He was more than 12 hours late, but he didn't mind - probably that's how it's done in Hollywood. Even if he just arrived from the festival...
And now seriously.
Jack Dimic is American. actor of local origin. He is currently traveling through Belgrade, where he arrived from the International Film Festival in Sochi, where he was the guest of honor. He will stay in Belgrade for a few days to perform a monodrama on June 28 Oh, my life..
Jack Dimić played more than a hundred roles in American films and series, and in theater plays. For example in Red Rose of Normandy, Fatherland, War Stories, Brother's War, Law and Order: SVU, Madam Secretary, Elementary, Hawaii Five-O, sleeper cell... He also acted in many domestic productions, which he will talk about himself later.
He was born Željko Dimić in Bosanska Dubica, SFRY, but he is an American actor. Here's how it came about. After several unsuccessful attempts to enroll at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts (FDU) in Belgrade, in '92. he went to Sweden, then to the Czech Republic, and after two years, he was baptized in New York. There he was admitted to the Lee Strasberg Institute and graduated as Richard the Third. "Since I am their student and a member of the SAG-AFTRA union, the largest actors' association in America, I am officially an American actor of Yugoslav origin."
He says that he was not admitted to FDU due to circumstances. "But I was lucky enough to be accepted to the Lee Strasberg Institute and to work there with one of the best acting professors and teachers in the world, with Michael Margot. My professors are also Dan Grimaldi, Irma Sandrey, Robert Castle, George Loros, Lola Cohen, Lee Dylan... I had the privilege of learning this wonderful craft from them for four years. So I'm grateful to FDU that they didn't accept me, and even more to 'Lee Strasberg' who did. By the way, 'Lee Strasberg' is known for that that someone who wants to learn this trade does not have to be the son or daughter of an actor, director, producer or some powerful person to even have a chance to pass the entrance exam."
Of course, his then modest knowledge of the English language was a big obstacle, says Jack Dimić. "It's not just a barrier for me, but for all of us who have come to America to do this business and weren't born or raised in it. However, thanks to the wonderful Lee Dylan who is a mage for accents and dialects, and her method of repetition (repetition method), after 14 years of painstaking work on correcting my Balkan accent, I finally got the chance to in two episodes of the series Hawaii 5.0 I play the role of Randy Thorpe, who was born and raised in New Jersey, which was my first American character in my career. I have my 15th role coming up soon, where I will be a native American in a Charles Erlinger film Stay on the Sunny Side where I play Harlan, one of the three main roles and I work in the American Midwestern Dialect for the first time. By the way, I'm not the only one from the area of the former Yugoslavia who interpreted American roles in America, that was also done by my colleague Goran Višnjić from Croatia."
So far, Džek Dimić has played in five languages and four dialects of English. He says that his Balkan origins and the languages he speaks (Serbo-Croatian, Russian and Czech) helped him interpret characters from those regions. He spent eight months preparing a theater play with Žarko Laušević Emigrants Slavomir Mrožek, premiered on September 30 at Lincoln Center in New York in front of 837 people. He says they repeated it in 14 other cities across America. "It is still the only play in America that was prepared and performed in our language." He says he doesn't know "why our actors in America don't do similar projects". He also says that he communicated "with some of his colleagues from the region who were trying to make a career in America and hung out with them until they returned from where they came from. "I made a film with my colleague Sergej Trifunović In the name of the son (In the Name of the Son) produced by AFI (American Film Institute), which in 2009 was eligible for the Academy Award in the Short Feature Film category.”
MEMORIES FROM THE FILMING:
The series "Lioness" with Zoe Saldana
Monodrama Oh, my life. for which he now came to Belgrade, he adapted and directed from the text of the famous Bosnian actor Josip Pejaković, that monodrama was his trademark. Džek Dimić says that he had the "honor and pleasure" of hanging out with Pejaković "until, unfortunately, he left us two years ago. Six years ago, he gave me his monodrama Oh, my life. and allowed me to adapt it and perform it in my own way. So far, I have played it in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, Cleveland, New Jersey, Prague, Zagreb, Belgrade, Skopje, Banja Luka, in Gradiška, Kozarska Dubica, Laktaši, Travnik, Vitez, Zenica, Olovo... From each of the aforementioned performances, I bring with me wonderful impressions and sincere reactions from the audience, and I am truly grateful to them for that. Here, on Sunday, June 28 at 7:30 p.m., in the Vukosava space at Karađorđeva 44, I'm playing again in Belgrade and I invite your readers to be my guests at the monodrama Oh, my life. which I have loved since my boyhood days when I only dreamed of being an actor".
