Danny Irizarry's First Step of a Very Long Journey

There is a version of me from 2016 who truly believed he knew what he was doing. He did not. He was sitting alone in his room, talking to a camera, trying to sound confident about a career that had not really started yet. What he did not realize was that this awkward little vlog would quietly become one of the most important things he ever recorded. Almost ten years later, I can see exactly why that moment mattered, and how a single decision to document the journey changed the way I approached this entire career.

Danny Irizarry before the career really began

How It All Started

Almost ten years ago, I sat in my room, turned on a camera, and introduced myself in the most awkward way possible.

“Hi, I’m Danny. Actor, model, singer, magician, human being… kind of dancer.”

I had just been cast in something that felt enormous to me at the time. A film adaptation of Lord of the Flies. It was the first major production I had ever been attached to, and I had no idea what I was doing. What I did know was this: I wanted to remember it. And I wanted to help other actors who were a few steps behind me. So I started what I called an “Actor’s Log.”

At the time, I had not booked anything big yet. No studio films. No recognizable titles. No credits that meant much to anyone except me. I just had a lot of belief and a very stubborn confidence that I would get there someday. What I did not know then is that this particular film would never actually get made. And that, by the way, is one of the most normal things in this industry.

Projects fall apart all the time. Funding disappears. Schedules collapse. Scripts get rewritten into oblivion. Over the years, I have been cast in several films that never ended up going forward. One of them was a project called Dream Machine. It never got funded. We never shot a frame of it. But here is the part people rarely talk about. Those projects still matter.

The casting director on Dream Machine remembered me. A couple years later, he cast me as the lead in a film of his called Assana. One opportunity that never happened directly led to one that changed my career. That pattern has repeated itself more times than I can count. Back in 2016, though, I had no way of knowing any of that.

The idea behind the Actor’s Log was simple. I was going to document what it was actually like to be preparing for my first real professional film. The good parts. The confusing parts. The mistakes. The moments where I completely botched something and wished someone had warned me beforehand. This was not meant to be motivational fluff. It was meant to be practical.

I wanted to talk about things I noticed as an actor stepping into bigger rooms for the first time. What surprised me. What helped me. What frustrated me. What I would do differently next time. If I messed up an audition, I planned to say so out loud. If something saved me, I wanted to share it. Most of this was for aspiring actors, because when you are starting out, nobody tells you the small things. Nobody explains how sets really work. Nobody prepares you for how strange it feels to stand around for hours waiting for thirty seconds of action. Nobody warns you how easy it is to overthink everything. So I decided to be that person.

Looking back now, that first video is hilarious. I am nervous. I ramble. I make jokes about tap dancing. I quote Lord of the Flies in a very dramatic way and then immediately undercut it with self awareness. At the end, I tell people the video is over and to leave me alone so I can read in peace. But underneath all of that, there is something I still recognize. Hope.

I really believed this was the beginning of something. I believed I was stepping into the life I had been chasing for years. And in a lot of ways, I was right. Since then, I have gone on to work on projects I could not have imagined back then. I ended up as the lead in Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie. I have been top billed in a major Apple TV+ film. I have won Best Actor awards for films like Knuckleball and been nominated for performances in projects like Wrapped and Sunsprite. None of that was on my radar when I filmed that first shaky little vlog in my room. What I had instead was curiosity and a willingness to pay attention.

Conclusion

If you are an actor reading this, here is the part that matters. You do not need to have booked the biggest job in the world to start acting like a professional. You can document your journey now. You can pay attention now. You can make mistakes now and learn from them. Some of the most important growth happens before anyone knows your name.

Almost ten years later, I am still doing exactly what I said I would do in that first video. I am still learning. Still messing up. Still sharing what I can. Still trying to help the next version of myself who is just starting out. And I am still very confident about one thing. I will get there someday. And I am very glad I started writing it down when I did.