From the Lower East Side to highs in Hollywood

MANILA, Philippines - Actor Victor Rasuk has mastered the charm offensive. In Raising Victor Vargas (2002), his first big screen role, he played the title character: a scrappy Don Juan trying to bag the hottest girl in his hood, the Lower East Side. And as Cam Calderone in HBO’s How to Make It In America, we found Victor Vargas had indeed been raised a refined young man, still keeping his Noo Yawk bravado by city-slicking his way to street wear mogul-dom.

Though How to Make It only made it to two seasons (it was cancelled last December, getting more street cred than network love), Rasuk’s catalog of characters — from real-life skate renegade Tony Alva in 2005’s The Lords of Dogtown to taking part in the Cuban revolution as Rogelio Acevedo in Che (2008) — prove he’s got the acting chops to back up all that charm. His buddy and Che costar Benicio del Toro’s witnessed it and so has De Niro, who Rasuk’s dipping into the drama pool with in the upcoming film Being Flynn.  

Sure, he’s not into the whole Twitter thing but with good company like that, why would you need followers?  

YOUNGSTAR: How to Make it in America got pretty big with the hipsters in Manila. Ever been to the Philippines?

VICTOR RASUK: I’m a huge fan of boxing and I just got to meet Manny Pacquiao about two months ago at the Wild Card gym, and also I’m a big fan of Nonito Donaire, who’s another young boxer. So I’m a fan of the Philippines, I’m a fan of the people and the athletes that come outta there. And I definitely wanna visit at some point soon, you know?

New York City eats its youth: Rasuk’s Cam Calderone with Bryan Greenberg’s Ben Epstein on the HBO series

Can you talk about the new De Niro movie Being Flynn and your character in it?

The movie takes place in a homeless shelter in New York and I’m the main guidance counselor. Basically, De Niro becomes a resident there and Paul Dano is the new employee there, and they play father and son.

They were small scenes but there was one scene where he is trying to get past me — like, trying to get inside but I’m blocking him from getting inside, so I have to pretty much manhandle Robert De Niro. He’s still got his boxing Raging Bull days — he plowed right through me.

You grew up in New York. I remember you once talking about how you rolled with a dangerous crowd in the LES. How’d you get sucked into that and how’d you get out?

We’re talking 13, 14, all the way through 16, where you’re very susceptible and very naïve to negative people. It was stealing candy from a store or taking an old lady’s purse — that kind of extent. But I didn’t do any of that; the thing that’s interesting is that, somehow, I never had to prove myself in the actual gang.

At the same time, you were in the indie Raising Victor Vargas. Did that affect how people in your neighborhood treated you?

I was 18 when I did that film and so when we shot it, I was already a year into really becoming serious about acting. I was in a high school called Professional Performing Arts High School. Jesse Eisenberg was one of my classmates, we both graduated together. I was already making a change in my life, you know? But the character was very much a composite of not only the bad people but also all the cool guys in the neighborhood.

Since then, have there been roles you’ve turned down because they were playing too much to Latin stereotypes?

I don’t get mad at Hollywood. Yes, I get frustrated but I don’t get mad because I understand that if the scope of what they see is not wide enough, people like Benicio, John Leguizamo, Raoul Julia, so many actors, they’re the ones that broaden their eyes. But all those Latin actors opened up the doors for me and hopefully I do the same when I play roles like the Cam Calderones and the Tony Alvas. I want them to be viewed as strong, independent, positive, not needing to be gangbangers or drug dealers or immigrants.

Any wisdom from the greats you’ve worked with over the years?

Benicio [del Toro], man. I got to spend three months with him while we were shooting [Che] in the jungle. Not a lot to do, you know? (Laughs) He explained how the first 10 years of his career was just straight hustling. Like, the dude could not get a break. He kind of talked about how that only made him stronger. Being around him made me really stick it out and believe in my talents and make sure that you offer something different than other actors.

Your most memorable character, Cam Calderone in How to Make It In America, was all raw ambition. Can you relate to that as an actor?

Honestly, I wasn’t too crazy about How to Make It when I first read it. Why can’t Cam be the one with the ideas? Why did it have to be Ben? I think Cam, if he’s hustling and doing all that, I think he’s smart enough to have the ideas too.

In between the first and second season, I tell the writers, ‘Look, man, I think Cam needs to get a lot more.’ I did that and lo and behold, second season, by the end of it, now Cam was sort of becoming the brains of the whole operation.

Did you have an idea the show was gonna get cancelled, though?

Into the wild: Rasuk with Heath Ledger and Emile Hirsch in the skate flick Lords of Dogtown.

I think we had an idea. Look, I had a great time. Put it like this: HBO was the best boss I ever had because they give you money and there’s no executive breathing down your neck. I think HBO’s at a point, though, where they want the next Sopranos, they want the next Entourage. We took two seasons and people started catching up but before people did, they were already looking down the road to something else.

What would you have wanted Cam to become?

I thought maybe he could become an executive or something like that. It would have been nice for him to have gone to fashion week in Paris and have him leave grandma’s apartment and see the world.

Have you gotten more fluent in street wear-speak since then? Any favorite brands?

I like G-Star a lot, actually. I think Nike has some really cool stuff. I like their jeans, their t-shirts — the NSW stuff. There’s a company in LA called Five Four. I wear a lot of their stuff. They have street but they have dressy, too, so you can go to a premiere.

I noticed you don’t have a Twitter account. Not one for self-promotion, huh?

I’ve just always been a private person and I’ve never been the type of actor who does something for the sake of accolades. I feel like artists who seek out attention for those reasons, I’m opposed to it.

I feel like it hinders certain parts I could have gotten if more people had known me. And I know that sometimes those social sites do that but I believe in my talents, man. I really truly believe that I bring something different to the table than a lot of the other actors, and I don’t need a social site to propel my career in any way.