Photo Credit: The Headshot Truck

Welcome back to another Blended Entertainment Interview. I had the pleasure of interviewing Sean Nateghi from the indie film, “Me, You, and Five Bucks”. Check it out below!

You moved around quite a bit growing up, can you talk some about your travels and then how you ended up back in California as an adult?

I was born in Orange, CA and grew up in Mission Viejo. Our family then moved to different parts of Virginia, North Carolina and eventually settled in Atlanta, GA, where I attended middle school and high school. While in college at Auburn University, I took a trip to New York and ended up seeing the musical Urinetown, and it blew me away. That night, I stayed up super late researching acting schools and how to be an actor, then quickly moved to LA.

Now before we dive into your psyche as an actor, can you tell the readers of Blended Entertainment about your training in martial arts?

I was bullied a lot as a kid, so I became pretty obsessed with Bruce Lee, martial-arts and getting into shape. As I learned more, I wanted to make sure I had an answer to any situation or fighting-style, which led me to learn more and more arts, until ultimately I ended up combining 11 different martial-arts. Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, I was getting picked on a good bit, so I had many chances to practice what I was teaching myself, and get better! The truth is, the more you learn the less you will actually need to use in a fight and it becomes easier and easier to avoid them altogether.

So even if you had not decided to pursue a career in acting, you were studying pre-med in college which I would imagine as quite the challenge. What was your mindset and career goal before acting?

I’ve always loved helping people, and since I was already well versed with anatomy and physiology from martial arts, medicine seemed like a natural progression for me. My goal was to become a cardiologist, but one trip to NY changed all that.

Your film, “Me You and Five Bucks” has just been released. The concept of the film is great. It has received good press and award recognition. Can you tell fans what this film brings to the table?

It’s a fresh love story that takes place in Manhattan. After a brutal breakup, Charlie, a waiter struggling to make ends meet, writes a book titled “The 7 Steps to Healing the Broken Heart” to help get over his ex. It doesn’t work, years later while low on cash, he puts an ad out for a roommate and the first person to respond is his ex! She ends up moving in, and at the same time his book finally gets sold and goes on to become a NY Times best seller. I play Charlie’s hot shot-womanizing-best friend, Louie, who is a writer for The Manhattan Times. What makes this film different is the acting, which is so natural and real because we shot the entire film in just 14 days.  As you can imagine, we didn’t have time to shoot many takes, so everybody brought their “A” game, and we have a truly diverse cast with nobody playing ethnic stereotypes, like you usually see in films.

You’re friends with your co-star Jamie Zevallos and he also directed “Me You and Five Bucks”. You also served as one of the producers on this film. What was the process of working on this film?

It was great, but difficult. Switching between producer mode and actor mode was tough at times, because, as a producer you need to be emotionally detached and cool headed to get stuff done, but as an actor it’s your job to be emotional and reactive and let things affect you.

What was it like shooting in New York for this film? Was New York a central element to this film? Could this film have worked in another state?

Amazing!! NY is beautiful and so are it’s great people. We debated shooting in other cities, like LA, but realized NY is a character within the film itself, and gives a vibe that can’t be duplicated anywhere else.

What would your dream role be as far as the type of character you’d like to portray?

It would be awesome to play a Braveheart type or Bourne Identity type of character.

Are there any experiences in your life that have prepared you most for life in Hollywood, acting and dealing with the ups and many downs of the industry?

Moving around so much as a kid taught me to be adaptable, learn to read, and get along with different types of people. That, mixed with getting picked on, taught me how to deal with “breaking in” when you’re on the outside looking in, and I think those qualities along with martial-arts taught me persistence and follow through.

Welcome to the Blended family! Thank you for your time Sean, is there anything you’d like to say to our readers?

Thank you having me! Please check out “Me You and Five Bucks,” you can find it pretty much anywhere, iTunes, Amazon, OnDemand, etc.  Also, please follow me on Twitter and Instagram @SeanNateghi to check out some cool martial-arts stuff and what I’m up to!