Actor's Altar
Cameron Monaghan - Ian Gallagher and Cal Kestis
I didn’t know how much I was holding in until I watched Ian Gallagher try to do the same. He wasn’t heroic. He wasn’t smooth. He was raw. Ugly with grief. Loud with silence. And Cameron? He let it be ugly. He didn’t try to sand it down or make it digestible. That taught me something. That stillness can hurt louder than screaming. That sometimes the most honest thing an actor can do is not move at all.
I carry Ian into every role I play. Not as imitation, but as ignition. He’s why I act. Why I stopped hiding. Why I let myself feel on camera. But Ian isn't just pain. He's also loving, chaotic and unapologetically himself. I needed that more than I realized during a particularly hard time in my life.
Cal Kestis - Jedi: Survivor
Ian Gallagher - Shameless
I was curled up with grief, not looking for anything but distraction. A video game. A familiar escape. But then came Cal. And he didn’t let me hide.
A guy with nothing left but pain—who still chose to fight. Not because he believed he’d win. But because he refused to let it end that way. He was quiet. Hurt. Kind. Angry. He wasn’t perfect, and that’s what made him powerful. Every time he stood up, it felt like permission to do the same even if I mess up.
Cal didn’t just help me find acting; he reminded me I was still alive. That there was still time to become something more. That’s the voice I carry with me now. Every audition. Every reel. Every role. Not a Jedi. A survivor. Like me.
Dean Winchester - Supernatural
Dean didn’t show his pain. He wore it, like leather. He flirted with death, defied God, and cracked jokes with blood in his teeth and grief behind his eyes.
But it was never the guns or the demons that stayed with me. It was the way he never stopped being a big brother, even when it destroyed him. Family meant everything to Dean. It does to me, too. I didn't grow up with family around or emotionally available, so this aspect of Dean really hit hard to me.
Jensen Ackles - Dean Winchester
I learned from Dean that masculinity isn’t about strength. It’s about carrying things no one sees. And Jensen… Jensen knew how to show it without saying it. The micro-expressions. The restraint. That barely-there shift in posture when Dean was trying not to cry. Jensen made pain beautiful—and ugly—and real.
I hear Dean’s voice in the back of my head:
“You keep going. No matter what. You get up, load your gun and you go out and fight. Don't matter if you're hungry or hurting. You go out there and do your job. Cuz that's what we do."
Harry Shum Jr. - Magnus Bane
The first time I saw Magnus Bane, I thought: There. That’s the kind of fire I want to be. He wasn’t subtle. He didn’t ask to be seen, he commanded it. With eyes rimmed in kohl and fingers wrapped in rings, he entered like a spell already cast.
But what caught me wasn’t the style. It was the grief beneath it. The way he made pain beautiful. The way he wore centuries of loss and still danced like it didn’t matter. He wasn’t performing for applause. He was surviving, loudly. And unapologetically.
Magnus Bane - Shadowhunters
Harry gave him grace. Stillness. The kind of restraint that comes from centuries of holding yourself together with gold thread and glamour. Magnus taught me that there’s power in performance. That aesthetic is survival. That to be seen is not vanity, it’s defiance.
When I put on rings before a role, or lace swagger into my sorrow, that’s him.
Jeremy Allen White - Lip Gallagher
Lip Gallagher - Shameless
Lip was never just a mess. He was a kid drafted into war. A big brother turned parent turned problem, long before he had a choice. He wasn’t angry because he was cruel. He was angry because no one ever gave him the chance to be a kid. And Jeremy, God, Jeremy wore that like skin. The way he clung to control. The way he self-sabotaged the second anything felt too good, too stable, too safe. Like he didn’t think he deserved it. Like punishment was the only thing that felt honest anymore.
Every time Lip made himself small so someone else could breathe? Every time he buried what he needed just to keep someone from falling? I saw myself. And it hurt. Jeremy showed me that the oldest siblings don’t just carry weight, they inherit grief. That sometimes, love looks like setting yourself on fire, so the house stays warm.
I carry that in my characters now. The shame. The silence. The scrambled wiring that makes you destroy every chance you get at peace. Lip didn’t need applause. He needed rest. And Jeremy never let him have it. Because that’s what it means to be the brother, or father, partner, whatever, who was never allowed to break.
Tom Hiddleston - Loki Odinson
Loki never wanted to rule. He just wanted to matter. What pulled me in first was the flair, the smirk, the silk, the quips sharper than a dagger. But what kept me was the ache. That quiet, desperate ache of someone who’s been rejected so many times that he’d rather be feared than forgotten. Someone who turned pain into performance, because at least people watched then.
Loki - Avengers
