237: Plot Twist: Why Achieving Your Dreams Won’t Make You Happier with Zachary Levi, Actor and Mental Health Advocate

In this bite-sized episode of The Light Watkins Show, actor and mental health advocate Zachary Levi shares a deeply personal and powerful story about the ups and downs of his career and mental health journey. Known for his starring roles in Shazam and American Underdog, Zachary’s path to success wasn’t as smooth as it might seem. In fact, when his dreams of acting came true, his personal life hit some of its lowest points.

Zachary opens up about the pivotal moment when his career began to take off and how that success strained his relationship with his mother. He talks candidly about the mental health challenges he faced, including depression and suicidal thoughts, even when it appeared from the outside that he had it all. The episode dives deep into his struggles with self-worth, the impact of unresolved trauma, and how he used therapy to transform his life.

Listeners will find Zachary’s honesty and vulnerability inspiring as he reflects on what it means to find true purpose and happiness, even when life’s plot twists lead to unexpected places. Whether you're a fan of his work or someone looking for inspiration on navigating your own challenges, this episode delivers powerful insights into resilience, mental health, and the importance of doing the inner work.

Tune in for an episode filled with lessons on perseverance, self-discovery, and how the toughest moments can sometimes open the door to our greatest growth.

And if you’re curious to know how the rest of his story plays out, click here.

Transcript

ZL: "I thought, well, maybe I'm not cut out for this. Maybe I'm wasting my time and I'm wasting God's time. I'm wasting the universe's time. So I remember having this real heart-to-heart with God one night in my car. I'm like, I need you to show me that I'm not wasting my time or your time. Because if I need to be doing something else, if I need to go back and go back to school and figure something out, if I need to go be something else and do something else to serve this world, then let me go do that." 

[INTRODUCTION] 

Hey friend, welcome back to The Light Watkins Show. I'm Light Watkins, and I have conversations with ordinary folks just like you and me who've taken extraordinary leaps of faith and the direction of their path, their purpose, or what they've identified as their mission in life. Today, I have another bite size plot twist episode for you.

A plot twist is a shorter clip from a past episode where the guest shares the story of the pivotal moment in their life trajectory, where they found the gateway to their calling. The idea behind sharing their plot twists is to inspire you to lean into those plot twists whenever they happen in your life. Because usually when you get turned around from what you thought was your path in life, what's actually happening is you're being detoured towards your actual path. And sometimes that looks like getting laid off or you got betrayed. 

Or in the case of today's guest, actor and mental health advocate, Zachary Levi, it's getting his dream come true. Now you may know Zachary from his roles in Shazam, the action hero franchise, as well as the NFL football quarterback, Kurt Warner story called American Underdog.

But Zach spent his earlier acting career bussing tables and washing cars. And when his dream finally came true and he booked his first major acting gig, that's when his relationship with his mom started to crumble. And they eventually became estranged for 13 years, which was difficult for him because his mom was part of his support system.

And he had a tricky relationship with the possibility of failure, which led to depression and to some suicidal ideation. So while on the outside, it looked like Zachary won the lottery and he's living the dream, on the inside he didn't love himself and he barely even liked himself. And that's what ultimately led him to doing his inner work. Let's listen in.

[2:28] ZL: I think around six is when I was just cognizant enough to recognize, “Oh, that box that we watch all of these entertaining things on is a television. The people that I see on this television, that are pretending, they're pretending to be other people, that's acting. That's a job. Oh, I'm going to do that. That is absolutely what I'm going to do.”

In fact, I knew that I was supposed to. I know a lot of people say these things and it doesn't always necessarily pan out for them. That could have been my journey, too. I knew that I knew, man. Genuinely, on a spiritual level. Even as a young kid, I understood that there was a concept of a God. There was something bigger than us. I believed that thing that was bigger than us, also loved us and was very much involved in our lives, and was incredibly powerful and had plans. You could be a part of those plans. I felt very convicted.

Again, maybe it's just because when you're a kid, you absolutely believe everything, because you have nothing but optimism. There's no thing that has happened in your life to shut your optimism and your hope down like that. It's not until later when you've run up against wall after wall and rejection after rejection, that you start being like, “Okay, listen, hop along. Maybe you're not as smart as you think you are. Or maybe you're not as talented as you think you are.” Like I said, I know plenty of people who felt the same, or seemingly, they say they felt the same conviction that I felt. Maybe we didn’t. Maybe the conviction I felt was actually a whole nother level of conviction. Maybe not. I don't know. I can't feel. I wasn't there when any of these other people felt whatever they felt.

