• The year was 1994. John French a waiter at a family owned diner is discovered by a well known film producer named Baz Luhrmann who will be producing a remake of Shakespeare’s play, Romeo and Juliet.
• Baz Luhrmann tries to convince John to be an actor in his film because he thinks that John would play the perfect Benvolio because John has very soft facial figures and is a seemingly peaceful and kind-hearted person.
• John eventually accepts the role and the film has great success. He feels like in less than a minute he went from nobody to a rising star. Considering that now he has to attend posh movie releases and has to walk down numerous red carpets.
• He partied with people who snorted coke from bathroom sinks and barfed up hundreds of dollars worth of alcohol. But after a few months, he began to feel restless. There was no real glory in impersonating the famous. John wanted to be the one being impersonated by others.
• But he was also becoming increasingly religious. The deeper he delved into the life of a film star, the more he realized that it was no place for anything spiritual. When he wanted to go to church, his managers would tell him he should be memorizing his scripts for upcoming movies. He had become a slave to a life that was no longer his…So he decided to quit acting all together by the end of 1999.
• In the year 2000, things hit rock bottom. He had two kids and a wife and no income coming in. The financial situation in his home got so bad that he needed to go to a church food bank because his family was hungry.
• Because of the newfound instability in John French’s household, he was also on the brink of divorce and to make matters worse his mother died of lung cancer.
• At the beginning of 2001, when his difficulties reached an ultimate high a homeless man on the street told him “Jesus of Nazareth loves you, man” and that
