Following his dream

Gerald “JJ” Curcio is an Anaheim-born aspiring actor who visited Chico back in 1994 and decided to make the North State his home. Despite living far from Tinsletown, Curcio has been an extra in a couple of commercials, for Comcast and Golden One Credit Union. He’s also done theater, such as a local production of South Pacific. A couple of his biggest roles to date have been playing a cop and FBI agent on episodes of the TV series I (Almost) Got Away With It, which airs on the Investigation Discovery channel. Curcio is on the verge of becoming eligible for membership in the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and hopes to eventually take his talents to the big screen. In the meantime, the 39-year-old, who’s married with two young sons, holds down a day job at a local big-box store.

How has Chico meshed with your big acting dreams?

Chico is an artsy town, so that inspired me in a way. Just thinking back to when I was in high school, how I liked drama … the Chico area brought me to that conclusion of remembering that I do want to pursue acting. It’s quite hard, to be honest with you, to be in Chico because all my auditions are in San Francisco. I’ve got one tomorrow and if I don’t land it, it’s almost a wasted trip, besides the experience you get at the audition itself.

Is there a key moment that helped your career?

I think it was my last audition for the TV series The World’s Astonishing News. The auditioning crew comes out and gives you the scenario, which are actual stories that happened in the world. You jot them down because you have to act them out in front of the casting director. Everybody was asking this one guy, “Aren’t you going to write down what you’re going to do?,” and he goes, “No, whenever I go for auditions, I act it out like I would in real life or I pick up the scenario of someone I know in that situation and act it out that way.” I was like, “Wow!” and kind of brought that mentality into my audition.

What do you see in your acting future?

My dream right now is to get my SAG card. You get paid way more as a SAG actor, and in places like L.A., they’ll only look at you 80 percent of the time if you’re a SAG actor. In the long term, I’d like to continue what I’m doing. I’d like to [do] feature films, getting cast in a bigger role; more speaking roles and things of that nature.