Acting : All About Me by Antoni Matteo Garcia

Hello! My name is Antoni Garcia, I am twenty-one years old, I am an American born from Filipino parents and I am currently living and studying in Berlin. Germany in an acting school called INAC Theaterakademie. I was actually born in Buffalo, New York, U.S.A. then raised in Cebu, Philippines and now I am currently here in Berlin. I love anime, opera, reading, writing, drawing, singing and dancing. As a child, my biggest dream was to be an actor, whether stage, screen or voice acting. I watched a lot of television as a child and observed how the characters are on screen. After watching a certain episode on TV or movie, I would always read the credits to see who voiced or acted as who so that I could get to know them better as I surf the web. I also played a lot of video games with Destrega, Soul Edge, Soul Calibur, Soul Calibur 2 and Soul Calibur 3 being my favorites. I not only played for the fun of it, but also the story and to hear such great voice acting, even though it was in Japanese, which was pretty much the first foreign language I heard. Speaking of languages, from the age of nine all the way up to now, I have studied Spanish, French, Italian, German and a little bit of Japanese through various language books and classes. I am still learning Czech and Russian though. I also attended ballet ever since I was a child and I have been dancing for five years. I unfortunately stopped ballet when I was ten, but it was a good experience. At age nine, I studied playing the violin though I did lose interest in it later on, but regained it when I reached High School. When I was a third-grader, I would usually read with my voice so that I can give a voice to certain characters in the story. Unfortunately, that landed me trouble with a lot of my peers and my teacher. I felt that was one of my first stepping stones into becoming an actor. I also loved writing stories and ever since my remaining years in grade school, as we would have these story prompts, where there is a phrase and we complete it by writing a story. I also acted in a lot of school plays as a kid up until my teenage years. For me it was so much fun that, I actually got used to being on stage. Then at age twelve, I got very interested in anime through Animax. Granted, I did watch Sailor Moon, Dragonball Z, Pokemon, Yu Yu Hakusho, Flame of Recca, Fushigi Yugi, Yu-Gi-Oh and Beyblade, but the programming that Animax had was so much better since it had Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, Wolf's Rain, Texhnolyze, Detective School Q and Gakkou no Kaidan. I also sang in church choirs as a kid, though in falsetto voice. By the time I was fourteen, I took voice lessons with Dave Sibonga. He taught me how to sing in the style of bel canto and taught me a lot of Italian songs. It was then that I found my real voice, being a baritone back then and now I am working towards tenor. Also when I was a child, my maternal grandma would take me to a lot of concerts. Unfortunately with my high school years, it was just not the same and my concert going days were limited unless my grandma ended up complaining. Which then leads me to my High School years. The school superintendent, Teacher Anne, was the first to notice my singing voice when I was singing for the opening mass. She thought my voice was really nice and that I pretty much knew these songs. Then came my first music class, I told my music teacher, Teacher Britz, that I ended up in Book 4 in the Shinichi Suzuki violin lessons. He thought it was best for me to be with the advanced class and after a few months, I found myself being in the String Ensemble for all of my four years of High School. I also, landed on my first acting role in High School being Colonel Pickering from My Fair Lady. Because I was a huge fan of the movie starring Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison, I ended getting all of the nuances and even the accent of Colonel Pickering. It was so much fun portraying him. And because of that, I ended up getting my first and only Best Supporting Actor award. It was such a huge milestone not only in my High School experience but also as a person. Even though I didn't end up winning Best Supporting Actor for the next three years, I kept on acting in the Literary Musical Week productions. Also, for four straight years, I was part of the Cheerdancing group, which may have been tiring but it was so worth it. Though we lost for three years, we ended up winning in my fourth year of High School. I also sang for a lot stuff like violin recitals, gratitude day and my most favorite experience of them all, FYI. For the those of you not in the know, FYI is an annual production that my old High School, Centre for International Education, had and they would pick people who can sing, dance and/or act to perform. I was always picked for singing and the results were great for the most part. Among the songs I sang were: The Prayer, You Raise me Up, Time to Say Goodbye, Till There was You, Sweet Child of Mine and Universal Child. Now you think that with all of this going on in my High School years, it would automatically mean it was great, right? Well, no, it wasn't. Aside from family drama and expectations being increased, I was kind of looked down by others for having such totally different interests. Also, the Centre for International Education was a business school. So, chances were that my peers were concerned if my goals were realistic. I kept insisting that this is what I wanted to do