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Studies at University of the Philippines Lives in Philippines taken by a fictional relationship Speaks English, Filipino, Japanese Born on 23 Jan '88

Darren Criss in Ruben Nepales’ book “My Filipino Connection: The Philippines In Hollywood”

Okay, I do not own a SINGLE word in this entire article. These are entirely Ruben Nepales’ words, and any mistakes (in facts, grammar, and lack of commas :P) are entirely the fault of the editor XD

Toward the end of our interview with Darren Criss, we had to compliment him on his level-headedness. The multi-talented performer was obviously raised well by his parents, Cerina (nee Bru) from Cebu, and Charles William Criss, from Pennsylvania.

We asked what Filipino values his mom ingrained in him. The Glee star, who took over Daniel Radcliffe in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying for a limited run on Broadway in January 2012, politely demurred, saying, “As much as I love to be biased toward a Filipino question and our culture, I think limiting that to Filipino values is a bit unfair.”

Darren explained: “Good values transcend culture, religion and all that other stuff. My mother’s values are good because she’s a good woman — probably the closest thing I know to a perfect human being. I guess I’m biased. We’re big believers in humility, working hard and being nice to people. I really can’t say it enough. There’s this great line that I love to quote. On his last show, before he signed off from NBC, Conan O’Brien said it way better than I do. I’m just quoting — ‘Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen.’”

That’s the mantra he lives by, said the San Francisco native, slim of build but bursting with energy and charm, and equipped with a dazzling smile. He is articulate, though prone to catching himself, saying, “That was inarticulate.” Meanwhile, he rephrased the favorite line: “Expect nothing, hope for everything and the rest will come into place if you put your heart into it. I don’t know if that was from my mom necessarily but she had a hand in that, for sure.”

On how his Filipino and Irish (his father’s side) heritage impacted him, the multi-hyphenate star — he’s an actor, singer, songwriter, musician and co-founder of a theater company, StarKid Productions — said: “It’s really tough to define what makes a heritage or a culture a part of your existence. If you grow up in a certain way in a certain neighborhood with certain friends, that’s going to ultimately define who you are, not necessarily what’s in your blood. Both Ireland and the Philippines have a very heavy background of music being involved with celebration and gathering. But then again, a lot of cultures do. I am just a melting-pot American. I have these two wonderful cultures bleeding into whatever I am.”

Darren, whose mom was born and raised in Cebu, said he has “been to the Philippines a few times.” He stressed: “I have family there but it’s never about where you are. It’s who you’re with — so being with family leans you toward the side where you’re enjoying yourself. I love the Philippines. It’s a very warm and inviting place. Filipinos are embracive of other people with Filipino blood so I am lucky in that sense. I always enjoy my time in the Philippines. It’s good to see family. The Philippines is a lovely place. I’m very proud to say part of my heritage comes from there. It’s pretty cool. Not a bad place to visit, either. It’s beautiful.”

Ask who among Filipino talents he admires, he cited Lea Salonga. “We’ve recently become friends, which is nuts to me,” Darren volunteered, thrilled that the Tony- and Olivier-winning actress is his new buddy. “She’s a lovely woman and a prime example of the breakthrough Filipino talent that transcends the pond between us.”

In a serendipitous twist, Darren, who played Harry Potter in StarKid Productions’s A Very Potter Musical and A Very Potter Sequel, succeeded Daniel Radcliffe when the latter ended his run as J. Pierrepont Finch in Frank Loesser’s How To Succeed… Of his major Broadway debut, Darren said, “I grew up as a theater fan. I had prepared for something like it my whole life. I’ve always been a Frank Loesser fan. I never thought in a million years that I would ever do the show, much less on Broadway.”

The University of Michigan alumnus with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in theater performance added, “I did quite a bit of homework because when you’re doing a three-week run… many of my friends on Broadway said, ‘Oh, you’re so lucky, three weeks and that’s it. Then you can get out of there.’ I suppose that’s true from the standpoint of stamina, but from an artistic point of view, it’s upsetting when you have only three weeks to do something that takes quite a bit of time. So the idea for me was to be at ‘seventh-month status’ by the first day so I don’t spend the first two weeks finding things. I hit the ground sprinting. My preparation was mainly just to be completely familiar with every facet of the show before I even set foot into the rehearsal.”

