He had tried to see what it was like to make acting his main event, but he decided ultimately he needed to do both. And he makes both work.

Not insignificantly, he met his wife in Phoenix at the same time, which influenced his decision about a potential move to Los Angeles, the obviously better option for aspiring actors.

I wondered a lot: How could I pursue this without totally being poor and having no job in LA and just getting by? he said. It was interesting brainstorming various options. Long story short is that I didnt go based on my life circumstances at the time.

I started to say, Well, how can I advance my acting career in Phoenix while doing this software engineering thing? My first thought was to try producing things, either with me in them or not. That way I could make something that could possibly be discovered and have potential to pop.

Since then, Suri has been juggling his job at Intel (which also involved the role change to systems analyst), the acting and producing, and being a husband and father.

This means having his agent schedule auditions during lunch, taking a vacation day if he needs to when shooting a commercial, and working nights and weekends on independent film and TV projects with people who have similar commitments to busy day jobs.

I was exhausted by the end of it, he said of his recent run of shooting an indy TV pilot, which was five days of extremely long weekend hours and late nights after being in the office all day. But thats how you make it work. It really stretches you thin though. You just do what you can.

Suris IMDB page lists his many roles over the years, some of which felt like milestones for him and others less notable.

The Mazda ad was a big break for him in a way, opening doors to his later work.

He had a supporting role in Dark Places, a 2005 feature film that went straight to DVD, but received distribution, which is a big deal for an independent film.

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