Just a Brooklyn Boy Who Can Be Anyone He Wants.

When my interview with Paul Ben-Victor came to a close, he said with a laugh, “Make me look good.” But with Ben-Victor, that’s not hard to do. The time spent talking with him was filled with laughs and stories, collected over the years of his acting career.
Though he’s just finished the second season of the USA series In Plain Sight, his “break” right now is hardly that. He and his fiancée, who have been together for three years, are busy planning a wedding and buying a house. Ben-Victor says he went from the role of an actor to a wedding planner and realtor. He can’t sit back and let other people plan for him. “I’ve gotta be hands-on with everything,” he says. “It’s a flaw.” One could argue that his hands-on involvement is hardly a flaw considering the success it’s brought him.
The one-time theater major with a focus in set design at Carnegie Mellon University made the transition to acting during his college years, explaining he was recruited. “A friend of mine was directing the play Short Eyes and he needed somebody to play Juan,” he says. “I was this wiry New York guy and I could play Latino people, so I guess I was the best fit for the role. It was easier than being in the catwalks, hanging lights, designing lighting plots.”
After Short Eyes, Ben-Victor was involved in another play that resulted in an emotional epiphany he recalls very clearly. “I remember getting off stage and people came up to me, praising me, and it was just an overwhelming sensation. I remember running across campus in the dark, sitting down under a tree and crying— I’m a big crybaby— it was this euphoric feeling and I said ‘Oh my gosh, I’m an actor.’” He knew he had found his calling. “I never had a doubt in my mind,” he says. “I knew it was something I could make a living doing.”
Like most budding actors, after graduation Ben-Victor went to New York, a homecoming for him as he grew up in Brooklyn. He started doing commercials and plays right away. His first role in the real world was playing another Latino character. His accent is phenomenal.  During the interview he introduced his own character, Tony, a gay Puerto Rican man who asked me through his lisped accent, “Does my butt look if his butt look fat?”
To anyone who has seen Ben-Victor’s work, from roles on HBO’s The Wire and Entourage, his performance as Moe in the television biography The Three Stooges, his appearances on Everybody Hates Chris, to his current role as Stan McQueen on In Plain Sight, it would seem the actor no longer needs to concern himself with developing his craft. But according to Ben-Victor, that couldn’t be further from the truth. “I’m still trying to learn how to do it, I watch myself and say, ‘Stop doing this! Stop doing that! Why are you looking there? Lose more weight—what’s with your double chin? Stop making faces. Leave your hands alone.’ I just pick at myself; I’m always developing.”
His key tool to developing his skills? Years of auditioning. Ben-Victor spent a great amount of time in his home office, living room, or bedroom coming up with characters for auditions. “That process has happened hundreds of times over the years, but that, for me, is a tremendous gymnasium workout for my skills,” he says.
One experience he recalls in particular was preparing for the role of Moe in The Three Stooges. “Everyone always imitates Curly, no one ever does Moe, and I have a lot of wigs ’cause I’m a bald guy. It was a $3,000 wig and I cut it to the bowl cut and I stuck it on my head and I looked in the mirror and I said ‘What’s the matta’ wit you?’ I thought, holy crap, this is yours; it was just me and Moe.”
It’s his instinct for characters and dedication to their development that led to Ben-Victor’s current success on In Plain Sight. He modestly attributes the show’s success to star Mary McCormack as well as to the fresh concept of a crime drama about a witness protection program, but Ben-Victor’s performance as McQueen is just as vital. He is a charismatic, devoted and intense actor who makes you want to watch.
Ben-Victor has a very close group of friends, some of whom he was up with until 4 a.m. the night before drinking “delicious wine,” he says. “They joke with me and ask me, say, ‘Who are you making them believe you are this week?’ That part of my life is make-believe, it’s like Halloween every day.”
Aside from auditioning for roles, Ben-Victor is writing his own scripts and roles, although his writing partner might not be one you’d expect. Ben-Victor works on scripts alongside his mother, a playwright in her mid-70s. One script has already been brought to the stage, and another is currently in early film production. He describes his mom as “a super-talented, super-funny fireball. I’m a huge fan of her work; I sit there and try to fish it out of her. One day we just started bantering about a script and there was a connection,” he recalls.
That closeness with his mother extends to the rest of his family, with many family members residing on Long Island. Although he has been living in California for the past 20 years, Ben-Victor makes sure to visit the East Coast often. “I have a really fun group of aunts and uncles; we have the best Hannukah parties. I’m just your everyday Brooklyn boy.”
There is no doubt that Paul Ben-Victor is enjoying his time as an actor. He’s played a wide range of roles that allow him to explore different aspects of his abilities. And with a hit series on USA, he isn’t planning on stopping anytime soon. “I just like doing it, it’s so much fun. I like to keep busy. I think most of us feel that way, we want to keep doing what we enjoy.”