Kristian Ventura is a sensitive artist on and off the screen. He first garnered attention for his outstanding portrayal of Richard III in Shakespeare's legendary play, which he performed while studying acting at the University of Southern California. But we are super excited about his role as Simon on the new series "School Spirits" on Paramount+, where he will quickly become your favorite character has he assists his best friend in determining who her murder is. In addition to acting, Kristian loves to write and is very active with his community in South Los Angeles and internationally. Please read on to learn more about Kristian in our exclusive interview below. I know we are excited to see what is next for him!

Where are you based?
Los Angeles has been home for most of my life now. I live in this special place I found a few years ago that I can’t seem to move out of. It’s a Jewish temple/church called a Chabad House. I’m not Jewish, but they let me stay in their rooms up top. It’s this beautiful, old building with stained glass windows and rabbis. Who thought? I guess life can be anything.

What inspired you to pursue acting and how did you first get started?
I came across a poem from Sylvia Plath yesterday. I might start carrying it with me. One line goes, “If you pluck out my heart to find what makes it move, you’ll halt the clock that syncopates our love.” In that same vein, I feel if we ever get to understand why we love something, or someone, we’ll see that there was never anything figure out. You do. I loved acting with such fervor and never understood why.

Could you tell us more about how your unconventional upbringing influenced your identity, desire to act, and want to give back to the world?
When you’re a kid, you’re so quick to accept things, so it becomes your life and you don’t mind as much. But as I got into my late teens and still never slept in my own bed, and noticed the rooms kept changing, and the food came from everywhere, and my mom was all alone, I think I caught a glimpse of how hard certain families can have it. And worse than mine. And since then, as opposed to the fluidity of my passion for art, service became a more rational, intentional obligation to pay attention to people who are forgotten. Now I say that because it’s how I truly feel, but I’ll balance my answer by saying: aren’t Oreo shakes the best?

We loved you as Simon on School Spirits! You were by far our favorite character! Can you tell us a little bit about the show and Simon?
Yes. School Spirits is a drama set in a high school where a murder occurred. The girl who is dead, Maddie, is a ghost and strangely enough, she can communicate with Simon who is alive. I play Simon, who spends every waking hour trying to help unravel the mystery. The heartbreaking problem he realizes though is that the faster he helps solve his best friend’s death, the less time he has to ever talk to her again.

School Spirits is a really interesting idea for a storyline and Simon has one of the most interesting roles. What is your favorite part about the show?
I think the symbol of a ghost is so powerful. An entity that exists in death — it allows for great themes. It’s not really a teen show. It’s not really one genre, either. It’s more of this story that helps us to reflect on death, on regret, on love. That’s the menu. I love that however wild fiction gets, it still manages for us see into ourselves, sometimes even deeper than realism. Screenwriters to me have always been sensitive explorers in this jungle of humanity— and since I read the pilot, I’ve felt the writing places viewers in the front seat of their own heart.

School Spirits has been renewed for a second season! Congrats! Can you tell us anything about season two without too many spoilers?
I haven’t been briefed, but my gut senses a direction that goes towards the sciences. What really are the supernatural parameters of ghosts? I hope we get to understand Janet and how she feels. Learn more about Mr. Martin. And Simon believes he’s gone insane, so it’s certainly not going to be an easy senior year for him.

Not only are you a fabulous actor, but you are a writer as well. Do you have a first love between the two? Do you have an interest in writing for TV/film?
The way I’ve always seen it was I cannot help but do anything in life except perform. However, the nature of the actor is to accept or reject the roles that come their way — and occasionally I itch and go, “Agh, I wish I could read a story that went like this…” And so writing has just been a tactic for me to communicate to the world ideas I wanted to make sure we’re offered.

Can you tell us about your novel, A Happy Ghost? What was the process like for bringing it to life?
I used to work at a hotel in Beverly Hills. The guests who stayed were often actors, athletes, producers, the whole industry. I worked the front desk on night shifts and had so many experiences, really dark ones, that I couldn’t see society in the same light anymore. The world looked a lot like luxury, deceit… sorrow. I left after a few months, then wrote a book about a hotel receptionist named Andrei and exaggerated his employment to a few years. The book is about him thinking, in the span of one day, how to escape the numbness he feels from what he witnessed. I wrote it from a few experiences and I wanted people to time travel — to skip the shadows of working in the hotel industry and learn what he learned. But really, it’s about moments, an awareness of people, boredom, and adulthood.

