James Longshore is an American actor, author and dialog coach specializing in the neutral American accent, who has carved out a unique career both internationally and in Romania. His journey has taken him from Los Angeles to Bucharest, where he became the first American actor to perform in Romanian on national television. In this interview, James shares his captivating story – from his early days on the stage to the recent release of his debut novel in Romania, Stage Fright. He offers a genuine look into the challenges and rewards of building a creative career abroad, as well as insights into life as an expat in a country he’s come to call home.
C&B: Describe your professional activity!
James Longshore: I am an actor, author and dialog coach, specializing in NAS, neutral american accent. Films I have acted in have premiered at prestigious festivals around the world. I have appeared in films acting opposite Oscar nominees. I have acted on television and streaming series in multiple languages. I was the first American actor to act in Romanian on national network television.
My writing credits include screenplays, most notably the Netflix film ‘Dampyr,” where I completed English script revisions working alongside an Italian screenwriter. An internationally published comic book series, “James Bong, Agent of J.O.I.N.T.” And now my first novel ‘Stage Fright’ has just been published in Romania by Editura Creative and is available worldwide in print and ebook format!
As a dialect coach, I work on major international film productions and provide private coaching. Between acting and coaching, I have worked on films from Italy, Germany, France, Romania, Sweden, Ecuador, the U.K. and the U.S.
C&B: What is the story of your career progression?
James Longshore: I began my career as an actor and I knew that was what I wanted to do, from a young age. I debuted in Shakespeare at seven years old, had an agent at ten years old, was performing Off-Broadway at 13 and I attended High School for Creative and Performing Arts as a Drama major. People would always say to me ‘You’re so lucky you already know what you want to do with your life.”
As I matured, I started feeling like I wanted to express myself more freely than just saying words someone else had written and I also got bored waiting around for the next audition and to be dependent on someone casting me for work, so that’s when I became a writer. First, I went to film school in Los Angeles and got a Film Directing degree and opened my own production company, so I could produce my own work while providing services to others. As a writer, I was focusing mostly on screenplays.
Then I met my Romanian wife Bianca Mina while she was studying in L.A. and moved to Romania, where I continued my career as an actor, became a dialect coach and opened the first ever english-language acting program in Romania. All my colleagues in the U.S. always says “Oh man, Europe is so great! The government just gives you money for your movies!” But I found it’s not so easy. It’s a closed system that rewards already proven filmmakers on a point system and only films that fit a certain perspective, usually not a commercial one.
I found it hard to raise financing. Not that it was easy in L.A., but you had a larger community of resources to draw from, people working for arts sake or on a favor for a favor philosophy. I wanted to remain a visual storyteller so I turned to making comic books, where you don’t need a big crew and actors, locations, costumes, etc., just a few people to draw them, color them and add some text! I supported the production of the comic through product placement sponsors and my comic series was published internationally. To produce the comic, I worked with artists from four continents.
But even with comic books, the element of depending on others to execute my story remained. So, I finally settled on books. But I will never stop acting and I still hope to make films and comics in the future!
C&B: What are the life and work principles you follow?
James Longshore: My life and work principles are pretty simple and often overlap. When you are an artist, your life is your work, the world is the canvas from which you draw inspiration. I try to always do my best, keep an open mind and strive towards almost perfection. For perfection is not something we can actually achieve but rather a concept we should always aspire to reach.
It is also important for me to stay true to myself, because especially in my field but in life in general, everything is subjective and it is hard to find a truly encompassing measure for success. Do you judge by profits, reviews, awards or achievements? Unfortunately, they are not mutually exclusive and you can’t always have all of them. Only in a perfect storm.
I see every setback as an opportunity to do it better next time. I think you never stop growing. I think you need to flexible because one day I might be acting, another I may be writing. The most important principle in both my life and my work is to always enjoy what I’m doing, even when it’s challenging, to choose happiness and to laugh as often as I can. Smiling keeps you looking and feeling young.
C&B: Have the pandemic and economic crises influenced your professional life?
James Longshore: Yes. Very much so. My bread and butter as an actor and dialect coach is film productions from abroad, which means travel, so of course the pandemic shut down my industry. Television, stage and film are one of the few industries left where people must be present; The work cannot be done remotely. When covid hit in March 2020, I had three productions lined up, all of which were canceled amongst the uncertainty. It took a while to get back to that level and I’m not even sure we have yet.
