Today we’d like to introduce you to Moises Tovar.
Hi Moises, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
I love acting. I can honestly say that my interest in acting has been with me since my childhood. I cannot pinpoint the moment I “decided” I wanted to be an actor, but growing up, I kept saying to everyone, “I want to be a movie star!” I even wrote a story in like the 4th grade that I titled, “What Would Happen If I Was a Movie Star”. I enjoyed watching movies growing up. At the same time, my father was working on building up his own TV show and production called Raíces Latinas (Latin Roots), a channel that focused on the Latin community and eventually wanted to visit archeological locations in Latin America.
I remember one occasion he got a new camera and was experimenting with it, and he used me as a subject and had me sit at a table while he played around with the camera’s features. I suppose that’s where I got some of the influence and interest in pursuing acting and film production.
Yet despite wanting to be an actor, I was a very shy kid. It was not until middle school that I started to take theater classes. Then in high school, I auditioned for a school play and, of course, forgot a few lines of my monologue, but I still got cast. The first night of the school performance came, which was my official stage performance “debut”. As soon as I got out on stage for my part, my hands started shaking! I was shaking so much I was worried the audience would notice. I ended up having to hold on to the trench coat that I was wearing as part of my costume which helped ease the shaking. But after that night, my love for acting grew stronger, and I knew that it was something I really wanted to do
After that, I participated in a few other schools plays up until I graduated. I later served as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in the California, San Fernando Mission.
When I returned from my mission, I decided to take classes at Salt Lake Community College and work on my general studies. While there I saw a poster on the bulletin board of a panel that was going to be held about film production. I decided to attend it, and it was quite insightful. At the end of the panel, they announced they were working on a zombie film and were looking for people who would be interested in working as extras. So excited and eager I decided to sign up! The make-up and filming was a lot of fun! And playing as a zombie is perhaps one of the most fun roles to play.
From there I made connections and had other opportunities to act in films as an extra, but soon lead to opportunities to have featured roles, and eventually joining an agency. I later gained interest in film production, the actual process of filming and editing videos. I felt the best way to practice and apply what I was learning was to create a YouTube channel where I can create and upload random videos. I started off creating highlight videos of events in Utah, such as cosplay highlights from FanX Salt Lake Comic Convention. I once filmed one of the Utah Asian Festival events to practice using a new camera I bought, then later uploaded the video onto my YouTube channel. Then someone from the Utah Asian Festival committee saw my video and reached out to ask if I wanted to help film their upcoming events. I gladly accepted and became their media specialist. It was there I got more experience filming, editing, and uploading content on all kinds of social media platforms. That experience led me to the opportunity to become the media specialist for another local comic convention called Pop Con.
Before I knew it, I found myself loving the cosplay community and pop culture. I eventually picked up photography as I realized it’s more practical to share and tag photos on social media than it is with video.
So that is what led to the creation of my YouTube channel Wannabe Productions and my social media presence, Nerdy Kid At Heart.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back, would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
The main struggle I’ve experienced was self-esteem and confidence. When it comes to acting, it’s almost hard not to feel self-conscious about your appearance. And when you have many auditions and are not able to get at least one callback, you begin to wonder if it has to do with your “looks”. This especially hit hard since, over the years, I began going bald and gained some weight. While I am full Mexican, I don’t have the appearance of a “Mexican” or “Hispanic”, which sometimes some auditions call for. And although I speak Spanish, because I was mostly raised in the United States, I do not speak it as naturally or natively as it is needed for voice-over projects for the Hispanic audience.
If it wasn’t a question of looks, it was a question of my acting abilities. While I took acting classes, and I had the wonderful privilege of taking a class from a well-known actor in Utah named Frank Gerrish, whose work and experience is beyond amazing, I sometimes struggle with getting the right performance. I would look at self-tape auditions I’ve done and start doubting myself. “Oh, I was too fast,” or “I was too slow”. “I had too much energy,” or “I didn’t have enough energy,” and so forth. And then because of work and other responsibilities I wasn’t able to continue taking acting classes and work on my craft.