ever since I was a child. I also had to behave really well in that school to the point where I felt like a doll, which was really stifling. At times, I was also ridiculed because of my interests. I wasn't totally into sports like basketball or soccer like the rest of the boys in my class. I preferred watching anime, writing on my journal, singing, dancing and acting. I was made fun of because of that, mostly because some of my peers just don't know better. What was worse was that, one boy in my class told all of my batchmates that I draw naked men on my journal and I broke down. He apologized, but the shit still spread towards my other classmates. Seriously, that was a private journal! What makes him think it's okay to do something like that? I even wanted to transfer to another country like Germany or America. But, no! I had to deal with my aunt's bullshit about this program called JunGolf, which is a golf program for kids under 18, that she told my mother about. Why? Is it just to get my mom's crazy ambitions fired up that that sorry excuse of an aunt and a mother of two little girls just had to manipulate her? Or was it just because her husband was being such a total jackass? Then again, I am getting carried away here. Frankly, I did not enjoy it because my mind was still bent on going abroad and the thought of transferring to another school. I also felt that a lot of kids were so overly competitive and at times obnoxious. Not all of them though, there were some that were nice. My mother had no problem with it but ultimately my father had a lot of financial stuff to deal with like his boat and everything else in between. The last straw came when my maternal grandma's friend took over the one thing that my mom worked so hard for: her museum. It was then that my mom stayed in New York for months, while my dad, brother and I were in Hawaii and then come back to Cebu. Well, I guess that's what happens when you have two horrid sows trying trample everything in the family. One who's weak-willed as a mother and wife and just plain stupid, and the other who takes things with no little regard that it pretty much makes her a prostitute. But things kind of went for the better after my maternal grandma passed away. My mom and my grandma's friend became friends and they kind of buried the hatchet. So, yeah with all of that said, High School was not my best experience. At least the best experience of High School was my graduation as I won a Loyalty Medal, I was in Honors, I won the Little Prince award, I won Violinist of the Year and Best in Performing Arts. It wasn't until I graduated that I enrolled in the International Academy of Film and Television that my dreams came true. Granted that before I graduated High School, I was in the 6-Week Acting Program and I landed the role of the narrator from The Pelican that wanted to be a Hippopotamus and I recited a monologue from Big Al. So, being in the 10-month acting program was without a doubt the greatest experience of my life. I made a lot of friends, I enjoyed every single class, I learned a lot like the importance of having a resumé, I acted in a lot of student films and stage scenes and I felt so blessed because my father actually recommended this school. So in that sense, I am very grateful to have a father like him. My best experience in this school was the time I was in Manila for my friend's thesis film Boiling Point. Amidst, all the crazy stuff like flight delays and a rebooking, being in his film was a lot of fun because not only my character which was a Rookie Terrorist but I made a lot of great friends who were also into anime. At that time, I was also working in Channelfix for four projects as an actor and one project as a translator from German to English. I was paid 1000 pesos per shoot which is equivalent to 22 US dollars and 64 cents. I graduated IAFT on March 10, 2012 with a best in academics award. This was with an average of 96.75 percent, which is silver level. After IAFT, I enrolled in INAC Theaterakademie, which is another school that my father recommended to me because they also taught in English, which in reality is a bit far from the truth. They do teach in German but at times they approach me in English. This was not really easy as I had to search for a flat with some help from my German aunt and her friend, and took me some time as I needed to reside in a flat for my student visa. Her friend suggested that I stay with a pianist who lives in Erich-Weinert-Straße 17, which is where I am currently living as of now. So, I took his advice contacted the gentleman, told him that I needed a place to stay and settled everything down that was necessary for my student visa. Once I had my student visa, I took a trip to London and came back to Berlin as a student. Since then, my time here in INAC has been good. My biggest dream is to be a voice actor in Funimation and Seraphim Digital Studios which are both in Texas. In order for me to get this dream, I not only did a lot of theater acting and student films but I also have a Behind the Voice Actors account, http://www.behindthevoiceactors.com/members/antonithenimenerd/casting-ca.... This way I can audition for anything here but my priority is original works, especially the paid ones. I have a lot of fun being on this website even though some of my auditions were not that great. I am very happy to have chosen this career of choice and I hope to prosper even further. As a bonus, here's my acting reel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8ikoZuKPiQ