Full of Heart: My Story of Survival, Strength, and Spirit

by J. R. Martinez

  “The character is a guy called Brot Monroe,” she said.

  The more I talked, the more Judy listened, and finally she invited me to meet her.

  “For me to even consider you,” she said, “you need to come to New York.”

  No problem. “I’ll be in New York next week.” I actually would be; I was attending a speakers’ conference to learn how to amplify my speaking career.

  “Can you stop in?” she asked.

  The morning of our meeting I dressed carefully: a pair of gray slacks and a light pink long-sleeved shirt.

  Judy met me in the lobby and we went into her office. I told her more details about my injury. I’d gotten pretty good at telling my story. She seemed interested. I got the vibe that she liked me.

  “Hold on,” she said. “I’m going to see if the executive producer can come down here to meet you.” She got on the phone and dialed the number to Julie’s office. “Ask Julie if she can come down here to meet one of the candidates for the Brot role,” she told the assistant, Diana Gonzalez-Jones. She turned back to me. “She only has a second, but she’s going to shoot down here.”

  Julie walked into the office and, as she told me at the end of that brief meeting, “Within less than sixty seconds, I was in love. But still,” she said, “at the end of the day we’re going to have to put you on camera and see what you look like.”

  “That’s great,” I told her. “Even if I’m not the right person for you, I would love to help tell the story.” As I said that, I was confident I’d do well.

  After the meeting I walked over to Lincoln Center and called my mom. She was so excited for me. I had a really good feeling in my heart that I had a shot at it.

  Back home in Dalton, I continued to work out and eat healthily. I watched All My Children every day.

  “Mom, I’m going to watch my stories,” I’d say. If I did get this part, I needed to know what was going on in Pine Valley.

  In mid-September I returned to New York for my screen test. I was nervous, but I willed myself to project the self-assurance I knew the producers wanted to see in a potential actor.

  After they’d pretty much decided on me, the producers, writers, and execs from the network discussed whether I’d be okay on camera, whether the audience would be able to accept my burn scars.

  A week or so later, on a Friday, I got a call from Julie telling me I had the part. My guardian angel had come through once again: It happened to be Anabel’s birthday.

  “Thank you so much!” I shouted into the phone. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” And I said a silent thanks to Anabel.

  “Look, here’s the thing,” Julie told me. “You have that special something that’s going to be successful with an audience, but you’re not an actor. You’re going to tell the story for the people serving our country. That’s going to have a huge impact.”

  I’ll work my ass off, I told her. “I want you to be hard on me. Tell me if I suck. But I’m going to make this the best thing you ever had on this show.”

  After we hung up, I called my mom. I wanted to mess with her. “Mom, All My Children just called,” I said with a sad voice.

  “Oh, niño, I’m sorry. It’s okay,” she said.

  I paused for a minute, and then hollered, “I got the job!”

  She screamed her high-pitched scream. “For real?”

  “Yes, Mom!”

  It would be a three-month gig. We decided on a start date a couple of weeks away, in October 2008. The show would put me up in a hotel until I could find an apartment. The hotel was ten blocks away from the studio, which was on Sixty-Sixth Street and West End Avenue on the Upper West Side.

  Julie asked me to get on the phone with the writer to tell him my story. So I spent a lot of time with him, telling him all about what happened, the showers and scrubbing, the depression and pain, and all about my mother. The writer brought many of those memories to life. The larger challenge for me as an actor would be to make the connection to events that were fictional.

  In addition to the intangibles, I also had to quickly learn about the other elements that go into a performance, from wardrobe fittings to camera blocking. The one thing I didn’t have to endure was hair and makeup, as I only required a little bit of anti-shine and powder. And that wasn’t even all the time. I considered myself lucky. I’d always thought that only rock ’n’ roll superstars wore eyeliner but no, here at All My Children I found that some of the guys wore it. Some even had abs sprayed on them for their love scenes.

