Written By: Jayme Face
Chris Santos’ breakout role was in Steven Soderbergh’s The Girlfriend Experience and now they’re working together again with the feature film Perfect!
upfrontNY: Can you tell us about your film Perfect and the character you play?
Chris Santos: Yes! Perfect is a film about a boy with a dark past who goes to a clinic to sort of try to better himself, elevate himself, and cure his ailments using genetic engineering and other types of really cool technology based things. My character’s name is STRIPS which is an acronym that stands for Stanford Research Institute Problem Solver which is a type of automated A.I. I’m at the clinic as well and you can’t really tell if I’m this autonomous robot or also a patient at this clinic; it’s kind of left unsaid. Everyone at the clinic is basically going through some form of transformation or elevation at this place.
upfrontNY: Now this is the second time you are working with Steven Soderbergh; what was it like the second time around, how did this come about?
Chris Santos: So, I did The Girlfriend Experience with Steven in 2009 and I had a really great time working with him in that film. He was directing so it was a lot more hands on working with him day to day. He’s just amazing, super laid back, super chill, but hyper focused on what he’s doing and we had a great time. I think we really hit it off and we became friends over the years since the film. When I got done shooting perfect, Eddie [Alcazar] is so talented and so amazing, he showed me a little bit of the film and was like “Hey dude, do you think we could send it off to Steven, maybe for some creative notes?”. I’ve never asked Steven for anything, ever, but I thought this film is really great. I really believe in Eddie, but more importantly I think it will resonate with Steven. So, I hit up Steven and said “Hey I just did this film with this director. I think he’s great, would you watch it and give us some creative notes?” It really started organically that way. He watched it and then like two days later he said “You know what this guy is really talented and I want to meet him.” They set up a meeting on their own in L.A. Eddie called me after the meeting and he said “Steven wants to come on board he wants to help edit the film.” Eventually he came on as an executive producer so, he and I didn’t really work together so much on the day to day in this film. However, we’ve been working together to bring this film out to the public and I’m just over the moon. I never expected for him to come on board the way he did.
upfrontNY: The film just premiered at SXSW, how was it received, how is it different releasing a film there?
Chris Santos: It was really well received. I was nervous. It’s out there, it pushes the envelope, it’s super visual, super cerebral. I was on the edge of my seat watching the film, but also watching everyone’s faces watching the film. Even my own mother was like glued to the screen and I was shocked. This movie is like having an experience because it’s so cerebral and everyone just loved it. Everybody had their own interpretation. People were debating what the movie was about or what it meant, which is what I think any great movie does. It’s just so cool releasing a film at a film festival. I released The Girlfriend Experience at the Tribeca Film Festival and that was great since I’m from New York. Then theres SXSW, which I’ve never been to. It’s a really great festival, it’s low key, no one is really dressed up, people are in cowboy boots and hats, no one is in a suit. It’s great! Everyone is just chill. There’s no better thing in the world than having the film that you’re in at the festival. It’s electric. Everyone that’s there wants to see films and they come to (the festival) specially for it. It’s like everyone’s pumped and when you have something you can talk about, especially one where you helped bring Steven Soderbergh to the project, there’s no better feeling than that!
upfrontNY: Can you also tell us more about the upcoming film Someday?
Chris Santos: Another really cool film I did. The film itself, in general, is about two people who get on a plane from Australia to Los Angeles which is a fourteen hour flight. I play Adam who is a really famous classical composer and conductor. Katherine’s (Castro) character, Melody, is sort of a normal person flying on the plane. We sit next to each other and everyone on the plane knows who I am except for her. We sort of spark this conversation and it ends up being this cool thing. You meet these people in life where you don’t know them, but you feel like you know them and you end up opening up to them about the craziest things in your life. Then you leave and you never see them again. You think about them often in your life, but you just met them for that time and it’s special, but then it’s just gone. We’ve all experienced that and this movie is sort of centered around this experience. There is a dance sequence in the film which is cool, but we had to learn this difficult Argentinian tango sequence. I like challenges I’m playing an Artificial Intelligence and a great classical composer, but learning an Argentinian dance sequence was a whole other challenge.
upfrontNY: Have you had any previous dance experience?
Chris Santos: I have zero experience. It was crazy because I feel like a lot of girls do dance work outs these days so Katherine had some form of dance experience, I had zero. We were with one of the top two Argentinian tango trainers and Argentinian tango is known as the hardest dance in the world to learn. Day 1 the male and female coach showed me the routine I was going to be learning. They showed me what I was going to have to look like in two months and there was no way I was ever going to look like that. We danced like ten hours a week. From where it started to where it ended I couldn’t believe it was my own body doing the things it was doing. It was really cool and now I know how to do a little Argentinian tango.
upfrontNY: Can you also tell us about your short film Dysconnected?
Chris Santos: Yes, Dysconnected is a pretty cool short. It’s a film about the choices people have dating, and how hard it is to date. I guess it would be a sort of motif on having too many options in life. It centers around this girl who meets this good guy and they really hit it off and they really connect, but she is still drawn to the “what else” is out there. You see her sort of swiping through this dating app while she’s hanging out with him and ends up connecting to me and ends up coming for me. I’m sort of a club owner, more of a bad boy and she’s torn between the two. She ends up making her choice and it goes from there, but it’s highly stylized really interestingly shot short about options but it’s a highly stylized, really interestingly shot, short about options people go through in the dating world today. It’s funny to me the way dating is with the apps, it’s easier to replace someone than it is to deal with the issue that’s causing the fight between the couple. It is definitely evolving.
upfrontNY: You made your film debut as a kid, did you always know you wanted to be an actor? Is it something you left and came back to or always stuck with?