But at six years old, I knew that that was my destiny. I did everything in my life to keep moving in that direction. I didn't really find theater, organized entertainment until I got into middle school, because elementary schools don't really have that. I was getting along just fine being yak-yak, ham it up, class clown Zach, that was enough to scratch my itch and keep going and doing voices and sketches and making up new lyrics to songs, like Weird Al Yankovic. All that stuff was enough for me to keep on this path.

Then I found theater in middle school, and did a few things there. Then getting into high school, that was now another level of really solidifying it. Then community theater outside of that, but yeah, I knew. I knew that.

 [4:49] LW: When that lady came up to you and said, “You got it, kid,” did you believe you had it at that time? Or was that like, it's about time somebody else came up and recognized and offered to help me?

[5:01] ZL: Kind of. The truth is, I always knew, like I said, at six, I knew. I knew that I knew. I can't explain it. I just knew.

[5:08] LW: You knew you were good, too. You knew it wasn't just like a hobby. This was something you –

[5:11] ZL: No. No, no, no. At six, I didn't know I was any good. I mean, at six, I was having plenty of family, or family friends, or whatever indulge me when I would be silly and do these things. Maybe in my little kid, I had an inflated idea of just how funny I was, because people were being kind. But by the time I got to February of 1999, doing this play in Ojai, and this wonderful woman, Maria Comfort, who was this retired manager, and she came up to me. I was 18. Yeah, and she says, “You've got a kid, and I want to help you.”

Now, at that point, I had been doing theater for a good bit. Again, all through middle school, all through high school. All through all that time, I had quite a few people. Not necessarily professionals, although some were professionals in the industry, or had been actors, or whatever. I had many people. God used a lot of different voices in my life to keep encouraging me along the path. Not so much my parents. Not that my parents didn't think I had a talent, but they were caught up in their own stuff. If my mom and stepdad were healthier people and weren't constantly wrapped up in whatever all that drama was and had more time and bandwidth to really give to us kids and encourage us in our own endeavors, I think my mom would have seen it and believed in it way earlier and would have said, “Well, let's figure this out. I mean, you love this like other kids don't love this. You keep getting cast in lead roles of all these things and other people keep coming to you.”

Directors, or parents of other kids that would come up to me after shows.I know it was God, because it wasn't just some comments aside. There’d be parents that would seek me out. They would say, “Hey, don't ever stop doing this. Don't ever stop doing this. You have got to do this.” It was those things that honestly, they kept me buoyed, because there were plenty of times, either between the chaos at home, or as I got older and feeling like – I'm 18, I'm like, “Why are these doors not opening?” Because I was doing this theater in Ojai. Ojai, California is this really artsy-fartsy little town, with lots of people who work in Hollywood. I knew some of them and they would see the shows I was in. They would be very complimentary. Yet, doors weren't opening. I was like, “What is going on?”

I knew. I mean, I knew for years that I had a knack for it, a talent for it, an it for it. I knew deep down in my heart, in the same way that I knew I was supposed to do it, I knew that I had the right stuff for it. That could still amount to a hell of a lot of nothing, if those breaks don't happen, if those little women like Maria don't come up to you at a foyer out of nowhere, when there's 30 people in the audience some night and go out of their way to say, “I want to help you achieve what you deserve to achieve. Because what you have is a talent that other people should see. It's something that you do well, and you should continue to go and do well and get better at.” Yeah, that's how all that journeyed.

[8:08] LW: How did getting the Less Than Perfect gig, which was your first major television gig, how did that affect your mental state one way or the other? Did it make you feel more fulfilled inside? Or were you still battling whatever was going on inside? Talk about that. Because I think people have this idea that, “Oh, once you get successful, then everything changes.” How was that for you?

[8:35] ZL: So I started auditioning, like Maria introduced me to a manager, who got me to a casting director. I mean, really, I mean, the manager didn't even do that work. It was the manager I was with at the time was setting up my headshots. I had no resume. I had no credits. I had no nothing. My resume, or my headshot just kept ending up in these boxes, these unknown boxes. This random casting director was casting something and randomly pulled my headshot out and saw me for an audition and turned the camera off and was like, “Who are you? What are you doing here? How have I never met you before?” I explained all that stuff about doing theater and whatnot.

