James Ransone: From 115 lb. Heroin Addict to Indie Hero

I usually don’t post articles that are considered old news, but I found this piece so well-written and inspiring, that I figured what the eff. 

Some of you might rememer James Ransone from HBO’s The Wire, Ken Park, or Generation Kill–and if you do happen to know who he is, congrats, you’re a cool person.  Last weekend I saw Ken Park for the first time (NOT for the weak stomach) and was completely shocked and struck by his performance as an angry teen who  (SPOILER) winds up brutally killing his grandparents because his grandfather cheated in a game of Scrabble.  It was a pretty crazy role, and he handled it greatly.

But after a Google search, I also had a lot of admiration for him too.  About a year ago, James wrote this article for Malibu Magazine, and did so with candid honesty and potency.  You’ll have to read the whole thing to really get it, but trust me, it’s a really inspiring piece.  ALSO one thing that was not mentioned in this article is that James recently saved a girl from a rapist by beating him down with a metal bar (story here).  See, what’s not to love about him?

THE STORY:

Twenty-seven is a strange age in the most Joseph Campbell sense of the number, especially for the male persuasion. It is the time when you realize you’re not 20 anymore, that whatever clever antics you may have done at a younger age now make you cringe. You’re also coming up hard on 30 and I think you start to evaluate the path that you’re on. Twenty-seven is the age when rock stars die and become legends, but to me it marked the death of my youth, when my past caught up with me and punched me in the head. 

  I weighed 115 pounds, was about 30 grand in debt and had developed a pretty healthy heroin habit. I had a few accomplishments under my belt as far as my career was concerned: I had been in some successful movies and television shows, and a few almost-successful rock bands. I was “cool” (in my mind at least) to a handful of downtown Manhattan degenerates. Things got so out of control in my head, that at one point I remember being offended when my agency would send me scripts for roles as “the junkie.” Looking back, I was far from the person I wanted to be. I was quickly on my way to being a 30-year-old adolescent. Twenty-seven changed that.