Talent: Alex Grech
Credit to Yellow Belly Photography
You grew up between Sydney and Melbourne before moving to New York. How have those three cities shaped your sense of identity, both personally and creatively?
While I was born in Sydney, I only lived there early in my childhood. Melbourne and Greater Victoria is where I spent most of my adolescence before moving to New York in 2020.
Melbourne is where the majority of my immediate family lives, and, coming from an Italian and Maltese background, I also have a reasonably large sprawling family on both sides. My family is a major part of both my creative and personal life. Chosen family and relatives alike, our family are the people we go to for guidance, support, and celebration. Melbourne will forever be the place where it all began, when I first performed on stage with the Victorian Youth Theatre at age six. My years attending an international boarding school in regional Victoria gave me the independence and resilience essential in the life I’d chosen. It was my experiences throughout this period of my life that motivated the journey that led me to my last six years in New York City. Through four years of study at NYU Tisch, and two years of working in the industry as an actor, writer, stunt coordinator, and director, I’ve been given countless opportunities to expand my lifelong passion for performance in ways that continue to amaze me.
Before landing your breakout role in Juliet & Romeo, you worked as a paralegal, laborer, and bartender while saving for a solo trip around the world. Looking back, what did that period teach you about ambition and resilience?
I have a number of abilities that I’ve used throughout my life and work. One that originated during this period — and is well known among those who have spent a significant amount of time with me — is: "Win some, lose most.” That phrase has, in more ways than one, helped me recognize that no meaningful journey is without its obstacles. Every opportunity for fulfillment requires some level of discipline, not only to achieve it but also to sustain it. There’s a lot of things the world can throw at you, and sometimes it can seem that hardship is the default setting. Forgetting that it’s the complications and unforeseen wins in life that can not only motivate you but also inspire you. In my opinion, anything worth winning is also worth taking some losses in the pursuit of. All you gotta do is keep going.
Your eleven-month backpacking journey took you from India to Central Europe. Was there a particular place or experience that fundamentally changed the way you see the world?
In all honesty, the experience as a whole fundamentally changed my perspective of the world. It taught me that life makes itself wherever you happen to be, if you can muster the curiosity and courage to embrace it. I originally auditioned for NYU during that backpacking trip in 2019 as an unknown Aussie boy living out of my hiking bag and sleeping on the floor of my cousin's Brooklyn share house. I walked into my audition thinking it would be a great experience, a trial by fire lesson, and an opportunity to experience an immensely competitive audition process. It had never occurred to me that less than a year from my audition in 2019 that I would be moving to New York, in the middle of a global pandemic, to start studying at one of the best performing arts institutions in the world. I realized it in that period of my life, but I am reminded of it any time I travel.
As someone trained at NYU Tisch's Experimental Theatre Wing, what aspects of your education continue to influence the choices you make as an actor today?
My time at NYU Tisch’s Experimental Theatre Wing (ETW) not only allowed me to advance my preexisting knowledge of various theatrical theorists, techniques, and performances styles, but also exposed me to so many more, each more eclectic than the last. Without the structure and guidance of the instructors at ETW, I would have struggled to develop many of the most important elements of what defines my artistic approach and style today. As every acting student knows, it’s all about adding tools to your toolbox, and ETW offered me an immensely unique opportunity to become familiar with a wide range of different tools as well as nurture my ability to create my own.
For Juliet & Romeo, you trained extensively in stunt work and horseback riding—and even became Romeo's stunt double. What did stepping into that physical challenge reveal about yourself?
I’ve always been an immensely physical performer and relished the opportunity to be more involved and physical in Juliet & Romeo. It was less of a revealing experience and more of an affirming one. It was an opportunity to practice what I preached. In my experience, the life of any artist is one that requires adaptability, and it’s immensely hard to be overly adaptable without a certain degree of comfort at being uncomfortable. A key part of my personal approach to creating — at any level of collaboration or scale of production — is rooted in understanding that discomfort should be expected, and danger is unacceptable. In stunt work, this line between discomfort and danger is more or less an impersonal one — easier to quantify, identify, and preemptively mitigate. In the world of directing and acting, success requires mutual communication, respect, and trust that are developed and nurtured throughout the process. By understanding the sense and scale of potential risk, as well as the limitations that different resolutions may entail, I’ve become better at being able to negotiate compromise. I want to make sure that I deliver consistent results that satisfy the cast, the crew, and the production.
Your hobbies range from surfing and martial arts to climbing and writing. In an industry that often demands reinvention, how do these pursuits keep you grounded?