  It was a whole new world. It wasn’t the way I thought it would be. And oddly enough, it was exactly what I thought it would be.

  On my first day on the set, Good Morning America was scheduled to come in and follow me around, documenting my virgin voyage. When the All My Children producers had warned this would happen, what could I say, except, “Okay, cool!” As if I didn’t already have enough pressure in one day.

  An assistant showed me to my dressing room—nope, my name wasn’t on it. On the way, I passed Susan Lucci, daytime’s reigning goddess, as she headed to hair and makeup. I went crazy in my mind but I managed to play it cool. She smiled at me and I smiled back. I didn’t say anything.

  I stayed in my dressing room reading my lines until I was mustered to sit down for an interview with GMA. The character of Brot was an Iraq War vet who pretended to have died in action rather than let the woman he loved, a fellow soldier, see him covered with scars.

  Shortly before I was due for my first scene, I was approached by one of the show’s seasoned actors with whom I’d be sharing my acting debut.

  “Hey, babe,” he said. That’s what he called everyone. “Do you want to run lines by the window?”

  We had about twenty minutes to go before I was due on set. “Sure,” I said. “But what does that mean?”

  “It means do you want to practice our lines?” he said.

  I did. But instead of looking at the script, this actor started telling me his life story. Before I knew it, our twenty minutes were up. Somehow, I managed to get through my first scenes okay anyway. I could do it—I’d done it. I hadn’t messed anything up.

  As if to underscore that certainty, a bunch of new scripts had been stacked in the mailbox mounted on the door of my dressing room. Apparently the writers were excited about the new character of Brot, so they wrote a lot of dialogue for him. I spent every waking moment going over my lines. Luckily I have a good memory; otherwise, I don’t know how people do it.

  I probably did ten to fifteen shows in the first two weeks. It was a huge amount of work, but I was exhilarated. I wanted to know everything that was going on on the set, and I was determined to learn everyone else’s lines. That way if something was changed in the script, I’d know what was happening in the action.

  Every night I’d buy myself a foot-long Subway sandwich, go back to my hotel room, and read my lines over and over. I’d eat half the sandwich and keep the other half to take to work the next day. I needed to save my money to pay for the apartment I hoped to get soon. And within a few weeks, I’d signed a year lease. I was that sure of myself. I bought a couch, a bed, a TV, and a table and chairs from IKEA.

  I spent a lot of time going back and forth between the studios and the show’s administrative offices to speak to the producers. Julie’s assistant was half African-American and half Puerto Rican, a former honors student from Queens, and the daughter of a police officer. She’d graduated from St. John’s University and gone straight to work in this industry. I had to go through Diana any time I wanted to speak to Julie. I didn’t mind—Diana was friendly and easy on the eyes. She was slim with big curly hair and dark almond eyes. She was independent and strong and I could usually crack her up.

  I found myself hanging around up there even when I didn’t have a real reason. Diana and I would chat about random stuff: my scene that day, what she was doing over the weekend, my mom, her sisters.

  “We gotta hang out,” she said.

  I told one of my fr
iends, “I’d marry that girl in a heartbeat, but she’s not interested in me that way.”

  My life still was pretty one-dimensional, consisting of work and home. Occasionally I’d go out at night and duck into a bar for a drink, but I never met anyone, didn’t really talk to anybody. I could walk around the city anonymously because my story line hadn’t begun to air yet.

  But after it launched, I went on The View to promote it. That’s when people began to come up to me and say, “Oh my God, you’re that guy from All My Children!”

  People were fans, which was pretty cool. “I love your story line,” people would tell me. “I love what you’re about.” It was always women, usually older women.

  One friend told me, “You’re going to get any cougar you want!”

  I thought, That’s nice, but I don’t want a cougar.

  I told Dan about this newfound fact.

  “Hey, cougars are my demographic. You better hook me up!” he joked.

