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Photo credit: Sela Shiloni, courtesy of Paul Raci.
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Paul Raci on His ‘Sound of Metal’ Breakout and How Acting Saved His Life


August 5, 2024

Everyone has their own, unique story. However, Paul Raci’s story is just a bit more unique than most. He’s a Vietnam vet and a survivor of addiction. Born to deaf parents, he is fluent in American Sign Language and spent years making a living as an interpreter while he chased the performing dragon.

After more than four decades of small parts and one-liners, that knowledge of ASL helped him land the role that would redefine his entire career and change his life.

Raci’s masterful performance in the hit 2019 drama Sound of Metal earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor and opened up a whole new world for him and his career, all at the tender age of 70. That’s the other unique thing about Paul Raci: he caught his big break after he was already collecting Social Security. Now, he’s not only in the acclaimed drama Sing Sing, opposite fellow Oscar nominee Colman Domingo, he’s also got the drama The Secret Art of Human Flight, later this summer. He spoke to us from his home in LA. 

How did you get acting?

I was originally a rock and roll singer in my high school days, and before and after Vietnam. I was going to the University of Illinois to get out of my duty in Vietnam on my second tour and, quite by accident, I saw a door that said “theater” and I opened the door and looked inside. I saw what they were doing and went in, and I met a professor there who saved my life. I wanted to know what he knew. He was one of those acting teachers that you just … I was like a vampire.

How did they save your life?

It’s the same thing that’s going on in Sing Sing. These men meet a teacher who has something that gives them direction.

As a young man, coming back from tours that I did, I was upset, angry and confused about what was going on. I fell into acting, and then I started a theatre company there, The Immediate Theater. I was all about Stanislavski and The Method. For years and years and years, I did theater, and then in my late 60s, I was doing theater, TV and film here and there.

[I was] still struggling for financial success, but as an actor, I was pretty well secure with myself. When you get a chance like Sound of Metal, it was an opportunity of a lifetime, but I turned the role down twice before I accepted it.

I’m sorry, what?

At first I thought they were looking for a deaf actor, and my buddy Troy Kotsur was put in the mix, but they said “No, we need a guy who is deaf later in life from Vietnam who can speak right.” I turned it down again because I was making more money as an American Sign Language interpreter in the judicial court system here in LA than they were going to pay me to go to the East Coast and film this Sound of Metal movie. I have a mortgage to pay, here. Then my agent said, “He’s on the phone, you gotta talk to this guy,” so we worked it out.

I remember when the movie came out, there was press about you, and they talked about the fact that you’d grown up with deaf parents and were fluent in ASL. That knowledge allowed you to pay your bills, buy your house and support a family, even as acting wasn’t.

I put my daughter through college. I had two and three jobs at the same time. Always, though, always auditioning for something, always looking for something. Now and then you get to be a guest star on a show, you get a little bump there and then right back to the grind.

I just love the craft of acting. I love working on a script, I love the pre-work. Everything about it. I’m just in love with it. That’s why I say it saved my life. When I’m when I’m working as an actor, I’m fulfilled. I just kept on going with the love of the work.

I think that one of the things I’m getting at is that there’s an inspirational aspect to your career, that you put the time in, that it continued to be fulfilling for you, and that huge break may have come really late, but it still came. It was still worth waiting for.

Absolutely. As long as you’re doing your craft with truth and it’s honest, that’s all you can ask. Another thing at this age, people are saying things about Paul Raci. It’s heartwarming because my whole life is added up until this moment.

I’ve been a counselor myself in an addiction ministry. I’ve met a lot of great men in my life. Great leaders, tutors and teachers. This man that I’m portraying in Sing Sing, this great man named Brent Buell brought that acting program into the walls of Sing Sing after friends told him not to do it, but he wanted to. He wanted to teach and have these men be fulfilled and he accomplished it. There’s another great man that I’ve met in my life.

There’s a lot of great men, and you better hold on to all these. Even if you’re a bartender, I don’t care what you’re doing, because you’re going to be able to use it in your work.

Let’s talk about Sound of Metal. I thought what you did in that movie was the best performance by any actor in any movie that year. Did you know that you were nailing it?

I appreciate that very much. I knew what was going on. I knew that it was good while we were doing it.

When I got home after we shot the last scene, It was the last time I was going to see [costar and fellow Oscar nominee] Riz [Ahmed], because we shot it in succession. I went home that night to my hotel room, and I cried my eyes off out of relief. I knew that this was important work, and I knew that I could do it.

I wrote my Oscar speech right there. Not out of cockiness, just as a spiritual way of, “I’m gonna speak my word.”

Your career has changed enormously in the last five or six years. What’s that like, finally getting your due after so many years of working at it?

(Laughs) I’ve always got some young director who wants me to do something. Sound of Metal, Sing Sing, these are both two young film directors who weren’t throwing a lot of money around. It was just the heart and the spirit of the thing. And both were shot in 21 days, so I have this joke that Marvel shouldn’t call me. I’m not interested. If you can’t make a movie in 21 days, forget it.

(Whispers) I’m kidding, Marvel. Call me any time. (Laughs)

It must be incredibly gratifying that people want to call you and say, “I want Paul Raci to bring his thing to my project.”

I’m not one to toot my own horn, but now there is a “Paul Raci” type out there. Somebody who looks like his face has been beaten up for years and taken a lot of shots. (Laughs)

It’s good. I’m reading a lot of scripts. I have a production company CODA Heart. I executive produced The Secret Art of Human Flight. I’m producing a documentary written by a CODA [Child of Deaf Adults] brother of mine, whose parents were in the movement of going to Grateful Dead concerts. Jerry Garcia cut off a zone in front of the stage, he called it the Deaf Zone, so deaf people could come.

It’s crazy. He’s got all this found footage of deaf people in the 70s with afros and peace and love, it’s fascinating. I’m producing that, I got a couple of other scripts that I’m working on, that I’m not going to be in, but I’m trying to get unheard voices from behind the camera to in front of the camera. I’m talking about deaf people, vision impaired, anything impaired, whatever. People want to be involved in the industry. I want more depiction of it.

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