Darren almost gave up on his acting dream. He would have been content singing and composing. Having the distinction of being the 400,000th member of ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers), Darren composed the songs for his company’s musical spoofs that are inspired by J.K. Rowling’s bestselling series. He admitted, “Right before Glee, I was close to throwing in the towel. The thing about music is that you’re the master and commander of your own ship. When you’re an actor, you’re at the whimsy of a lot of different authorities who are hoping you look the part, that you fit the part and all that stuff, which is totally fine. But with music… I was running a musical theater company with my friends from college. We were signing quite a few records and our musicals were starting to do well. I was going to go down the composer route because I didn’t have to audition to be a composer. My musicals were doing fine. I’ve always enjoyed writing music. For those who don’t know my previous work, my main squeeze is writing music.”

He revealed, “Acting wasn’t as mentally lucrative. It wasn’t this immediately fulfilling thing because you had to wait around. With music, I just sat down, wrote my thing and sent it off and the result was immediate. So I was very close to throwing it in. Glee was the cavalry that came and threw my life for a complete loop.”

What have been the most rewarding experiences of being cast in Glee? “Oh, man, there’s quite a few,” he replied with his winning smile. “I still consider myself pretty lucky… which is an understatement because the show has reached quite a level of success while I was still a flailing unemployed actor in Los Angeles and New York. A lot of the rewarding things for me are things that happened for other people. I was over the moon when Chris Colfer was acknowledged for his work as Kurt Hummel and he received the Golden Globe. Getting to work with people like him is a pretty fulfilling experience.”

On playing a gay character like Blaine Anderson, Darren was quick and firm in his reply: “I’ve thought about it a whole lot less than the press has. I’m not so naive as to think that it doesn’t matter because people take an interest in personal things. I get that. But in a perfect world, it wouldn’t matter. Acting is acting. You are telling a story and you’re portraying someone. At the end of the day, no matter whom you are playing or who you are, you always empathize with your character, whether he’s gay, loud and crazy or quiet.”

Darren continued, “The best comparison is someone like Max Adler, who plays this homophobic football player bully on the show, but who happens to be a non-football playing teddy bear of a guy. Or Heather Morris, who plays this ditzy cheerleader but she happens to be one of the most intellectual girls I’ve ever met. It’s all about playing a character and empathizing with his goals and needs. Love and affection are universal. The object of that desire and affection is superfluous. In my role, it happens to embody itself into a homosexual relationship. It has been a very lovely journey for me, simply because it’s a good character. I lucked out because I could just as easily be playing a straight character with a compelling love interest or with a weak love dynamic. It happens to be a very strong one, and the fact that it’s gay just doesn’t mean anything.”

Darren was modest about his contribution to the show but his talent and onscreen charisma undoubtedly led the Glee producers to make him a regular cast member. Voted by People magazine as one of the sexiest men of 2011, he continues to win thousands of screaming fans, who show up at Glee road shows and his own live performances. “I always joke that the reason people like Blaine is that people love Kurt,” he said. “I’m fortunate to have a role that was attached to something that was already doing okay. I have been riding on his magical coattails for a little bit. I had no idea how long I was going to be around. I was just happy to have a job in the first place.”

To feel entitled to anything more would be “absurd,” he said. But Darren has earned the other offers that have come his way. He has a commitment to make an album, but that will have to wait because of his schedule. He found time, though, to act in a film, Imogene, a comedy with Kristen Wiig, Annette Bening and Matt Dillon. He said of his Glee stint, “I’m just happy to be invited to the party. If they choose to have me around, that’s great. If they don’t, that’s groovy, too, but they keep having me around. It’s a very nice feeling to know that something was really worthwhile — not because I was involved in it but because I thought the character was so good. I’m glad I wasn’t alone in that belief.”

Darren still marvels at how his life drastically changed after he debuted on Glee in November 2010. Not too long ago, he was a struggling performer whose stints included singing in cafes and restaurants. Darren accompanied himself on the guitar (he also plays the piano, drums, mandolin, cello and violin). His musical taste is eclectic — from baroque and romantic period classics (he played the violin for fifteen years), to Nirvana, Soundgarden, Tupac, B.I.G., Barbra Streisand (his dad gave him a copy of her album), Chad & Jeremy and Herman’s Hermits to the Beatles.

But typically for Darren, he enjoyed that period. “When I was doing it, I didn’t think it was a challenge,” he said. “It was just me having fun. I love playing music. Music is inherently a communal thing. There are people who express art for therapy — that’s a bit one-sided. What I like about music is that it can be all about the crowd, everybody experiencing something together.”