  In the meantime, I wondered how I could give the producers ideas to extend my storyline. I was scheduled to speak at a conference in Orlando in December, so I suggested to Julie that we shoot a scene of me actually speaking. She agreed, which showed me that the producers valued my input.

  I felt like what I was doing was badass, but I didn’t have anyone to share it with. I didn’t have any friends in Manhattan. I did have one friend who lived on Long Island whom I hung out with a couple of times, but he was older than me, with a couple of kids. I’d text random friends in Dalton or Texas to occupy myself.

  But on the set, a lot of the cast and crew seemed to be invested in me. When I did something well onstage, people applauded. There’s a lot of competition in any performance and not everyone’s going to survive. But most people genuinely supported me, though there was one awkward incident.

  My first partner on the show was an experienced actress who’d recently come to All My Children from another soap. She was an Emmy-nominated performer and I respected her work, but she was less than happy to be paired with me. I focused on the task at hand and tried to do the best I could. I asked her to give me feedback so that our scenes together could be powerful.

  There was a lot of buildup between her character and mine, and several times we came close to kissing onstage. Finally it was time. I walked on set into her character’s apartment. A fire burned in the fireplace. We were having an intimate dinner. I was nervous and I got giggly, like I was five years old. Following the script, we gazed into each other’s eyes. I kept giggling. A big-ass laugh was building up inside me like a volcano.

  “What the hell are you giggling about?” the actress hissed at me.

  I struggled to stifle my laugh. We resumed the scene. I’m going to try to hold this laugh inside of me, I thought, and when she puts her lips on mine, I’ll put all my energy into this kiss. That was a good plan—no one needed to tell me how to kiss a woman. So I lurched in and kissed her until the director called, “Okay, clear!”

  The actress pulled back and yelled, “Oh my God, the rookie used his tongue!”

  I was totally, completely embarrassed. No one had bothered to tell me it was different when you kiss a woman on camera. Lesson learned. And fortunately, I never had to be in the position to do a love scene with her again. Her part was written off the show by the end of the year, and it was rumored that I might be paired next with Shannon Kane, a beautiful and freethinking actress. The story line revolved around a dance marathon in Pine Valley to raise money for a charity.

  Julie called me into her office. “Can you dance?” she asked me.

  Yeah, I can dance.

  “But can you really dance?” she persisted.

  “I was out last night and the bar was having a Michael Jackson dance competition,” I told her. “I won.”

  After Shannon and I began our scenes together, one of our costars approached me. “Hey,” she said, “I’d like to talk to you. Here’s my number. Call me when you get a chance.”

  Cool, I thought. Maybe we’re friends? This actress was a diva, pretty full of herself, but she was very experienced and I wanted her approval. I called her from the back of a taxi on my way to the airport.

  We weren’t friends. “I see the way you play against Shannon on-screen, and you’re acting like a boy, not like a man,” she said.

  I was playing it exactly like the producers had instructed me, and I told her that.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry,” she backpedaled. But it was bull. She made me feel like some kid. I got so upset that my eyes actually teared up.

  Moments like this gave me real pause. I don’t like this shit, I’d think. Why am I doing this? Then I’d shake it off, tell myself that I wasn’t going to allow these people to intimidate me. I spent most of my time hanging out with the crew and Diana, because I could relate well to them.

  Shannon and I competed in Pine Valley’s dance marathon, emerging victorious. The script brought us from our first meeting to becoming friends to me getting a crush on her to us having sex. By the end, we were engaged. Shannon was so much better to work with than my original partner.

  “Try it this way,” she’d suggest, or “Did you ever think of doing it like that?” She was encouraging and helpful and it was great to work with her.

  Despite my minor setbacks, my time on All My Children convinced me that I liked acting. I felt like I was getting pretty good at it and I started to believe it was my future. I developed a strong fan base. I began to get mail from people all over the world. I read every single fan letter and in return sent an autographed photo. I attended the fan events and people went nuts for me when I was introduced, which was surreal.

  On the street, it was different. People didn’t recognize me so much. But one incident sticks in my mind.

