We had the good fortune of connecting with James van Langenberg and we’ve shared our conversation below.
Hi James, why did you pursue a creative career?
In high school I was deeply involved in the music program, a self-taught drummer and keyboardist (I could never get my head around sheet music!). One day, we were assigned “Jungle Boogie” for our stage band. I had never heard the song, and two friends said “What, you’ve never seen Pulp Fiction?!”. After school that day, those 2 friends invited me to their house to watch it on VHS. After the opening scene, I was totally hooked. I couldn’t look away for the entire film. Afterwards I went home and told my Dad “I had no idea people made movies like this!”. He took me straight to the local Blockbuster and grabbed 3 DVD’s off the shelf and hired them. He said “if you liked that, you’ll love these”. That first hand-full of films blew my mind, I had no idea the terror, amusement, devastation that these actors were able to convey in these nuanced and subtle performances. All I knew by the next week was “I want to do that…”
Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
When it comes to my approach to the work, honestly I think I’m probably more of a kinetic performer rather than an intellectual one. Even back in school, I was extremely impulse-based when it came to music/art/performing. I love cooking at home and I’m the same in the kitchen too – I don’t measure anything I just kinda go for it, try and feel it.
I’ve spent the better part of the last decade attempting to take those impulses and apply them to scripted work, and I have trained and studied across the globe, learning what I can from different cultures and different approaches to the performing arts. I always try and remind myself of the very root of what we’re doing – storytelling. I imagine people 4,000 years ago telling stories, myths, legends around a fire. It’s all really quite instinctive and natural at the end of the day, but we certainly find ways to complicate it.
Finding MY approach, MY voice, MY method, is always ongoing, I really do love and enjoy the process and in the projects I have worked on so far, I have really loved the collaborative experience. Learning to remove myself from “actor island” has been truly helpful and also kind of hilarious to look back and see how isolated we can make ourselves in a team.
Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
Theres no better way to experience a new place than to eat it! Live as the locals do, as they say. Street tacos, Randy’s donuts, red-leather-booth Italian joints steeped in Hollywood history. I think I’m all hiked-out in LA, but I would always want to show a friend the Malibu Creek State Park. I love the long walk through the grassy hills to end up at that little oasis amongst the rocks and have a dip. I love cinema, so I would also take the opportunity to do a studio tour at WB or Paramount. The history and energy at those lots is so rich, you can literally drink it in.
Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I was a pretty rusty beginner (still am somedays, teehee) so I’d really have to shoutout to those who showed kindness and care to me as I waddled into my first monologues and acting exercises. My first acting coach Jeremy Raymond in Toronto, Canada, had already had a lot of success in his own career, so his mentoring and coaching was very brotherly, honest and guiding. Even when I left a class with my tail between my legs he would always leave me with a sincere “Hey buddy – great work today”.
While I was in Canada I also met one of my dearest and closest friends Nicole Gauthier who is without a doubt the smartest and wisest woman on the planet when it comes to the Performing Arts. For years she has listened to me whine, sulk, question, ponder, and be curious about this profession, only to always have the right answer or tell me exactly what I need to hear. She could be the most successful acting coach on the planet and make millions but instead she plays with paint and cats. What a loser.
I’d also have to thank Hannah Waddingham. I used to wait on her at a bistro in Toronto late at night before she went off to shoot a series. We would always chat when she came in, and one night I told her I was a little lost in my direction and she exploded into the most colorful and encouraging speech about how I should move to London, UK and study Shakespeare. She even wrote me a list of places to train, live, eat etc. I never saw her again, but 6 months later I had moved to London and enrolled at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama for an evening course. That lead to joining two theatre companies and embarking on probably the most profound and meaningful acting journey of my life to date. Hannah, thank you.
Instagram: @jamesofaus
Other: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm8420194/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk