John Campbell

John in a period film

A serious acting role

Written by Lon Levin

According to IMDB, John Campbell-Mac was born in Canning Town, East London, England in 1973.

John was brought up by his grand parents William and Mary Campbell. The family moved from Canning Town in East London to Colchester in Essex when John was the age of 5. After being bullied as a child he was encouraged by his grandfather to take up boxing and boxed for the Castle Colchester Boxing Club. He won the award for best prospect in his first competitive season and later became club champion eventually moving back to London to advance his career.

His acting talent first came to the attention of his school teachers where he was regularly given main character in school plays and later in amateur theatre productions. Upon leaving school, he worked in construction, as a physical fitness instructor, model, dancer and as a professional boxer and continued his training in martial arts including Muay Thai (Thai boxing), karate and taekwondo.

When did you first think about acting as something you wanted to do? How did that evolve into your present business? Were you encouraged or discouraged by family, friends, teachers, mentors?

I think I was born a natural entertainer straight out of the gate, my family were all these huge personality’s so I guess I was just finding a way to be heard. I think people are either born funny or their not and with regards to tough guy roles I grew up in a pretty tough neighborhood so that came pretty easy too.

What kind of kid were you? Where did you grow up? What were your influences?

I was one of those cheeky naughty kids, full of fun and mischief. I was raised by an old couple who adopted me, I sure kept them busy. They were real larger than life characters from the East End of London, salt of the earth, amazing people. Both sadly passed now.

We were working class but there was never a shortage of love in our house. They moved out of London to Colchester in Essex when I was around 5 years old which is where I grew up. Early influences were probably the tough guys in our neighborhood, early performances? Well when I was about 10 I remember standing on a kitchen stool at the bottom of my garden and singing Nat King Cole, SMILE to the field full of sheep that were gathered there, If I remember rightly they were a great audience ha ha .

Your style is very unique. Did you work on developing a style or is that what naturally came out of you?

I’ve done lot’s of comedy and tough guy roles, both come pretty easy to me. I was always the class clown and it just grew from there.

What areas does your acting work appear in? How did that come about?

I love acting, from my very first day on set I just thought ‘Wow this is it, this is where I’m supposed to be. I’ve met a lot of crazy eccentric people in various parts of the entertainment world. Many were as crazy as a bag of frogs so I felt I just fitted right in, ha ha. If you google my acting name John Campbell-Mac you should find some of my work. Mostly film with some TV, I did more theatre back in London.

But my route to it was a little more unique. I moved back to London when I was 23 years old looking to advance my boxing career. I had been club champion and fought in the ABA’s (UK equivalent to the golden gloves). Now in my mind it was clear, join the most successful club (there was Repton in Bethnal Green which I joined), get an Olympic gold medal, turn pro and become world champion simple as that. Well the universe had something else in store for me. I had managed to buy the house for my old mum and dad and make it nice for them before I moved. Then there was a big recession at the end of the 80’s early 90’s in the UK and suddenly there were fewer jobs especially in construction and I was having hard financial times. Unbelievably I’d lost a few fights (it came as a shock to me) and after a few months it seemed that I had gone from hero to zero, overnight. I remember my car being re-possessed as a particularly low point. Now as a young guy, being broke is not such a big deal but with my aged parents mortgage to pay as well as rent in the city was a tough spot to be in.

In desperation I heard about the world of underground unlicensed boxing, I remember a real tough guy in an infamous gym in London saying to me ‘You look a bit tasty Johnny, why don’t you have a fight? you might be able to make a few quid’.

Well desperate times call for desperate measures and all that so I was in. Try and imagine a warehouse in Woolwich filled with 500 flat-nosed skinheads begging for blood. If you have ever seen the movie “Snatch” with Brad Pitt and Jason Statham well my last fight was in the same ring in the same venue where that was filmed and they captured the vibe perfectly. There were some very tough guys, people like Lenny McClean and former champions like Jimmy Cable, really hard men involved who I still have the greatest of respect for, but fortunately for me I had some skills. Rules were pretty loose but we did have gloves. Anyway let me not bore you, I had a handful of these fights, won them all but realized I couldn’t make enough money so I needed something else.

Well just before I left Colchester I saw a guy in a bar in a G-string with a load of screaming cheering girls around him and I remember thinking maybe I could do that. He was performing I think for somebody’s birthday or a bachelorette party. Anyhow to cut a long story short I phoned every entertainment agency in London before I finally got an interview. I went down to meet the owner who took a look at me and said OK son We’ll give you a go, you might want to hit the

JC Mac at the Oscars

Professional Boxer JC Mac

weights and build yourself up a bit.

Then boom the next night I was doing it. Straight from the boxing gym into the city on the tube shaking like a leaf. Shot of whiskey for Dutch courage, then bowled into a wine bar took off my track suite while reciting a happy birthday poem to the ladies in there. I’m sure I was dreadful but the crowd seemed to like it and I was hooked. After a few weeks I was running all over London meeting all types of people and it saved my financial situation.