Although American cinematography does not have the problems that Serbian cinema has (finances, blacklists containing those who criticize the SNS and the president, cancellation of festivals and events...), it is certain that it has some. However, Jack Dimić does not want to talk about it. "Honestly, I don't deal with the problems of American or cinematography in our region, especially I don't deal with problems of a political nature. I promised myself from the beginning of my professional career that I would never deal with politics. I leave that to those who benefit from it and who thus get roles belonging to someone or something. I, well, I am lucky, or I fought for it, that I am a free man and a free actor and that I do not belong to anyone and that I decide which one I will do according to my conscience and my own sensibility to choose a role when it is offered to me and with whom I will work. Or, as our people would say, I chose the hard way - to fight for every role in which I always have at least several hundred people against me. The only thing I can tell you is that there is a difference in the budgets of film and television projects compared to our region."
Can you make a living acting in the US? "Statistics say that only 4 to 5 percent of actors in America make a living from their profession alone. The biggest reason for this low percentage is the huge competition, which is fierce - as I said, at every casting you have at least several hundred colleagues who also came for the same role as you. To illustrate, I recently finished the third season of the series Lioness with Taylor Sheridan, Nicole Kidman, Morgan Freeman and Zoe Saldana that we shot in Texas. I played Alexey Yurimov, a former FSB operative, and at the casting I had more than 900 colleagues against me. As I said, in America the competition is beyond fierce. I have only been living exclusively from my profession since 14 years ago, and until then I had to do other jobs in order to survive. All of us who are members of the SAG-AFTRA union regularly receive royalties from all screenings, not only in America but throughout the world. It is very well organized in America and I sincerely hope that one day my colleagues in the region will have the same privilege."
He was recently a guest at the "Lee Strasberg" Institute. They invited him to be their guest lecturer on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of his graduation. That was, he says, "an honor and a privilege". Jack Dimić also holds "workshops and master classes, both in the region and in America, for younger colleagues and acting students. I try to pass on my experience to them, to do exercises with them that I did for four years at the Lee Strasberg Institute, to answer questions and to help them in some way, if I am able, in their future development in this profession". But, he says, he does not recommend them to stay or pack their bags. "I have no right to that, they are all individuals for themselves and should make their own decisions. Whether one of them will leave the region for America or stay, I really leave it up to each of them. Any suggestion that they stay or leave would be very ungrateful on my part and I personally think that it would not be right pedagogically. After all, at one time, when I was trying to be an acting student here, I made that decision on my own, just as I decided to leave on my own."
Would you come back?
"I return to the old region, my birthplace, under my wonderful mountain Kozara, five to six times a year. And not only to my hometown, but also to all areas of my former homeland from Triglav to Đevđelia, not only because I love this part of the peninsula called the Balkans, but also because of the many friendships I have here, and of course because of frequent engagements in local productions. So this year I had the pleasure of being a guest in the series Pat's Chef's Secret, to play Ramiz in the movie Line, then US Congressman Trenton in the film 2034 produced by Netflix and directed by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, all three projects were filmed in Belgrade. And by the way, since you're already asking me about it: I've been playing in series in domestic projects for the last few years Nobel laureate Tihomir Stanić (the role of Nenad Jovanović), Klan Boban Skerlić (Mileusnić), Professor Mišković's notebook (Jeff Boyd), Military Academy (Savage), Emergency Room (Doctor Kovačević), in the film Key (Cardinal Randazzo), in the Sarajevo series Accommodation near Hilmija (Colonel Ford)... And finally, I can't go back to my hometown because I never left it."
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