Chris Santos: Yeah, so I’m one of five kids and my mom sort of introduced us into the entertainment industry young, me being twelve. A couple of my brothers and sisters did well, but I sort of got comfortable in front of the camera from the beginning. I guess being a kid and being comfortable in front of the camera is a big hurdle to conquer, so I started working quickly. What kid doesn’t like playing pretend, that was easy for me. My first film was with Rob Weiss and it was Amongst Friends which is a great film that blew Rob up and gave him that entrance into Hollywood. He did Entourage and he’s producer of Ballers. He’s from Long Island as well, where I’m from, and we’re still friends to this day; in fact, I have a meeting with him next week about another project. In the beginning, it was something my mom sort of encouraged me to do. I did it from about 12 to 19 at which point I didn’t know anything about life in that way. I just kind of knew acting so, I went away from it and I became a personal trainer for about 10 years. I loved doing that and it was sort of helping people and changing people’s lives. I was good at it and I enjoyed it. Along the way all of my family members, my brothers and sisters, started moving to Los Angeles. It got to a point where my mom called me and said “Look, Chris, I’m going to eventually have to move out there too so, you have to figure out what you want to do with your life.” I made a very tough decision to just sort of leave everything in New York and come to Los Angeles and just restart so I could be closer to my family. I left an entire personal training business behind. I’m not going to start from scratch, it’s a very difficult business to acquire clients, it takes years. I really felt like wow I’m in Los Angeles let me try acting, get back to it and see how it goes. It was my decision to do it. It was on my terms and I started to pursue it again. Probably about 6 or 8 months in I got a call from David Levien who is the writer of The Girlfriend Experience (he has Billions on Showtime right now). He said “I know you’re out there and you’re trying to act. I just wrote this film called The Girlfriend Experience. It’s a film about a high priced escort with a boyfriend. I made the boyfriend a personal trainer and I realized I sort of channeled you into the character. So, I want to get you into a meeting with Steven Soderbergh, not to get you into the film, but just sort of talk to him about trainers and give him ideas and notes for the story. We’ll get you a little check for consulting.” I was like wow great I’ll take a check and I ended up meeting up with Steven. We were talking about training and he said “Chris, I want you to be the guy in this film. I think you will crush this. I’ll help you. I’ll guide you through it and it’ll be great. I realized I went as far away from acting as I could. I went to personal training only to end up being in the film as a personal trainer. I worked in the gyms I used to work at surrounded by trainers I used to work with it all came full circle. I went as far away as I can only to be back right in front of it. I always get a little giggle when people are like I’ve always known. No, I did not always know, but as time goes on it becomes more clear that this is where I’m supposed to be.
upfrontNY: You have family in the business, have you ever been able to work together or do you want to work together in the future?
Chris Santos: Well, my sister is a hairstylist, my brother is an entertainment lawyer, my other brother was an actor and I’m sure he would still like acting, he was just over the business. It’s a tough business to be in, a lot of rejection, it’s a lot of no’s and if you’re not okay with that it gets to your psyche after a while. Yeah, I think it would be really cool. I’ve never worked with my brother. Maybe when we get to a point where I’m a producer on a film or the co-producer, something like that, I would love to get my brother a part. I would love to play against my brother and just see who comes out on top. That would be such a cool experience. It would be such a great thing to have later in life, a movie where we both play characters in it would be the coolest thing ever.
upfrontNY: You are originally from the New York, what is something you miss about it?
Chris Santos: Anyone that talks to me in like sixty seconds or less is like you’re from New York aren’t you? I have New York hardwired into my bones and I’ve been living out in L.A. for 10 years. I love the energy of New York. I love it from the very second I get back to New York. I just feel like my life force battery is being recharged. There’s no other city like that. There’s just an energy, it comes up out of the ground and grabs you and I do miss that the most. I hadn’t been home in a couple of years and I was walking around SoHo and I was like ‘Oh my God I forgot about the subway grates’. It’s just like New York and the air that shoots out underneath. It’s such a New York thing and the cobblestone streets! It was a combination of being on a cobblestone street with the subway grates. I don’t know why that stuck with me.
upfrontNY: Would you like to share anything else with our readers?
Chris Santos: I am of course working on what the next thing is, but I can’t talk about. It it’s not complete yet, but the other thing I would want to convey across is that it may sound like it but it’s not so easy. These stories make it seem like it, but they are a lot of years apart. Actors should be studying. Yes, I got kicked off in a Soderbergh film. I had my first return back to acting, but what I did was go and join different acting schools at the same time, multiple acting schools without pause, without break. I think a lot of actors come out to L.A. with the idea that it will be dropped in their lap. Yes, you can have an opportunity to drop in your lap, but you’re not going to have two dropped in your lap. The next one you’re going to have to go out and fight for, you need the training. A lot of people ask what my best advice is and my best advice is you better be studying because if you’re not, people you are going against are.
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