The pandemic also caused some shifts in protocol in my industry that will never turn back. One, casting shifted from in-person auditions to self-tapes, in part due to safety but also made possible because of modern technology. This new protocol has its pros and cons, but in the end, it does create inequality and can add to the cost of doing business for an actor, who is expected to audition but doesn’t receive any compensation until after he gets the part, if he gets it. It’s not as easy as looking for positions online and just sending a digital resume remotely at the stroke of a key. It can be time-consuming and expensive. Imagine if you had to create a different resume from scratch every time. That’s essentially what you have to do with a script. Each one is different. You need to spend money on technology, too and those with better financial resources will have better technology, giving them an edge. In the past, all you needed was bus fare to get to the casting office and someone there had a high-quality camera and a professional to read the lines with you and record the audition with good lighting and good sound. You read your lines and left, you didn’t have to edit and choose the best take and send the video.
Two, media consumption shifted to streaming services, which is not as financially lucrative for actors, writers and directors, because it is subscription-based and not reliant on advertising or retail and box-office revenue.
Economic crises always affect my industry because it is a risky business that requires investment. In times of economic crisis, investors are more risk-averse and revenue decreases because consumers have less disposable income to spend on entertainment.
However, I had the time and peace to write my first book, ‘Stage Fright’, during the pandemic, so something good did come from it. That has changed my professional life, because your first book is always the hardest and I hope my path will open up from here.
C&B: You have a movie producer in front of you. What’s the sentence that convinces them to cast you in their upcoming movie?
James Longshore: Take a look at my track record. It speaks for itself.
C&B: You wrote and published your first book. How did that happen? Tell us the story behind it.
James Longshore: I wrote the book in covid, but not because I was bored during covid, like many other first-time writers debuting on the market today. I actually started writing it in February 2020, just before the pandemic hit. Covid gave me the peace and free time to focus on it.
I wrote the book because I am a big fan of Jerry Seinfeld, whom I actually saw perform live at Carnegie Hall in New York City when I was a teenager. What Seinfeld did on his TV series was create plots based on his observational comedy bits. I wanted to take my witty observations about being a foreigner living in Bucharest and Romania and create a narrative structure to support expressing them.
Also, there are plenty of books about foreigners living in France or Italy or Spain or Greece or the UK. Not many, any really, about an American living in Romania. Especially set in present times.
The intended message of the book is that we are not that different. We are all just people, human beings, just in different languages. I think that in an age where the forces of globalization and nationalism are clashing every day, it is important that we do not forget this fact.
I wrote the book for Romanians and Americans. For Romanians, I want them to see that they are not so different from Americans, given that they seem to often feel inferior to them. For Americans, I want to break many of the stereotypes they hold about Romania and show them they are not true. I’ll admit, all I knew about Romania before I moved here was vampires and bread lines, so I think I’m the right guy to do it.
While Romanians will naturally appreciate some of the aspects of the story more profoundly, I think any human being can relate and I hope to reach a broader international audience, not just Americans, because the prejudices against Romania extend to many other countries in the world, which I have seen firsthand traveling with Bianca Mina, my Romanian wife.
C&B: Are you planning to write another book?
James Longshore: I am indeed! In fact, I am writing one right now. I just paused for this interview. I plan to release it in the late spring/early summer 2025.
It’s a romantic comedy thriller and the book is solidly on brand. Like ‘Stage Fright’, the protagonist is an American expat in Romania. Except this time, he’s a ‘canceled’ film director, Jeff Rhoades, who has to come to Romania to make his comeback film, ‘The Dirt Is Cursed’ because of his reputation back home. He casts Jackie Soare in the lead role, a young Romanian socialite with stars in her eyes who dreams of being a famous actress in America and is a target of the media due to her wealthy status. When they get involved in an unexpected accident, dark secrets from their past come to light and they have to scramble to hide what they’ve done. Can they get out of hot water and finish the movie?
C&B: What is your opinion about society and its evolution in Romania considering the years spent here?
James Longshore: There are so many things I love about Romania and the lifestyle here. And I love Bucharest, it’s the New York City of Romania!
I moved to Romania at Christmas 2010. With a three-year pause where I lived in Paris from 2015 until 2018, I have lived in Bucharest for eleven years, non-consecutively. In 2018, I returned to a very different Romania from the one I left in 2015.
The thing I love most is the piata, the market where you can buy fruits and vegetables directly from the peasant and their garden. Not just fruits and vegetables, but homemade goods like cheese, bacon, honey, jam and eggs from their hens. I can do the same from the macelarie, where I procure fresh meat from the butcher.
It is much more nutritious than anything you can get at the large multi-national supermarkets. Not only can you taste the difference, the energy your body gets from it feels cleaner. Most of the food you find at the supermarket is full of chemicals from industrial farming and preservatives.
I travel a lot and people ask me what I like about Romania. I tell them about the market and they can’t wrap their head around it. They say, yeah, we have that. It’s on Tuesday in this neighborhood and Thursday in this neighborhood. I’m like, no, I mean, every day of the week, all over town.