I later met a friend who was a successful model and suggested I try my hand at that. He generously got one of his friends who is still a top photographer to take a few pics of me, then I got an agent and suddenly I was a model, you couldn’t make it up. Believe me it was quite a journey from my working class beginnings. I was in good shape and did lots of underwear and swimwear shoots which led to me being put up for commercials. Simultaneously the dancing was going from strength to strength and now I was doing fully choreographed shows in every type of venues from small bars to nightclubs and theaters. Through the modelling I met lots of other similar looking fella’s so I put a group together along with my brother and suddenly we were touring the the country and eventually the world not just dancing but singing as well. We toured over 20 countries over a period of 10 years meeting all sorts of people and making all kinds of connections which still serve me today. Sorry I digress so I remember being on the set of my first commercial which was very sane in comparison to my night job and seeing the lights and the crew, etc and thinking, this is me, this is right, this is what I want to do. This led to small parts in TV shows where I met some real actors which made me realize I needed to get some proper training. So for the next few years I did every possible workshop I could do gradually honing my craft as my resume got bigger. You know acting is very different to performing, it took me a long time to learn that.

You’ve worked in construction, as a fitness instructor, model, dancer and as a professional boxer. How has that helped you to become a great real estate agent?

I was a bricklayer for 5 years when I left school, even went to college for it, seems like a million years and a few lifetimes ago now. But I feel this gives me an idea of building fundamentals and architecture. The rest well I have been blessed to have done a lot of things which has brought me into contact with many types of people. Hopefully this has given me a greater understanding of people which can only help in real estate.

I’m fascinated by your film work and it seems like you’ve had some real success at it. What caused you to want to be a real estate agent??

I love acting, it truly is a passion and I’ve enjoyed all the projects I’ve worked on. I’ve had a degree of success and won a few awards and it’s taken me to some glamorous places like Cannes and Sundance for the film festivals. But I would say my second passion has to be real estate. I bought my first house when I was 21 years old which was my introduction to the industry. As my brother and I had success with the entertainment industry we bought a few houses together. We bought and held, managed tenants and flipped. I spent over 20 years negotiating entertainment contracts for our group and later for him when he became famous as a singer in the UK. Owning property was the first thing I experienced that could give you a residual income and was a sure fire way to build real wealth.

Does living in LA give you a certain tone to your work(acting) that living elsewhere wouldn’t?

Believe it or not I came to L.A reluctantly, I had a

John with wife Stephanie and a friend

nice life in London. I was acting, my managing my brothers career (he’s a bit of a pop star back there). I was wheeling and dealing in real estate and had a small portfolio of properties. But being an extremist I always wanted to take my acting career as far as I could so Hollywood it had to be. Always having an eye for real estate a friend and I partnered and bought a duplex in El Sereno which we still own. Coming to the US from the UK and getting a working visa believe me is no mean feat. Thankfully I had a decent resume as an actor but it still took years and thousands of dollars to graduate from an actors visa to a full Green card. Imagine you are trying to build a life somewhere but are always worried that the rug can be pulled from under you. Unless you have been through it, it’s hard to understand but believe me it’s incredibly stressful. The minute I got my green card I started studying for my real estate license which quickly followed.

What’s does your process entail? Start to finish. Can you give us a short step-by-step?

I think great acting comes from great writing, if the writing is good I find the lines easy to learn they just flow and stay in my head. In truth the behavior around the lines is far more important than the lines themselves. But if the writing is shall we say not great then it takes me longer to learn. Then longer to have the freedom of having the lines in your head so you can simply react. But acting is a lot of work, I believe there is no substitute for repetition and running over the lines again and again and again then make some bold choices then just go for it, as I think James Cagney said ‘Hit your mark, look your partner in the eye and tell the truth’ But if you are under-prepared and you are still thinking about your lines etc then this is not possible. Real estate is not so different, in acting you are trying to understand what your character really wants, what is their motivation, why do they make the choices they do. With real estate it’s almost the same thing, what does your client really need, what’s practical, affordable, suiting to their taste

etc. So again you are trying to understand them and their motivation. Once you fully understand the reasons for buying or selling, why they need to downsize or upsize. Or what’s truly important to them then you can serve them a lot better and save them and you a lot of time. I’m sure you have heard the saying ‘your network is your net worth’ well in real estate that’s holds true even more than any other industry. I’ve been blessed to have made a lot of friends and have a huge network of people. I work with a lot of directors and producers and entertainment types as well as now do a lot of video and social media marketing. I’ve not really had a lot of mentors in my life but my broker and great friend Peter Lorimer certainly is one. He is always offering help and ideas for marketing especially video which he has had great success with over the last few years when nobody else was doing it. He is always encouraging us to run to our tribe as the vast majority of deals I do are with people I know and have something in common with. So yes, I work with a lot of single woman… ha ha, only kidding. Actually I do. Thinking about it, my last two deals were for successful independent ladies but lots of my business in from the world of entertainment, both sides of the camera and musicians as well. For the past 12 months I have been building a team at PLG , my brokerage, I have been training two young agents, Dakota and Colton who are both now competent in their own right which has allowed me to social network more, face to face with them helping with the extra workload. I get to instigate, delegate and negotiate although I give all of our clients my personal cell phone number and they are welcome to call me anytime with any question they might have.

What’s the future hold for JC? Short term and long term. Any ultimate goal?

I know, to be happy and healthy and for everyone I meet to leave with a positive experience. It would be kind of fun to play a leading role in a big blockbuster, win an Oscar maybe? Fun maybe who knows, you know funny enough two of my friends were in the Green Book this year that won best picture, I’m helping one of then buy a condo right now in Marina Del Rey.