Today we’d like to introduce you to Brent Huff.
Hi Brent, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I’ve wanted to be an actor as far back as I can remember. I grew up in Springfield, Missouri and my high school had a very good theater program. (Fun Fact: Brad Pitt and I are members of the Kickapoo High School Theater Hall-of-Fame). I went to college at the University of Missouri, where I was a Theater Arts major. I was also a member of the track team at Mizzou. When I broke my leg, which ended my track career, I took off for California with less than five hundred dollars and zero connections in Hollywood.
I got a menial graveyard shift job in downtown Los Angeles so I could go to acting class during the day. My car was broken down so I had to take three buses to get to my job. I was barely scraping by.
Thankfully, one day, Nina Blanchard, who was the top modeling agent in Los Angeles at the time, asked me if I wanted to be a model. Never in my life had I thought about modeling. I ended up working quite a bit and that career took me to New York, Paris and Milan. It was an amazing opportunity but it didn’t get me any closer to my goal of being a working actor. I got serious about the craft and moved to New York to study acting at the HB Studios.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I had the mindset early on that I was going to make it as an actor. I didn’t want to be an actor, I HAD to be an actor. You can’t imagine the amount of rejection I’ve had. Sometimes it was very hard to stay positive, but if your goal is to be better today than you were yesterday, just think where you might be in ten years. It isn’t about who I am now but who I can be.
Someone said, “Tribulation produces perseverance and perseverance produces character and character produces hope. Hope does not disappoint”.
If you want to be successful as an actor, writer or director, you must be willing to work harder on it than most people think it’s worth. You need to have a fighting spirit and persevere in the face of setbacks.
I try to do things that others aren’t doing. You pay a high price to succeed, but having no purpose also comes with a high price. The ending to my story has yet to be written.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I currently have a recurring role on the hit ABC show, The Rookie and The Rookie: Feds. This has been an absolute blessing. In season one of The Rookie, I had a small one-day role. The showrunner Alexi Hawley and the writers continued to have my character back. My character Smitty is a lazy cop who tries his best not to work too hard. The writers come up with some great dialogue and storylines for Smitty. I love the cast and crew that I’m fortunate enough to work with. I’m proud to say, The Rookie just finished its fifth season.
I also direct and write narrative and documentary films. On the narrative side, I just finished a film with Jake Paul titled, A Genie’s Tail. The film was picked up by Showtime. I also directed a documentary film about female basketball legend Jackie Stiles. The Jackie Stiles Story is about a girl who grew up in a tiny town in Kansas who had a big dream of becoming the best college basketball player in the world. With hard work, grit and dedication, she accomplished that goal. Jackie Stiles set the Women’s All-Time NCAA basketball scoring record and was the WNBA Rookie-of-the-Year. After a great festival run, The Jackie Stiles Story is now playing on Amazon Prime and Apple TV.
The reason I picked Jackie Stiles as the subject was because I saw a lot of similarities with Jackie and myself. Obviously not as far as a basketball talent, but that both of us are willing to sacrifice the present for the future. We believe in delayed gratification in order to succeed. If you take your turn at difficult tasks, people will learn to trust you. If you work as hard as you can at one thing, you will change.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.brenthuff.com
- Instagram: @brenthuff11
- Twitter: @brenthuff11
Image Credits
On my primary photo: Tandem Photography NOTE: The woman in the photo with me at the lake is my wife, actress Shawn Huff The woman in the photo with me on stage is Jackie Stiles, the subject in my documentary, The Jackie Stiles Story
