Today we’d like to introduce you to Boris Lukman.
Hi Boris, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
It’s a very common thing to hear from other actors and performers but yes, I’m also one of those extraverted creative people that always wanted to perform in front their parents in the living room, and because of that, I was taught from a young age to pursue my artistic passion. I can say that I’m extremely lucky that my parents supported my ambitions and encouraged me to fully realize my potential. It is something that to this day, I’m grateful for and don’t take for granite (I know how it’s spelled, I’m just a Rick and Morty fan).
When I was fourteen, I auditioned for the 2nd season of Serbia’s I got talent as a Michael Jackson impersonator. I ended up being in the finals; I was the first person to ever perform the iconic “lean” from the Smooth Criminal Music Video on national TV; and it was one of the best experiences I had as a young teen.
After this, I started my acting and tap dance training under the mentorship of the multi-awarded director and choreographer Milos Paunovic. This lead me to perform for EventBox (Middle East’s leading live entertainment company, with multiple partnership awards such as Warner Bros. Outstanding Franchise Execution Award, Nickelodeon’s Licensee of The Year Award, and impressive portfolio of world-class brand licensed shows), touring countries like Egypt, United Arabian Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, etc, with live theatrical shows in the biggest theater venues in the Middle East. I was first cast as the lead character Shaun in a live theater production of the famous Aardman Studios playmation Shaun The Sheep. Later, I also performed as characters such as Sid the Sloth from Ice Age, Ryder from Paw Patrol, and I voiced and sang for an original musical production of the cult classic cartoon Tom & Jerry, called Tom and Jerry: The Crystal Quest, voicing characters like Droopy, Tin, Pan, Dragon, and Big Cheese. The show premiered in Abu Dhabi at the Al Raha Beach Theater, selling over 2000 seats per performance.
At the same time, I auditioned for drama schools in London because I wanted to further develop my craft as an actor and get some serious training under my belt. I worked with the late acting coach Dee Cannon (17 years acting teacher at The Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, taught actors such as Tom Hiddleston, Colin Firth, worked with actors like Tom Felton, Jason Momoa, Simon Callow, etc.) who helped me prepare to get into the most prestigious acting schools in the UK. With a twist of fate, I eventually got into the oldest acting conservatory in the English-speaking world, The American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York. I enrolled in 2018 and graduated in 2020. The school was founded in 1885, and this school gave the acting foundations to many famous academy alumni, including Kirk Douglas, Lauren Bacall, Grace Kelly, Robert Redford, Danny DeVito, Paul Rudd, Jennifer Coolidge, Carrie Anne-Moss, Jessica Chastain, Adam Scott, and many others.
After graduating, unfortunately, because of the pandemic, the industry took a massive blow, and it stagnated my acting career and just life in general. I was fortunate enough to be able to book the role of Nikola Tesla as a lead in a SAG horror feature film called Vortex: A Film Anthology. It was shot in Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey, and it’s currently available on Prime Video, Google Play, and Tubi. It won an award at a local film festival in New Jersey and is set to go to the Cannes Film Festival to be sold to foreign markets.
I later returned back home in Belgrade, Serbia, and I was fortunate enough to be signed by the leading talent agency in Serbia, Slavic Artists Management. I later booked a role on the upcoming sci-fi series The Ark (Sy Fy Channel) and also a biopic film called King of The Sunflowers.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not, what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Any artistic career is a high-risk, high-return kind of profession. By default, you face rejection everywhere you go, and when it comes to being an actor, you have to balance developing a thick enough skin so that you don’t slip into feeling bitter, resentful, as if the industry owes you something, and preserving and cultivating that spark that you had since you were a little kid. Because when the moment comes, you better be ready to shine forth with it.