At one time, I did experience financial hardship. My father was the main source of income for my family, but with his passing away due to cancer, my mother and I struggled to make the mortgage payments and got into so much debt with credit cards.
So with the combination of no callbacks and going through the financial hardship, it came to the point that I emotionally broke down and felt so depressed. I honestly believed that perhaps acting was not meant for me and gave up on it. I spent the next few years working hard to get my mom and me out of debt and become financially stable. I still received audition opportunities from my agency, but I had to decline most of them.
While I honestly believed that acting was probably not meant for me, and giving up on it entirely, over time, there was something in me that wanted to get back into it. I soon realized I miss acting. I miss the environment of being on set with a crew, of being part of the creative process, and collaborating with many talented people, all working together toward an end product. At that point, my mother and I found ourselves in a much better condition than before, and I was in a much better emotional state and decided I wanted to pick up acting again.
I still experience the same struggles as before, but I have developed a bit of emotional resilience and persistence.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
First and foremost, I am an actor. Over the years, I’ve had the chance to work on commercials, industrials, voice-over work, and debuted in my first feature role in the film My Heart Can’t Beat Unless You Tell It To. My most recent work is in the film Strong Enough.
When I’m not in front of the camera, I create fun highlight videos and photography of events in Utah both for personal and client projects, and I’m a content creator for my social media Nerdy Kid At Heart. So I guess you can say I specialize in pop culture and the cosplay community. I love seeing the wonderful costumes, or cosplay, at the FanX Salt Lake Comic Convention, and I attend other similar events in Utah such as Anime Banzai and Mini-Con. I love seeing the creativity and the fun at these events, and I try to capture all that in my videos and photos.
As a way to blend in with the crowd, I wear the hat that the character Marty McFly wears in Back to the Future 2, where he travels to the future and wears a shiny, almost chameleon-like color cap. Over time, many started recognizing me with the hat and essentially became my signature look.
Aside from cosplay and comic conventions, I also enjoy creating highlight videos for cultural events like the Utah Asian Festival. I had the honorable privilege of being on the committee as their media specialist, providing video and photos for their website and social media platforms. From there, I had the chance to work on other cultural events with the Utah Odia Community and Chinese community. In short, I enjoy working in the arts and culture the most.
What would you say have been one of the most important lessons you’ve learned?
You don’t have to be good to have fun. I learned that the most common reason many of us never do the things we want is because we think we are not “good enough”. I was so hesitant to try anything because I felt I didn’t have the right equipment, knowledge, skills, or the experience, resulting in many projects and goals being put off. But one day the thought came to me and realized if I don’t take the first step regardless of where I was, nothing else in my life will ever work out in my favor.
So I had to take a deep breath and embrace the fear of sucking, and I mean that. To embrace failure, embarrassment, mistakes. But the biggest one of all is to embrace disappointment and rejection. There’s no real way around it, believe me I have tried numerous times.
But that’s okay, you don’t have to be good to have fun. Part of that fun is the learning and growing that comes from doing the things you love. When you develop the attitude that you do things not because you are good at it but because you want to have fun, the learning experiences become a bit easier to bear.
But to be clear, I don’t mean we go in doing the things we want with fear and dread, rather we overcome those feelings by simply changing our view of the learning process. Ironically, though, I’m not saying we need to have the attitude of the glass being “half full” either. Rather we face and acknowledge for what it is, to know that we are probably going to fail, but we are going to fail big. Acknowledge that we might not know what in the world we are doing, but we are going to learn as we go. Basically, finding the fun in the journey.
You don’t have to be good to have fun. As we keep that attitude, over time we will grow and improve and develop the skills in whatever we pursue, not because we are good, but because we want to have fun in doing the things that bring us joy.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nerdy_kid_at_heart/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nerdykidatheart
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/NerdyKidAtHeart
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@nerdy_kid_at_heart
Image Credits
Main photo by Shaun Anders Photography
