In Which Center Stage Is The Place To Be
The parents were actors. Decent, competent if not inspired, but as committed to their work as to the traveling lifestyle. In a way, their only son hardly stood a chance. He grew into a kind of an odd kid, someone who never really knew anyone his own age, was usually brushed off by adults, but occasionally allowed to help behind the scenes. Occasionally allowed to sit up and listen to late night conversation and drinking and revelry, surrounded by the easy cameradery of the closed world of the theater, but, as the lone child, never really a part of it.
He taught himself to read by following along with the play on the scripts left scattered backstage, learned how to light, how to direct, how to even make costumes, all by just becoming part of the furniture.
It's part of what makes him a great actor. He can be anything to anyone, including no-one at all.
He never intended to act himself--it never occured to him, until he was fifteen and the company took in a new stage hand. There was that accident, and it was only minutes until curtains, and every seat was bought, and Alex had said shyly "I know it."
The seamstress had bundled him into the costume, tacking it up so his pants won't fall down on stage, and then it's three, two, one, entrance.
"What ho, good people." The second that light hits him, he ceases to be Alex Suarez.
And he's good. Alex knows he is, can tell objectively. More than that, once he's started, he can't really stop; it's like a drug, being someone else. It's freeing and bright and interesting, fresh and new even when the play's the same as the night before, or the night before that. To each audience, it's new, and he sees the words through their eyes, and that keeps it fresh for him.
His characters have intense relationships, friendships they would kill or die for. Alex doesn't. He lives the loyalty and betrayal and joy and despair each night on stage, but he doesn't connect like that with anyone himself for several years.
In a way, that makes it easier, because it's kept stored in a bottle, on call when he needs it and not just leaking out messily all over the place like it seems to do with other people.