group of the Second City performers, including Kapelos, and teach them “the secrets of the craft.” Kapelos stresses the importance of these lessons because “the arts is a craft-oriented world and unless someone is willing to let you in…then you really aren’t learning anything, just broad strokes.”


Chicago might


not be the biggest entertainment industry in the world, but it still does arguably rank third. Being in Second City’s spotlight helped Kapelos refine his skills, define his acting style, and put himself out in the world. With the help of his agent, Kapeloswas able to audition for John Hughes’s film Sixteen Candles and got the part.


John Kapelos


continued to work with John Hughes and is most famous for his role in The Breakfast Club playing as Carl the Janitor. By learning out in the Midwest, Kapelos was able to make mistakes and learn from them. “You


don’t want to fall down in the big markets,” he says. If your agent doesn’t have faith in your abilities, then he won’t send you for auditions.”Kapelos asserts that it is important to “be realistic with yourself and your own abilities…if acting is not working out for you, you make the call and stop.”


If being an actor


is working for you, then knowing that the industry will put you in your most fragile state of mind is the key to staying strong throughout your career. “To be honest, there isn’t a week that goes by sometimes when I don’t want to quit. People can hand you a line of BS. But to be a professional actor is to really put your whatevers on the line and to say ‘take me as I am’ and if you don’t then you’re passing on my essence and it hurts,” John Kapelos confesses. Recently, he went on an audition for a TV show. It came down to him and another actor. “Iwas convinced through all my experience that it was going to go my


way. When it didn’t, it hurt just as much as if I was 21 and didn’t get something,” Kapelos says. He recommends that you “bury your head in your hands, or your pillow, or your loved-ones breasts,” and hopefully your loved one responds, “I know how you feel, you ain’t going to quit honey.”


Kapelos’s key to


remaining confident throughout the hiring process is to “reinvent” yourself rather than self-destruct when things are not going your way. He says that since we live in the “500 channel universe, the YouTube universe” there are plenty of ways to “sharpen your creative blade.” If you are able to learn from your shortcomings by continuing to work harder and taking lessons from every audition, performance,


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