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Success Spotlight with Kyle Matthew: Aspiring Actor and Student at USC How would you define success? As someone who constantly aspires to be inspired, I am constantly seeking mantras to further intensify my passions. For my personal definition of success, I believe Winston Churchill articulated it best: “Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” What is/was your dream? Depends which version of myself you are asking. Personally, I am a HUGE basketball player, so as a kid, my dream was to be in the NBA. Since I fully committed myself to the arts, that dream has transformed into playing in the NBA Celebrity All-Star Game. And of course there are professional goals that I desire such as winning an Oscar, hosting SNL, taking my personality- filled Jewish grandmother as my date to the Emmy’s and being in the discussion of the best actors of my generation. Not to discredit my personal or professional dreams, but my ultimate dream, as cliché as it sounds, is to be happy. That, I believe, can only be accomplished by devoting myself to loving others, to being fearless, to being humble yet hungry, and to devoting myself to the community, my friends, and my family. What do you plan on doing/ what have you done to achieve your goals? In his book, Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell states that it takes roughly ten thousands hours of practice to achieve mastery in a field. I believe that in order to achieve my goals, I must be disciplined enough to work on my craft every day. One of my favorite stories related to this comes from Gary Harris Jr., a basketball player who was drafted by the Denver Nuggets in 2014. When he was 11 years old, his father put a banner across his bedroom wall that said, “What did you do today to make it to the NBA?” This whole idea of success being described as “the sum of small efforts, repeated day-in and day-out” and “to sacrifice what you are, for what you will become” is embodied by Gary’s story. For me, that involves, going to the gym, reading plays, books and scripts, constantly rehearsing, meeting with people in the industry, etc. Every day when my head hits the pillow, and I ask myself, “what did I do today to get myself closer to my goals,” I aspire to always have an answer. What is your biggest failure and how have you grown from it? In recent years, my attitude towards failure has been altered dramatically. Especially at this stage of my life, of my career, it is essential that I am constantly failing, and as Samuel Beckett preaches: to continue to try, continue to fail, no matter what, and to ultimately fail better. I have often heard that one learns more from failure than from success. Think about some of the greatest success stories: Bill Gates who watched his first company crumble, Walt Disney who was told he lacked creativity, and Steve Jobs who was booted from his own company are a few of many people who overcame failure. As an actor, I am constantly failing. There have been significantly more roles I have not received than roles I have received. The greatest thing about failure, is that it forces one to reevaluate why they are pursuing whatever it is they are pursuing. What is the best piece of advice you have ever received? This might be the hardest of all these questions to answer, so I am going to bend the rules a little and express the two best pieces of advice I have ever received. The first comes from my great-grandmother, LaLa, who once said, “there are three sides to every story: his, hers and the truth.” The second, and more recent piece of advice I have received comes from one of my idols, Jim Carrey, who gave a commencement speech a couple years ago in which he advocated, “the affect you have on others is the most valuable currency there is.” You can connect with Kyle here: Kyle Matthew Website Kyle Matthew LinkedIn Kyle Matthew IMDB Kyle Matthew Twitter Kyle Matthew Instagram
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