My Story
Before a man can achieve the kind of life he wants, he must first become that kind of individual. He must think, act, walk, talk and conduct himself in all of his affairs as would the person he wishes to become. He is then actually that person and the things that person would have him do would naturally come to him. Earl Nightingale It’s with that exact mentality that I wake up every morning knowing that I need to become more of who I am in order to achieve the life experience that I want. This is how I grow.Growing up at a young age, nurtured by a single mother who worked relentlessly to put food on the table and provide for me, I learned at an early age that life doesn’t just hand you things. They need to be earned.My name is Joe Gilani. This is my story about who I am and why acting has always been a part of my life. 
Until the present day, I continue to imagine what it took for all of those series of events to take place that led to my birth and I keep on landing on ‘right place, right time.’ There is a quote that goes by, “Success occurs when opportunity meets preparation.” These are thoughts I keep with me daily as I prepare for my days and work towards achieving my goals and my dreams. My parents meeting was pure serendipity and I never want to take that for granted. That’s a driver of mine to get up in the morning, to be grateful and to get after my day.Back to my story - Although my father was happy that I was born and that I existed, he was extremely unhappy about his failed marriage. For quite some time that drove him away and ultimately he went in a different direction. During these years, my mother and I did a lot of growing. My mother mentally and me, literally. In the late 90’s my mother met my soon-to-be step father while starting her career as a real estate agent. He had been in the industry for quite some time and was occupied, raising his own two children as a single man and building a business of his own. They’re both great-hearted people and on paper would have seemed to be a great match for each other. They sure indeed were as they went on to get married, raise a mixed-family of five children and build a successful real estate brokerage business. The American dream. In the mid 1980’s, my parents met in a bodega store in BedStuy in New York. My mom, Gigi, (working behind the register counter) had only just begun her journey in the United States as she had migrated from Ecuador with a visa obtained via my grandmother who had moved to New York years before. My father, Arif – who was born in Pakistan and raised in the outskirts of London, England, had been living and working in the states for just a few years. I still to this day have trouble imagining how they interacted with each other being from completely different worlds and speaking two completely different languages. Somehow they managed and with my father’s romantic persistence, they dated. Eventually, they were expecting a child and my father, being a gentleman, proposed. Unfortunately and ultimately their culture and language barriers caught up to them. Their marriage lasted all but a few years however out of that matrimony came a miracle – Me!
These were the years that molded me more into who I am today. My step-father’s work ethic and business acumen plus my mother’s strong-willed personality and experiencing the dynamics of siblinghood within a mixed-family have all taught me more about what it takes to make it in life than I could ever learn elsewhere. All throughout these years, I have worked in sales with Major League Baseball and National Football League teams and in Manhattan real estate as a broker. Every step of the way from my childhood to my adult life has been a brick added to my brick of walls and every step of the way I have perceived performance as a critical component to success. Whether it be in sales or a family matter in my personal life, I have always felt as if the way to win the deal or communicate effectively in a personal conversation was to become who I needed to become in order to achieve the desired experience. Affirmations, meditation, acting technique classes, and surrounding myself with people who are more like the person who I want become have all been a huge part of me building a winning mindset that has helped me achieve my present day mental aptitude. It’s like what Earl Nightingale indicated in his book ‘The Strangest Secret’, once you start behaving like the person you want to become, you become that person.
And that to me, is what acting is. That is why I’m in pursuit of delivering performances as an actor.
Watch this space.
