Please introduce yourself, what you do, why you do it, and what you want people to know about you.
Hey! Kaleb Rudy here. I’m an indie pop singer-songwriter and actor. I got into the arts for much the same reasons a lot of people in entertainment do: A) a love for the arts, and B) a need for validation. Hah!
I suppose a kinder way to put that is a need to feel seen and understood.
This many years into it, creating is just the way I process life. I write to make something good out of my experiences, or to tell my side of a story if I didn’t get to before. When I’m feeing nostalgic for a time past, or grieving that a beautiful moment is gone, I get to fossilize that moment in amber by turning it into a song and putting it out into the world.
What qualities makes you different and unique from everyone else in the industry?
I’m pretty fascinated by psychology and theology. I want to know why we are the way we are and why we’re doing any of this to begin with. That curiosity helps me discover characters more deeply as an actor. Getting new perspectives also helps me communicate my experience through music more clearly than if I were to just fire off in real time (though sometimes that makes for good songs too!)
Describe THAT moment when you realized you wanted to do what you do now. Who did you tell first? What has it been like since that moment?
It’s hard to remember the exact moment I realized I wanted to make music when I “grew up,” though I know it was in early grade school. Music always moved me. I wanted to act from a young age too, but it wasn’t until my sister showed me American Beauty when I was 15 that I realized film could reveal something meaningful about life and people. That’s when it clicked for me that art distills and communicates the human experience. I knew I wanted to be a part of that.
What has been the biggest challenge you’ve had to face and how did you overcome it?
Myself. I think it’s a common thing for artists to get in their own way. I struggled with addiction to alcohol and nicotine for a long time. It had me stuck in a loop of instant gratification, never fully coping with emotions, and a whole lot of dreaming instead of doing. I know now those behaviors were coming from a great deal of pain and I am compassionate with my former self, but I was absolutely self-sabotaging. I had to break through addiction if I wanted to become whole and create the life I wanted for myself.
If you had to pick the TOP 3 people you’d want to meet that could take your career (or business) to the next level…who would those 3 people be?
I recently became obsessed George Michael. From the sound of his interviews, he was trying to wrap his head around a lot of the same things I”m trying to. I feel connected to him. Todd Haynes is such an incredible director and I’ve always looked up to Nicole Kidman as an actor. There’s so many people I could learn from.