Theo Rossi

Actor, Producer, Podcaster & Philanthropist

Theo Rossi spent years believing he was a product of his environment, before discovering he could become something bigger.

Born and raised in New York City, Rossi overcame a challenging childhood and the loss of his beloved grandmother at an early age, to build a celebrated career as an actor and producer. A graduate of New York’s Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute, he is known for his roles in Sons of Anarchy, Luke Cage and The Penguin, and won the Sunscreen Film Festival West Award for Best Narrative Feature for the film Bad Hurt, which he produced and stars in.

He is host of the podcast THEOry, and a dedicated activist supporting the Boot Campaign, The Humane Society of the United States, PETA and the Harlem Film House. Today, Rossi believes being free is not being controlled by fear, and allowing ourselves to become bigger than we ever told ourselves we could be.

What does freedom mean to you?

To me, freedom and how I’ve led my life, is freedom from who I was supposed to be, or freedom to be me. I don’t know if I’ll ever get there; I’m continuing to try all the time to find who I truly am and what I’m destined to be for this earth, for the people around me, for the people closest to me.

On my journey I’ve learned that every single minute, the next minute from now, the minute before this, I’m always someone different. I’m learning something new every minute. I’m learning something this morning, from being part of this ranch I’m on with the animals. I’m learning something from my kids every day. I’m continually getting closer to something. I’m not sure what it is, and I’m not sure I will ever know what it is, but it’s some type of freedom of shedding these things that I was, or these things that hung me up.

When I was younger I thought I knew everything, but I knew nothing. As Socrates said before he passed, ‘The one thing I know is that I know nothing’. I’ll probably think the same thing when I’m done: that I know nothing. But now I know more than I used to know, and tomorrow I’ll know more than I know today. Knowing and knowledge of self gives me freedom.

What have you had to overcome to set yourself free?

The main thing would be the small box I put myself in. For a long time, I thought I can’t be anything I want to be, I can only be a certain thing. I boxed myself, and then the world is going to box you. I did that because I wasn’t able to see over the wall put in front of me. Once I was able to not just see over the wall, but climb over the wall and sit on top and see more, I was able to see I can have anything and I can do anything.

It was probably about that same time as when I shook in fear in general. My own brain, my own negativity of, ‘You can’t do that; you can’t accomplish that’. That self-talk. That thing that wants to tell you you can’t do something that’s stronger in some people than others. I’ve relentlessly tried to remove that from my brain.

“FREEDOM EXISTS IN THE ABSENCE OF FEAR.”

Can you share your story of being around substance abuse?

When you are young, you become a product of your environment. That’s the truest thing. When you are around certain things you believe that’s the way it’s supposed to be. Right, wrong, or indifferent, you just believe things are the way they are and that’s what you’re going to be. I adopted what was around me. For me, that me was, ‘You need to make money, no matter what, at any cost’. However that’s going to be done, whatever that hustle is, you need to make money.

In doing that, I started to see, ‘OK, if it’s not going to be me, it will be someone else’. I’m not maliciously trying to hurt anyone. I’m just doing this service, providing this thing. Someone else is going to do it, so it might as well be me at seventeen-years-old, and this is what I’m going to do because I don’t know any different.

You start to live on the edge a lot, and you’re experiencing a certain level of danger that comes with that. You have to grow up very fast and become something your brain is not fully ready for. There are psychologists and doctors who say your brain doesn’t fully develop until you’re twenty-six.

I was in a very fight-or-flight moment in my life. Even from when my father was gone when I was younger, I was always in this mindset, ‘I gotta do this now. This is the way it has to be done’. As I started to learn and grow, I started to think and, more importantly, started to see other ways of doing things. I was able to escape that and get into another hustle, which is the arts.

For me, that journey led me to a sense of self. Who I was, how I was going to handle things, how I was going to deal with the things in front of me. It got me to realise my fears. I learned early that I couldn’t really be scared of anything. Just to exist in my daily life I had to get rid of it.

As things started to change and as I got involved in the arts, I met people who had a different outlook on life. I started to learn from people, and as I got around more mentors and people who looked at life differently, I started to expand my horizons of what I can be in this life. Maybe I can be a husband. Maybe I can be a father. Maybe I can be a steward of land. Maybe I can have a great career. Maybe I can be bigger than who I was told I can be or who I told myself I can be.

Over years and years, now I’ve gotten to this point where I’m OK with myself. Being OK with yourself is a dangerous place to be for other people, because most people unfortunately are not OK with themselves. Most people are living in fear. I believe fear is truly the base of everything. I’ve kind of gotten rid of all of that. There’s still a million things I want to accomplish, a million things I want to do, and I’m never going to stop thinking like that. But I’ve gotten rid of this fear of who I’m not going to be, because I’m so secure in who I am.