He elaborated: “When you’re playing in cafes or restaurants, or especially on the street… that was always fun because it was very communal. It’s cathartic when you get to experience this thing in real time with each other. It’s a joy. I never thought of it as a challenge. The only challenge was meeting my rent every month but, other than that, I did it for the fun of it. I’d do it for free, too, for hours, and the payment could be just having fun with your friends and meeting strangers. That’s also why I got involved in acting — because it’s a celebration of strangers. It’s giving people a reason to believe in something for a short period of time. Very rarely do many people in a room who don’t know each other believe in the same thing for an hour at a time.”

The son of a banker (his dad founded East West Bank) claimed, “I’m a man of simple pleasures.” We believed him. “This life that I get to live right now is more than I’ve ever dreamed of. I’ve always had dreams of being an actor. I grew up in San Francisco near the American Conservatory Theater, which is a great repertory. Doing something like that, being a working actor, and being able to support your family — should you choose to have one someday — to me, that’s success. All this other wonderful stuff that happens as a byproduct of Glee — that isn’t what success embodies. It’s about working, being happy, staying grounded.”

Smiling, he recounted singing in an Italian restaurant two nights a week. “Yeah, free good food,” he dished, chuckling. “I was 22, 23 — I did this in college. I lived in Italy (he can converse in Italian) for a little bit and I used to do it there too. It was just playing music and doing things naturally. When people show up at a place where they didn’t expect music, that makes it more pleasurable.”

Amid his growing success, this young man confessed to a yearning atypical of a pop idol: “I always imagined I’d go back to school. I love the University of Michigan. Of the things I ever did in my life, that was one of my favorites. I had every intention of getting my master’s degree at 25. I love to teach. I love being around thinking minds. I’m addicted to academia. I wasn’t very good at it. I didn’t get very good grades, but it doesn’t change the fact that I loved going to class. It’s good to be constantly invigorating your mind until you die. At some point, I would love not necessarily to go back to school, but to teach and maybe be a part of a college department somewhere, but who knows?”

Also among his many plans and commitments is to do more projects with StarKid. “At any given time, I’m juggling like six or seven chainsaws. They often fall and cut me up. I run StarKid with my friends from college. We’re always writing and creating. While I was doing the first season of Glee, we were writing our fourth or fifth musical. I would love to see that show touring at one point. I had every intention of taking it to places. I’d like to continue developing the show. I like that my name isn’t blatantly on it. It’s very fulfilling as a composer to know that what you’re doing is adding a lot. You don’t necessarily have to be at the forefront of that.”

He stressed: “Another reason I would also love to be a teacher one day is that I don’t really get my socks off on being on the frontline. It’s a very lovely treat but I always say that if I hadn’t gotten the acting bug, I would have been a manager or an agent because I like to see other people do well as a result of something that I had a hand in. Having said that, I’d like to see some of the music I’ve worked on be developed a little more and exposed in different ways. Hopefully, in a number of years you will come to see Broadway shows that I wrote.”

Darren’s experience on his first major film role left him wanting to do more, especially indie projects. “I’d like to continue to be working on a film like Imogene, which was very special to me,” he said. “I’ve always liked small indie films and working with people who care about the project. They don’t care about the paycheck. It’s about the story and getting together a group of like-minded, excited people. I’d love to be doing that. And I’d like to keep working on Glee. The series is the springboard for which everything has come about. If I’m working on it for a couple more years, so be it. I would love to.”

As for other future projects, he shared, “I would love to continue writing ideas and developing things into screenplays with my company. I enjoy directing quite a bit. I did a lot of directing in college. It’s a smattering of many different things.”

As the interview wound down, Darren said, chuckling again, “I’m still trying to find a way to manage the wonderful things that have come my way. So the main part of the list is to stay focused and grounded. I hope to not go crazy. That’s probably number one on my list in the next several years. If I can do that, the rest hopefully will happen by proxy.”

In this post: darren criss  person: no fuck you asshole  
April 25 at 12:37am
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About

Ginnie. 25. Philippines. Dentistry student. Gleek. Theater geek, particularly for musicals. Singing and math/science are my true first loves -- sorry, DC. This is a blog full of Darren, Chris, whines about the ridiculous show they're on, and the occasional Disney/food/inspirational/animals post.

This blog is friendly to Will and Mia. Vast majority of shipping posts are Klaine and CrissColfer, natch, but I kind of like Will and Mia. Please don't let this dissuade you from following me -- as long as you have Tumblr Savior, we're good :)

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