They offer the chance to forget people for a moment and focus on reconnecting with myself. For me, there’s few things as peaceful as a few days of alone time in the outback. Surfing, climbing, hiking, and cross-country skiing are, in my opinion, opportunities to test yourself against the natural world. They require a committed engagement of both body and mind, working together to solve a puzzle and overcome a challenge that cannot be beaten entirely, allowing for an immense sense of satisfaction in the process of mastery. Living in New York, it can be hard to find the time or access for week long solo hikes or climbing expeditions. Martial arts, however, are built on a very similar principle of lifelong discipline and satisfaction — not in the idea of winning or beating something, but in learning and becoming increasingly proficient at it. Writing is the way that I process the value of such experiences. In reflecting on the challenge — how you overcame it, or how it overcame you — is crucial to how I continue to cultivate resilience. In an industry and world that often demands reinvention, I’ve found myself drawn to hobbies that help me remain adaptable.
Fitness is clearly a major part of your lifestyle. Beyond aesthetics and performance, what role does movement play in your mental health and overall well-being?
Fitness, for me, is about wellness. I’m someone who needs physical activity in their daily life. I grew up struggling with my sleep, and still do to this day. But, with the implementation of various workout regimes, I have the ability to stay consistently active while never getting bored of focusing on one particular regime for too many months at a time. My experiences filming Juliet & Romeo are an excellent example of how essential physical discipline is to me. We spent six months traveling around northern Italy during the filming of Juliet & Romeo. With every day being an overnight shoot, and only hotel gyms to workout in or rural Italian towns to run through, it would’ve been easy to let one’s fitness fall to the wayside. For me, it became even more important. It was a moment of peace; a moment that allowed both my body and my mind to center itself.
You use your platform to advocate for environmental conservation and support community-run theater in New York. How do you navigate the balance between being an artist and an activist?
My activism is certainly in its infancy stage as I prioritize my artistry at this point in my life. I think it’s important for anyone with a platform, especially in the world today, to use that platform not only for self-promotion, but also for advocacy and representation to those groups as well as individuals who haven’t yet found that platform for themselves. I am by no means someone with a large enough platform to institute massive change, but even if all I can do is help give someone the confidence to take that next daunting step to pursue their own ambition, then I’d say we’re certainly heading in the right direction.
Many of the causes you champion—cancer research, neurological disease awareness, and mental health initiatives—are deeply personal. How have those experiences shaped your outlook on success and purpose?
Often, when we witness someone we love struggle with something that fundamentally changes both their life and their place in ours, we can become so overwhelmed by the inevitable onslaught of emotions that it becomes difficult to see them as the person they once were. My own ongoing battles with my mental health are not what defines my life or myself. Research and culturally specific awareness are fundamental in improving the lives of those living not only with the aforementioned medical conditions but also with neurodivergence, both of which remain subject to misinformation and stigma in the public sphere. Over the course of my life, I’ve come to define success as longevity in a field that provides you with deep fulfillment and the opportunity to be a present and an active force of good in the lives of those you love. Purpose is, as you might expect, more abstract. I’m not even sure if there is a singular purpose for anyone, or anything for that matter. It is what you make of it. At a core level I believe that purpose is about giving something back to the world. In this way success and purpose are intertwined. By finding something that gives you fulfillment throughout your life, you’ve found the key to success, and with the key to success you can unlock the door to a real sense of personal purpose. Or maybe it’s the other way around. I’m still figuring it out myself and am nowhere near old or arrogant enough to claim otherwise.
You're entering a pivotal moment in your career with your first major film role. Five years from now, what would you hope people understand about Alex—not just as an actor, but as a person?
I’m honestly not sure. I don’t really feel a need to be understood by people. People and life are complicated and often messy. To expect anyone to understand you, in the way or lens that you do, is in my mind too high an expectation. I hope that my life and experiences can offer someone a chance to see that their life can be whatever they choose to make of it. For me, I don’t expect understanding from anyone who might come across my work or me. I merely hope that people are curious enough to ask the question that may one day lead to some deeper understanding.
What is one thing people would be surprised to learn about you, and one thing you hope they never stop associating with your name?
I think people would be surprised to learn that I grew up loving comic books and mythology, and still do, to this very day. While it’s impossible for me to own lovely hardback copies of every ancient text, I still read and listen to new retelling of various mythologies and cosmologies from around the world. And even though I can’t afford to stay up to date with physical copies of my favorite titles, I do my best to keep up with all the story lines and character arcs. I think that my early years of absorbing such fantastical adventures, which somehow always seemed to touch on some darker, grittier aspect of the human condition, have massively informed my approach to storytelling today. It’s my hope that in the future I can offer someone the kind of inspiration that authors and storytellers like Neil Gaiman, Tom Stoppard, or Paulo Coelho, offered me.
