Quinn Marcus, a junior, has been acting since he was a child, and has appeared not only in many Northwest Academy productions, but also in movies.
“My parents had signed me up for the acting course at my school in fifth grade,” said Marcus. “I had a lot of fun and that is kind of the beginning of when I got into acting.”
That quickly led into a major role in a movie, Never Grow Old, a western starring 10-year-old Marcus alongside Emile Hirsch and John Cusack, in which Marcus played the son of Patrick Tate (Hirsch), an undertaker who buries the victims of the murderous outlaw Dutch Albert (Cusack).
“I got the opportunity for [Never Grow Old],” said Marcus. “That was really the biggest turning point where I realized that I wanted to act. It was completely terrifying, but also really fun.”
From there, Marcus moved onto stage productions, such as Our Town at Northwest Academy, where he learned how to express himself through acting as an art and a form of self expression.
“I did not know how much I really loved acting until a few years later,” said Marcus. “It was really freshman year of high school that my appreciation for acting completely skyrocketed.”
Marcus found a way to identify with the characters that he was portraying onstage, which helped him immensely with refining his craft.
“It was the first time I had seen acting as a form of introspection and a way to explore one’s own psyche,” said Marcus. “I learned how to deal with a lot of emotional stuff through characters and dealing with these relationships [in the play].”
From that point on, Marcus found that acting was his most sincere form of self-expression through art, which he attributes primarily to his increase in maturity.
“I think that I was matured enough [during Our Town] in contrast to when I was 10,” said Marcus. “I realized just how essential acting is to my being, my growth and my maturity and it helped me get more in tune with myself.”
While Marcus had initially set his sights on acting as a career, he has since added filmmaking as a means to express himself through film as well as acting.
“I am sort of making a shift to going into film [as a career], not just acting,” said Marcus. “I think that going into film will be more beneficial for college and my career, and being a filmmaker who knows how to act is super helpful in the craft.”
Marcus plans to keep acting through high school and college, as a way to continue expressing himself through characters.
“I am going to try and keep acting,” said Marcus. “I am going to do a mixture of things, film, photography, acting. I want to try all of them.”
