Photo courtesy of Mary Rosenbaum Photography.
Matt Godfrey
Photo courtesy of Matt Godfrey.
Matt Godfrey
Los Angeles is the most populated city in California, and everyone is there trying to do the same thing — act.
It’s a thought that can be both encouraging and discouraging for 28-year-old Matt Godfrey, and it’s made clear as he sits in an audition room with hundreds of other people.
Each actor dreams that this will be his break into the industry. At the same time, as the man next to Godfrey starts another set of pushups meant to intimidate the competition, each actor is also trying to beat out the others.
Many, like Godfrey, quickly find that L.A. more closely resembles the boulevard of broken dreams than the city of angels.
“It’s super hard to find an agent, super hard to get auditions at all, and I think I thought [that] coming from theater, you just rolled into town and went to an audition,” Godfrey said. “It’s hard to get in there. You have to have somebody submit you for it, and it’s going to take two auditions — it’s just hard.”
Unlike the people who leave after a year or two of not making it, Godfrey, a 2004 Briarwood Christian School graduate, has lived in L.A. for about 5 years with his wife, Ellen. Although she wasn’t involved in theater in any way, she’s been Godfrey’s support system ever since they moved to L.A. shorty after they graduated from Samford University and got married.
He said the first year was just learning how the city works. The layout is tough, the city is rough and Godfrey said it takes an hour to drive five miles.
Although it’s difficult and completely different than what he was used to in stage theatre, he has had some success getting his name out there, even if he doesn’t think so himself.
“Success looks different here than it does there,” he said. “I feel very much like I’m just sitting around all day and nothing is happening.”
His IMBd profile might suggest otherwise. Godfrey has been featured in multiple commercials for companies such as Food Lion, Old Navy and Chevrolet, and he is currently in a nationally running Progresso Soup Commercial. He also has credits in short films such as Blue Like Jazz, The Darkest Game and Mush, and he wrote and performed in titles such as Cane Creek, First Day and The Gospel of Quinn.
Blue Like Jazz was his first movie gig in his first several years in L.A., and it was based on a book that both he and his wife really liked. When his wife told him they were making a movie, he started doing some research.
“I ended up coming across the director of photography, which is not the normal ‘in’ for a movie,” Godfrey said. “I emailed that guy, and he was super cool. I went to Nashville to audition, and it was amazing — I mean it never works like that.”
The film was shot in Nashville in 2012, and soon after he had another chance to work with Ben Pearson, the director of photography, in Godfrey’s own short film Cane Creek.
Godfrey was tired of waiting for someone to call him in for an audition, so he took to heart what people often say “if you aren’t making your own work, you are no good to the industry.” He started to produce his own work, which led to Cane Creek.
“When I do audition, it is few and far between and it might not be for a role that I love,” Godfrey said. “It’s just whatever comes along. You want to grab at it, but writing it, I can sit down and say ‘I want to play the guy who seems super nice but turns out to be a serial killer or something.’ I can create that for myself.”
Writing might have started as a means to an end, but Godfrey said it has grown into an interest in itself. He admits that writing is hard and acting still comes easier to him, but it’s inspiring to write the roles he is passionate about.
He’s still on the track of writing his own shorts, auditioning for the roles that come his way and continuing to pursue his dreams. He’d love to be in a science-fiction/drama television series, and he’d love to write and act in a feature film.
Even in the harder moments, when he’s working hard without much reward, he believes there is a lot of merit in not quitting because most people do. Through all of those darker times he remembers why he is in L.A. in the first place.
“Simply — I just really like it,” Godfrey said. “My wife and I talk a lot, and if we didn’t enjoy it anymore, we would stop. I think before I thought, ‘I’m not going to quit because I don’t want to have to say that I quit,’ but I think I’m passed that. If I stop liking it, then I stop liking it and that’s fine.”
To learn more about Godfrey’s career, visit mattgodfrey.net.
