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From
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"I do movies to live, so that I can perform Shakespeare. There is no better training ground than 'the Bard,"' said the San Pedro, California resident and actor, whose recent performances have included parts in "The Comedy of Errors," "Othello" and "The Merchant of Venice."
A producer and rising actor whose name appears regularly on TV networks such as PAX TV and Showtime, "G," as friends call him, warns there are no easy trips to stardom. Joseph personifies a rags to riches story, coming from a near-poverty environment in the & tobago as a child to living in a gated community on the Palos Verdes Peninsula.
Joseph graduated from the now-closed West Indies' School of Performing Arts. A fourth-degree black belt in Bando kick boxing and fifth-degree black belt in Snow Tiger Kung Fu, he also ran a martial arts school where he met his wife, Ria.
It was while watching a Chuck Norris movie--and believing he could do a better job with the martial arts scenes--that Joseph first became inspired to become an actor and producer.
When he and his wife arrived in Los Angeles in 1987, the couple got their first lessons in Hollywood chicanery.
"When my wife and I came from the Caribbean, we had $1,500 between the two of us," Joseph said. "About $1,000 of that went to scam artists."
Since then, he said he has learned how to pick and choose his projects while waiting for callbacks from casting directors.
Julian Caine, president of Caine Entertainment Inc. in Sherman Oaks, will begin co-production with Joseph in March on "8th Rank," an action-drama movie to be filmed in Trinidad and Los Angeles. Caine said he was impressed with a copy Joseph sent to him of his 1996 film "Flight of the Ibis," a drama dealing with the plight of a rare Caribbean bird, personified in an action hero. Another production that caught Caine's eye was Joseph's student endeavor, "Men in Gray," a two-hour action feature film for Trinidad television. The film, which cost a mere $7,000 to create, was written and produced by Joseph, his wife and friend Ric Moxley and starred Joseph.
Scott Rabinowitz, who played Ross Leigh last season in "The Young and the Restless," recently directed Joseph in "Two Gs" a hip-hop version of "The Two Gentlemen of Verona" at the Sacred Fools Theatre near Hollywood.
"He played the part of Duke of Milan or the owner of Club Milan," Rabinowitz said. "G worked really, really hard. He decided he was a hands-on owner and stayed in character even backstage."
Rabinowitz and Joseph will begin filming a movie, "The Advanced Man," in the spring to be shot in Trinidad and Los Angeles.
(Extracted from the Los Angeles Times of January 15).