Meet Peter Mendoza | Actor

We had the good fortune of connecting with Peter Mendoza and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Peter, why did you pursue a creative career?
Acting is the scariest thing I can do. In my life I was always afraid, afraid of failure, of loneliness, of not meeting my loved ones expectations or what I owed society. But acting became my superpower. It embraced me, enlightened, and empowered me. That I didn’t need to feel Ashamed of who I was or where I came from. It first came to me in middle school when I was in sixth grade, a drama class had just been added but I was already enrolled in an art class to learn how to draw because I liked comic books even though I never read them. So I had a choice and though I was determined to get better at drawing, acting always felt like a secret wish. A dream I didn’t want to share for fear of humiliation. I wanted to be an action star like Jean Claude Van-Damme. He had an aura of cool that was unmatched in my eyes when it came to action stars. The movie Hard Target would forever hold a special place in my heart, Van-Dammes’ reveal alone always made him seem effortlessly unstoppable and the front flip over a burning trash can, the piece de resistance, totally fake but real enough for me to hope someday I could go on those kinds of adventures. I grew up poor. My mom paid a family to raise my brother and I while she worked as a stripper. One thing my mom was not Ashamed of, I would ask her why and she would say, you have food in your belly and a roof over your head, as long as you’re taken care of it doesn’t matter how I afford it. East Los Angeles felt like a town that felt in a rush to be busy at doing nothing. So much happening and yet so hollow. The anxiety of the American dream. But I had wrestling and movies to quell these concerns. Concerns that felt too big for me but one i couldn’t deny. The fear to make rent, pay bills. The worry on the face of the family raising you while you see the worry on your mother’s face when she could only afford to satisfy one of you. But you enjoy it however you can. You don’t know any better. I grew up as an observer, I always felt like a background character in my life, or like an investigative journalist meant to catalog this experience. I never felt comfortable with people, always an outsider worried of making a fool of himself but knowing how powerful a tool that can be when wielded correctly. But that often meant I was alone. So I would just watch. Study how people got along with each other so that maybe I could learn what they do to make friends. So whether I was conscious of it or not I had been acting all my life. A tool of survival in a chaotic environment. Acting brought me friends, history, travel, understanding, a voice. A craft that exemplifies the very best of human creativity. An art to give voice to those that need to be heard and a face desperate to be seen.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
For me acting is a tool to find my identity. Who am I underneath these features, this environment, this family, this culture, this sex. What is important to me and what is important to fight for. My first taste with the profession would be an audition for East Los High, a Hulu teen drama. What was so special about that experience was the faith the casting director had in me. Blanca Valdez was so generous with me, guiding me through the audition, giving notes and adjustments, something she’d be known for but for me it was my first taste of acceptance, that I was on the right path. And though I did very well it wasn’t enough for me to fully commit to this professional world of acting. I didn’t want to leave the security of my college where I had been playing leads, a big fish in a small pond but a safe pond. It would take a car accident to wake me up. Wake me up to the fact that I wasn’t indestructible, that I didn’t have all the time in the world, that at any moment I could be taken away. I couldn’t miss this opportunity. So I decided to dive in, I submitted for every short film, student film, feature film, theatre production, anything and everything. I was hungry for experience. And though I had my mentor to guide me, he could only help with acting because all the tools he used when he was an actor had changed. Now we were using online acting profiles and I barely knew how to use a computer. I didn’t have a car so public transportation was my my ticket. But I was determined, I needed to succeed, I wasn’t good at very much but it seemed I could do this even still I couldn’t get away from my poor man’s mentality. I didn’t know of a world other than the four blocks in which I lived in, I just felt that sooner or later the pressure of responsibility would hit and I would have to “grow up” and be an adult. How could I ever be an actor, all the actors I’ve ever seen look like they should be actors, I didn’t know how I could ever compare to them but at least this was better than working at Baskin Robbins. It wasn’t easy at first, battling through nerves, getting there late, or getting cold feet because I didn’t feel right for the role but after a while I would start to get the hang of it. Acting is really the art of auditioning. It’s what you do more than anything. The first obstacle is yourself, you have all your insecurities and fears waiting to welcome you but once that is over then it just becomes about experience and them. I was fortunate enough to play a varying degree of roles but it would be Elliott, A Soldiers Fugue that would get people talking. I had been hustling for about seven years, struggling to make any commercial success. Then Elliott came along, a play written by Quiara Alegria Hudes, that was being produced by Center Theatre Group at the Kirk Douglas Theatre. It pushed me creatively, artistically, and welcomed me into the arts scene of Los Angeles. I would have the great fortune soon after of working with Zoe Saldaña in Netflix’s limited series From Scratch and later cast as a principle player in HBOs second season of Perry Mason starring Matthew Rhys (The Americans). Recently I found myself proud to associate myself with Cholavision and No Fronts Actors Woskhop. A production company and acting school that believe in fostering the voices of East Los Angeles’s underrepresented communities, ex cons, and former gang members. I recently worked with them in their productions of Romeo and Juliet, Rolling through East LA (written in street slang poetry by Alex Alpharaoh) and The Last Days of Judas iscariot by Stephen Adly Giurgis. I want to tell stories that reflect the very best, worst, and complex. To keep challenging what acting looks like and who gets to tell our stories. I believe we’re all a giant marble block and life is us chipping away at the excess until we find the greatness inside.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
I would take them to Alhambra for a Salmon Benedict from Popping Yolk, play some pool at Cue Ball then head over to Fosselmans (a hundred year old ice cream shop) get some Chocolate Dipped Strawberry/Cookies & Cream Shake. Then take them to the fourth street bridge in East Los where some of Mi Familia was shot, head over to DTLA to Alamo Drafthouse for a movie and cap them night off at Rakkan in Little Tokyo for some late night ramen.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I would like to Shoutout my mentor Tom Atha. As a poor kid from East Los Angeles there aren’t many opportunities to look forward to growing up especially coming from meager beginnings. This man who was my first acting teacher at East Los Angeles College, where I was going to be an English teacher, saw potential in me, a “spark” he would call it. A quality that set me apart. He gave me the means to chase a dream and my success is just as much his as it is mine. But most importantly he gave me faith that I was always more than enough.

Instagram: @Petertheatre

Image Credits
1)Bobby Quillard (B/W portrait photo)
2) Unknown photographer
3)Alexander G. Seyum (two B/W photos of fight and dance from Romeo & Juliet, Cholavision Prods.)
4)Jenny Graham (Color photo of Perdita and Florizel in The Winters Tale/ Antaeus Theatre Company)
5) From Scratch/ Netflix (Family style photo with Zoe Saldaña)
6) Perry Mason (HBO)
7) (Photo of a mock bull fight) Lara, El Flaco de Oro/ Bilingual Foundation of the Arts
8) Cholavision production (black and white Cowboy photo)