  I was in the Bronx with a friend, waiting for a ride home. As we stood chatting on the sidewalk, we heard a woman’s loud voice: “Brot, is that you, motherfucker?”

  Frowning, I looked over. Three rough-looking women were gaping at me. They were crackheads or prostitutes or both, in their tube tops and Daisy Dukes.

  They ran at me, hooting with joy, as I backed away.

  “Shit, that is you, motherfucker!” one of them screamed into my face, her spit stippling the air around me. She put her hands on my shoulders and jumped up and down. Here’s what went through my mind: Being on TV should get me every chick out there, and this is what I got.

  They wanted photos. “Aw, shit, take a picture, bitch!” yelled one woman to her friend.

  “Move, bitch, it’s my turn!” shouted another.

  Then they wanted a group shot. My bewildered friend agreed to take it. I was standing with the three women when, at the last second, just when the shutter clicked, one of them threw her leg up on top of my arm so it looked like I was holding up her leg with my hand. That was all I needed, for the studio to see a picture like this.

  When I signed on with All My Children, I didn’t know whether my stint would last past the three months. I signed a one-year contract, but every three months I had to renew it. After I’d been on a whole year, the original contract expired and I was told to contact an entertainment attorney to negotiate a new one. This was in mid-September 2009.

  But the ensuing year would see the demise of several daytime shows—Guiding Light and As the World Turns among them—and my cast mates on All My Children were wondering if we’d be next.

  In August 2009, in the middle of one of the dance scenes that Shannon and I were shooting, an intercom voice summoned every single person to the studio across the hall, where The View was taped. Everyone settled nervously into the audience seats, Shannon and I next to each other. The president of ABC Entertainment daytime TV addressed our huge group of actors, crew, production, and other staff. The first thing he said was, “Relax, guys, we’re not being canceled.”

  We’d heard rumors that the show might be moved to Los Angeles, which wasn’t a bad idea to me. In fact, for a long time I’d felt that L.A. was in my future. When I fi
rst learned of the All My Children opportunity, I’d been in L.A. When I found out I’d gotten the part, I’d been in L.A. In my mind, L.A. was my next stop.

  I leaned into Shannon. “I bet I’m going to L.A.,” I whispered to her. “I know I’m going.”

  The executive told us that in December, All My Children would be transferring production to Los Angeles as a cost-saving move. The announcement shocked many of the cast and crew, a lot of whom had strong roots in New York and couldn’t leave their mortgages and their kids’ schools. The executives told us they’d let us know in the next few weeks who would be sent west. My confidence kicked in to overdrive. But word was slow in coming, so I walked around in limbo for a long time.

  About three months earlier, in May 2009, I’d met a guy who ran a speakers’ bureau out of Connecticut. He had a full roster of speakers on just about every topic and booked them before audiences at colleges and universities, corporate meetings, and other large groups. We decided to work together.

  Since the producers were busy trying to figure out the details and logistics of the show’s move, I had no idea what my fate had in store. Screw it, I thought, I need to move ahead with my life, so I began to book presentation dates. I’d tell my story, explain how I’d kept my head up, and talk about maintaining a positive outlook no matter what life threw at you.

  Then in September I finally got my answer from All My Children: I was going to L.A. I was in shock, especially since I knew that there were a handful of experienced actors who weren’t being included in the move. I told Julie I’d focus on being the best actor I could be.

  And I was more than a little pleased to learn that Diana would be going to L.A. as well. We coached each other through the whole move. When I went to California to scope out apartments, I’d text her when I saw a good one. By December we were both out there. It was great to have a friend in this new town.

  I realized I should put more effort into my acting, though, and Julie recommended an acting coach. I signed up for his class and attended every Tuesday evening for a couple of hours. We students were instructed to print out the scripts of various films, then pick a scene and act it out with a partner. The lessons provided the opportunity to exercise different roles outside of All My Children, but besides that it didn’t really do anything for me.