40/52 Nat Manuel

40/52 Nat Manuel

“For risk of sounding like a stereotypical actor, I was a fuckin weird kid… I was really sick most of my life, off and on. I just had a lot of issues from being born extremely prematurely, so I had a very medicalized childhood… I escaped a lot into stories. I was a very quiet child, and I read voraciously. There was just something about the escapism of it, and that translated into movies.

I kind of fell into acting… I happened to go to a very small school that had an incredible drama department and they had a great improv program. I remember the first couple of days of grade nine: the sketch team was trying to get people to come up. I’m there with my like 50 facial piercings that I wasn't supposed to have, and my mohawk, and I'm looking around at all these girls who seem like really self-assured and self-confident and no one's putting their hand up to get up…. And I was like, Fuck it, I'll do it.

From there, that kind of translated into doing young people theatre at a theatre festival, where I got spotted by an agent and got to audition for some really cool stuff when I was younger

I took a 20 year break. Life got in the way, but just prior to the pandemic, I went…okay… I miss this… I miss this terribly. I just kind of learnt to shut that part of myself off for a very long time. You know, life was very intense. There was lots going on, and to think of creative pursuits at the time was not part of the landscape of my life. So yeah, I kind of fell back into it and I haven't looked back since.”