been there from the beginning. I remember my mom teaching me poems to recite before I could read. These performances too were not a handful of parents and teachers. If you had 30-40 kids attending you had double that in parents, plus siblings and other relatives. And of course the kids themselves, and we were competitive! This was taken seriously. It happened before cellular phones so the attention on the performer was always focused. This was kindergarten.
In school I’d get picked for big roles in plays. The funny thing was that because the number of boys was so low, I’d often play male roles. Leading ones. Not sure why the boys didn’t. I took it as an insult because gender identity was such black and white territory in that time and place. Now I look back on it amused and proud. I was a chameleon from the very start. Today I gravitate toward the complicated, the gritty, the uncomfortable. Nature? Nurture? Luck of the draw growing up on the Eastern block at the very end of a period that both devastated and branded the people and countries escaping the Iron Curtain? Who knows. The only thing I know is that no matter how far, in miles or years, I am from that place it flows in my veins just the same.
Right before adolescence I landed in Toronto. I think of it as the perfect place to make the transition between where I’d come from and where I was headed. Not to say that that transition was at all easy or without significant trauma, but that’s a conversation for another time. Toronto and Canada will always feel like my safety in this world. I can always go home to Canada. Canada soothes my soul. Time works differently there. Totally rad and modern, but with a touch of old world living in terms of values and how Canadians treat each other. It was also my introduction to multiculturalism. I’ve never seen another place so interlocked with cultures and races as Toronto. Not glossing over difficulties and conflict, but definitely the most harmonious I’ve experienced so far. Canada taught me patience. Canada taught me acceptance. Canada held me in her arms and fostered a growth and evolution completely unexpected for someone of my Eastern European roots.
Then there was New York. And now, LA.
My life and work combusted together in what I think of as the Wild West of my dreams. My mother raised me an American patriot since the time she was teaching me poems. She imprinted that American dream in me all the same as Eminescu. I had no clue what America was, I didn’t even know what ‘countries’ were, but I loved it and longed for it, because she did. Her dream etched on my own reality. I got a scholarship to study acting at an NYC conservatory. I dropped out of my graduating year in one of the most revered PR programs in Canada and proceeded to live on a futon for the next few years. I absorbed everything I could from the city. The concrete. The warm, rancid air on the MTA. Bagels. The rats at 4AM. The MET, MOMA, Guggenheim. Williamsburg. BedStuy. Flea markets by the river. JFK, LGA, even EWR. Underground poker rings. $1 pizza. More art. More friends. So many things that I sometimes forget I lived it all in one life. In only a few years. I just finished Patti Smith’s autobiography and was hit by a tidal wave of nostalgia.
What’s interesting is that in spite of doing a few short films and my life itself being an art, I didn’t take my “career” very seriously until LA. I expected Los Angeles to be a fluff town of pink pool-floaties and stoners. I had an extremely rude awakening when I touched down and everything moved so fast around me that it made my head spin. LA showed me the hardest work, and discipline. LA put me on TV for the first, second, third time… While in LA, I booked one of my biggest roles to date: One of the leads in an MGM digital series that ironically shot in New York and had me portray a Romanian computer hacker living in Romania. Not even sure I fully contemplated the layers of irony ’til this moment.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Was the road toward a career in a field that is completely undefined and filled with prejudice and smoke mirrors smooth? Totally. Not at all. It’s like constantly training to be the world’s finest snipper in a “Survivor” type setting, and then demonstrating your skills to get the job by soothing in the dark, in one of those rooms with a two-way mirror where even with the lights on it looks like no one else is there to see it all go down.
I’ve done a few other things I’m proud of, like playing an opioid addict mother trying to fight that addiction and get her kids back from the system. That film was directed beautifully by Steven Broadbent. Remember that name, you’ll come up against it again. My costars were brilliant. Our DP was brilliant. Our casting director, who won an award for working on GREEN BOOK that year, was brilliant. It was all brilliant.
Now I have several projects in development. I can’t really go into it, but let’s circle back in a while and see how it all comes together. It’s extremely exciting. And it’s just starting!
We’d love to hear more about your work and what you are currently focused on. What else should we know?
There isn’t another art form as directly revealing of the artist’s soul as acting.
Not only do I have to connect the character’s journey to my heartbeat, I then present her/them experience everything as it’s happening. Openly. Publicly. “Live action.” That’s part of the addiction, the joy of it. Reveling in the reveal, to self and audience.
I’ll always be focused on acting. I’m a devoted lover in that way.
You should probably know that I write too. It’s not something I’m completely comfortable advertising, but this is as good a chance as any to practice!
What is “success” or “successful” for you?
I think of success as doing things you’re proud of. For me the criteria for that is in constant changing.
Contact Info:
Image Credit:
Header photo: Yinger Wong, Photo 1: Jai Lennard (https://www.jailennard.com), Photo 2: Still image from unreleased film FIGHTING GRAVITY, Photo 3: Jai Lennard, Photo 4: Still image from Fox TV series LETHAL WEAPON, Photo 5: Jai Lennard, Photo 6: Still image from MGM digital series #WARGAMES
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