Meet Nicholas D. Monteilh | Actor, Writer, Director

We had the good fortune of connecting with Nicholas D. Monteilh and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Nicholas D., what led you to pursuing a creative path professionally?
I am not sure I ever really considered anything else. Sure, I wanted to be an astronaut when I was five, but then I saw the movie “Alien” and I didn’t want to be an astronaut anymore. I knew I wanted to make art and do creative works every day for my entire life, so figuring out how to do it professionally and as a career just seemed in line with that overarching goal.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
I’ve been an actor practically my entire life, starting when I became the lead in my kindergarten play about Christopher Columbus. I started studying the craft at an arts high school in Denver, continued doing so in Los Angeles at USC, and I have been writing, producing, editing, and directing plays, films, audiobooks, and web series throughout and ever since. My most recent projects are CookEatLive (@cookeatliveshow, www.cookeatliveshow.com), a comedy cooking show about how cooking really good food is simple, no matter what level you’re at; and starting my own production company, Eternal Loop Productions, along with a short film that is almost out of production.

Getting to where I’m at has been both hard and easy at the same time. I feel life has been challenging when having to deal with the day-to-day things like rent and bills and day jobs and the grind to just get by. The pervasive feeling that you’re alone on a huge hamster wheel, just going round and round. And yet, when I’m working in my element and creating my art, everything is easy, everything comes naturally, and that makes all the hard times worth it. The good times give purpose to the bad times.

That is what I aim to do with every piece of art, really, no matter what medium or genre: to make people feel better about themselves. My energy and enthusiasm for life and human connection is infectious, and nothing makes me happier than to spread that to someone else through a performance, or the written word, or media, or “content”. It’s all about giving back.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
Oooooooooooo, that’s a good one. I’d do things to highlight the crazy amounts of diversity Los Angeles has to offer. Korean BBQ, Venice Beach Canals, go to a hidden speakeasy, drive up PCH in a convertible, midnight taco trucks, Grand Central Market. Even the touristy areas can be a blast for someone seeing it for the first time, although if they wanna go to D-Land they’re buying the tickets. And always the beach (Hermosa is my favorite) because it’s shocking how many people have never seen the ocean in person, let alone dip their feet in.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
My mom deserves all credit. While a “mother’s unconditional love” is not a unique experience to just me, my mom was uniquely gifted in providing it, and doing so in abundance. From the moment I came into existence within her, my mother treated me like a fully-grown person with a gamut of emotions who deserved respect and dignity from the very first heartbeat. She let me know I was capable of anything I wanted to do and that she was always going to be proud of me for doing it. And she showed me how to forge your own way in life and to do the things you feel you must do by living the example herself: a single mother raising a single child alone, a thousand miles away from any support system, following her passion to serve in the fight against domestic violence as a women’s advocate despite the ridicule she felt for choosing a career with little money in it. She also taught me how to drink (she and I could finish a bottle of scotch in a couple of hours, easy), but that’s a different story.

Sadly, my mother passed away earlier this year, and nothing will ever be the same again. I am proud of her for so much – for who she was, the things she did, and the way she did them – and even more grateful that I got to share in so much of her life. We were a team, partners, just a woman and her boy facing the world together, hand in hand and laughing all the while. She was my first and greatest best friend, my #1 fan, my mentor. She gave me her creativity, her eye, her intelligence, her humor. She didn’t just teach me “a lot”; she taught me everything.

Website: www.ndmonteilh.com

Instagram: @ndmonteilh; @cookeatliveshow

Facebook: @ndmonteilh; @cookeatliveshow

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/cookeatlive

Other: https://linktr.ee/ndmonteilh

Image Credits
Jayne Marin