Chrissy Metz may be a household name today thanks to her starring role on one of television’s most-talked-about shows, but the 36-year-old hasn’t lost sight of where she came from.
She’ll never forget what it was like to scrape by growing up or the struggles that came along with pursuing her dreams thereafter.
“There were nights my mom wouldn’t eat dinner,” Chrissy recalled. “She’d be like, ‘Oh, I’m not hungry.’ I knew she was giving up food to make sure we could eat, but when you’re 9 or 10 years old, you can’t help. It was devastating.”
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In an interview with Glamour Magazine, the “This Is Us” actress revealed she had less than a dollar in her bank account the day she was booked for the breakout drama.
“I didn’t know anybody with connections, I didn’t come from money, I didn’t go to Juilliard,” said Chrissy.
Metz had played a small role on “American Horror Story: Freak Show,” prior to being cast for “This Is Us,” but struggled to get hired for acting jobs in between. It was her mother who encouraged her not to move back home to Florida, but to continue trying to pursue acting saying, “You can either be miserable here and not pursue your dreams, or you can be miserable in LA and at least pursue what you want.”
Though she was getting by with hardly any money, and had maxed out her credit cards that were growing interest, Metz decided to stay and keep auditioning. She said she couldn’t have done it if it weren’t for the community she had around her—friends who offered her a place to stay when she needed one, and cooked her meals when she couldn’t afford food.
“I am so grateful that I had such an amazing support system, but when I booked ‘This Is Us,’ I had 81 cents in my bank account,” she said. “I could cry right now just thinking about it.”
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Coming from such a low place before, Metz is even more grateful for her newfound success, noting that “getting the role of Kate has changed everything.”
She also said that hearing other women tell her how much her role in the show has changed their lives “makes all the struggle, all the ramen noodles, all the times when I couldn’t pay my bills, all the times where I was like, ‘I can’t do this,’ worth it.”