What were some of the biggest challenges you faced getting a break in Hollywood?
Love and an actor’s life are synonymous. In love, you get hurt again and again and ask how you will ever heal. You think it’s really over. But then you always meet someone new that surprises you, gives you a new flavor of humanity you can’t even comprehend, and suddenly you can love again. When I read for a role, I accept the character in my body in the most personal way. And when I find out I didn’t get it, I have to let it die, and then I grieve. I worry that I won’t come across another piece of writing that moved me the same way. But months later, a new part comes along that you couldn’t have predicted. Romance and acting will always catch you by surprise. They’re immeasurable attachments. My biggest challenge was hanging on in the time in between.

What advice would you give to aspiring actors and authors who are just beginning their journey?
Take off your sunglasses. It’s not a city to be cool. It’s not a city to be so tough and so beautiful. People turn it to be that way, but I see Los Angeles as a place where creative souls are happily drawn to. But often you’ll attend an event where people pretend at lengths to be poised, exotic, and ice cold. It’s anti-art. That’s the opposite of how the world trusts us to behave. We are leaders of what is good inside us. So talk to one another, be open and friendly. Take the sunglasses off — we are all here to tell the truth, so the eyes are a good place to start.

You changed your name from Kristian Flores to Kristian Ventura. What inspired this change?
I never knew my father. He gave me his last name, but I never understood why I should bear it if all this time my mother raised me. It was never something I wanted to keep. Earlier this year, he ended his own life in San Francisco. I knew the man I wanted to be, so I embraced my mother’s family side and took her name.

What have been some of the most meaningful projects you’ve taken part in while serving your community?
Right now I’m currently in France. I’m doing our interview from a town called Lourdes, in the South, and it’s the dearest place on earth. Pilgrims come here in need of healing from their illnesses with the water known to provide miracles. A lot of them are paralyzed, or have some physical deformity, but of course many sicknesses can’t be seen. I volunteer here in the summertime — mainly because it was clear how greatly their experiences are affected by the volunteers who help them, hold them, talk to them. If you ever visit Lourdes, it is the quickest way to seeing the core of who we are.

Poverty starts with how you grow up. What changes in the world would you like to see to help better support lower income populations? Especially to aid children to grow out of these environments.
After the conditions of food and housing are met to a child, the key is education. Proper education. There’s simply no other angle to this. It’s an immortal priority — and it can’t ever be underestimated. It’s not only because it allows for economic mobility, but it’s what education does for us. For homes and generations of homes. People are trapped into poverty, it’s the reality of living in a certain area of the world, and naturally, children get abandoned. If you take the case of orphans for example, majority of orphaned children have at least one living parent. What does that tell us about poverty? It’s that the problem is yes, a tangled, multifaceted mess— but if unraveled carefully and slowly, human beings can improve at being human beings by learning about human beings in the classroom. At all costs, every child should get to listen. And it sounds like an oversimplification to say education ends poverty, but it’s a way of offering the world to a child. And at the very least, it will secure families.

The Supreme Court just abolished Affirmative Action, which has been an attempt to help these communities. What are your thoughts on this ruling? How do you think we can move forward to protect these people with Affirmative Action no longer in place?
It’s a step backwards. I’ve spoken to an attorney and a schoolteacher about the ruling to understand the scope of the abolishment. It of course hurts to see a court deem the pretty clear struggles of colored students as “vague.” There’s nothing vague about not having money to afford SAT prep, or your last name not having a recognizable legacy to admissions officers. But if you asked me honestly, I will tell you that I am not worried. No one can imprison a soul. I think in each of us, there is something infinitely stronger than pieces of paper, rulings, systems, and constructs — and that thing is the human spirit. It doesn’t matter where you are in the world, there will be something in you that wants to triumph and see beauty and seize the life you deserve. And this spirit is larger than the stop signs the world plants in your road. We drive our life, despite regulations. We always have ourselves, our independent mind, our will, and history and poets reveal to us that this pure force wins every time. My purpose as an actor is to nurture and protect that spirit— so that it will never be damaged in rooms, or completely deadened, but is still alive with life and refreshed. Affirmative Action abolished or not, political intervention or not, every person is capable and responsible for finding what perfectly awaits them.

It has been a rough few years, how have you been staying positive?
I wouldn’t call myself positive, but I’m very hopeful. And books give me hope. And movies. Lots of books. Lots of movies.

What is your motto in life?
The risk is worth the possibility.

To learn more about Kristian please follow him on Instagram:
Instagram: @kristianventura

Photo Credit: Tate Becherer

Kristian Ventura - The Romance Of Acting