It took me 4 years to get into acting school. I remember the time when I was auditioning for drama schools in London, and competition was so high that not even if you were Gary Oldman guaranteed you enrollment at RADA, LAMDA, or any big acting school of the Western world. I was going through various rounds from several schools, but the furthest I’ve been was in the final round of Rose Bruford College. When I was sorted out from over 3000 applicants down to the final 50 people, still the school could only pick about a dozen students. At this point, any of was just as deserving. We all proved that we wanted it bad enough, worked hard enough, sacrificed enough, but again, that isn’t enough for someone to succeed. It all comes down to it in the end of being at the right place, the right time, and being ready. Of course, the key to that is playing the long-haul game instead putting all your eggs in one basket. For me to be successful, I don’t need to necessarily be in the same school where Gary Oldman went (although it would’ve been pretty cool).
Overall, I learned from that experience that my best chances of achieving my greatest ambitions is that I need to practice working like I won’t see the light of day tomorrow but be patient in my mind as if I’m going to get my big break at 70 years of age. Who knows, that actually might be the case. But it’s better than not getting there at all.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I’m a professional actor, voice actor, and dancer. I specialize in projects that require use of body and voice as a way of embodying characters, like physical theater and also Commedia Dell’ Arte. I played Mascarille, the lead in Moliere’s five-act play, The Bungler, which was my classical graduation play at AADA. I got to incorporate all of my skills that I acquired throughout my training at the academy and my career as an actor, dancer, and voice-over artist. My teachers told me that they haven’t seen a physical theater performance of that caliber for all the years they’ve been teaching at the school.
I really love to do accents and dialects and use that as a way of transforming into different roles. Sometimes I’d play British characters, sometimes American, Australian or East European, and I’m always fascinated how those different accents can evoke patterns of behavior I haven’t manifested before. I’m very proud that I voiced characters for an original Tom & Jerry musical for Warner Brothers. Working on iconic characters like Droopy the Dog or the two Cockney henchmen cats Tin and Pan really showed me that I have a capacity to transform not just my manner of speaking but also behavior and state of mind. The actor I look up to the most, if it wasn’t already clear, is Gary Oldman, and he is someone I aspire to be like when working on any role I come across. I also specialize as a tap dancer, and with that, I had the great opportunity to be Sam Ryder’s Tap Double in his recent hit Music Video “Somebody.”
In terms of your work and the industry, what are some of the changes you are expecting to see over the next five to ten years?
In regards to what kind of career I’d like to have and where the industry is headed, when it comes to TV, film, productions and casting offices want to hire actors who fit the role so much as to the point of even hiring non-actors who have similar if not the same experiences as their characters that they’re portraying. in the attempt to make those characters as “close to reality as possible.” It seems that hiring an actor who has the craft to access a character that’s different from themselves is a relic of the past or something that’s only reserved for certain A-list Hollywood stars.
If I’d want to make it through the industry, I’d need to probably rely on the fact that I come from East Europe until casting offices decide to give me something other than a Russian mobster. I’d go through various roles of that sort in the hopes they might decide one day to give me something else. Usually, that’s not how it works. The more you do characters of a certain type, the more it’s difficult for them to see you as anything other than what you’ve showed before, regardless whether you have the capacity for it or not.
On the other hand, actors like Andy Serkis, who has a huge body of work that involves great physical and vocal transformation, like his iconic role of Gollum from the Lord of the Rings, Caesar from Planet of the Apes or Baloo from Mowgli, opened the door to a new era of character acting through motion capture. CGI has developed to such a level that you could capture all the nuances of an actor’s expression and digitally put it on a face of a dragon, orc, alien or whatever sort of otherworldly character you could come up with. Also, the video game industry has been releasing masterpieces of video game storytelling in games such as The Last of Us, God of War, Death Stranding, and many others, showing that the market has widened quite a bit thanks to technology, and it gives actors more opportunity to find their niche than ever before.
I hope one day I’ll be able to find my way into this industry and that my skills will have their place where they can shine without me needing to wait on the conventional doors to open for me.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/borislukman/saved/?hl=en
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/borislukmanfb/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/boris-lukman-a23821155
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/lukman_boris
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCN01e3AvmRFrNwnJ4SAQirg
- SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/boris-lukman