Then she got me to an agent who was – I mean, one of the best agencies in Hollywood, Endeavor, before they merged with William Morris. This was back in 1999. I mean, this all happened in ’99. In 1999, I signed with these agents. I'm now 19. I'm going on legitimate auditions, but I'm still living in my parents’ place in Ventura. I'm working at a carwash, and I'm bussing tables at restaurants and scraping by.

Within a year, I had booked a pilot for a TV show, which was next-level elation. The pilots are interesting, because you're right at the like, “Oh, my gosh, we made it and we're going to do it.” But the pilot is just a pilot, until it gets picked up and turned into a television show. Well, that pilot didn't get picked up. Then I was right back to bussing tables and washing cars, and auditioning my butt off. Nothing was really going. Then a year goes by and I booked another pilot. I’m like, “Oh, my God. This is the one.” Then that doesn't get picked up. I'm back to grinding and grinding and grinding.

I almost gave up, by the way, which is in hindsight, so silly, because to book a pilot, and the success I was having was actually quite successful for a brand-new kid to the scene, most people don't have that level of agent when they're starting. They're pounding the pavement every day. They're barely getting commercial auditions. I was auditioning for full-on feature films and leads in television shows. I was testing all the time, and I was actually booking pilots.

But because the two of them didn't get picked up, and because I wasn't booking a lot of jobs in between, really at all, I thought, “Well, maybe I'm not cut out for this. Maybe I'm wasting my time and I'm wasting God's time. I'm wasting university time.” I remember having this real heart-to-heart with God one night in my car. I'm like, “I need you to show me that I'm not wasting my time, or your time. Because if I need to be doing something else, if I need to go back and go back to school and figure something out, if I need to go be something else and do something else to serve this world, then let me go do that.”

I shit you not, on the heels of that time, of that prayer time, I booked this job. It was this cable movie that was on FX. That was the first thing I ever did that actually saw the light of day and people saw. We had a viewing party at my parents’ place. It was a whole deal. I was a small part in it, but nonetheless. That was enough to buoy me through to the next pilot season and the next pilot season. The third one was when I got Less Than Perfect, and Less Than Perfect got picked up.

I put all that context there to say, I'm now 21. I've booked this pilot. The pilot is picked up. I know, we're going to go do at least 13 episodes of a TV show that I am one of the leads on. I was just washing cars and bussing tables. Now, I'm quite literally experiencing the first real, real powerful taste of this dream I've had since I was four years old, essentially. I was on cloud nine. It was wonderful. It felt great for my mental and emotional well-being. I also was totally unaware at 21 of just how much damage and trauma was sitting in me.

Of course, it felt great. At 21, a lot of that stuff hasn't really manifested yet. You're still in this clueless time. I wish to God, that anyone in my life, I wish I had anybody between 20 and 25, grab me by the scruff of the neck and throw me into therapy, when I didn't think I needed it and tell me, “Oh, you do need it. You have no idea how much you need it. You're going to go talk to a therapist, and you're going to work through stuff, and you're going to figure out, oh, my god, wow, I had no idea these things were brewing.”

At that point, I had no idea the deeper things that were going on internally. All I knew was externally, I was very much succeeding in a way that very, very, very few people even get the opportunity to attempt to succeed at. I was beyond stoked. Yeah.

[12:57] LW: Behind the scenes, this is the period where it looked like the relationship between you and your mom started to go off the rails in a major way?

[13:05] ZL: Yeah, because all of a sudden now, I went from being her son who was struggling to break into the business, at which point she was already in my ear, “I should be your manager. I should be your agent.”

[13:18] LW: Right. You know, I worked with ZZ Top.

[13:22] ZL: Yeah, exactly. Oh, man. “I worked with ZZ Top,” she would say. Yeah. I mean, because even though I wasn't quite broken into the business yet, I was still auditioning for legit stuff. I think she started to see the writing on the wall a little bit. Again, as a woman who did not feel purpose, did not feel worth, did not feel identity of her own in her life, this was the way that she could get in. It was far more attractive than what my sisters were doing, which was still going to school, if you're my younger sister. If you're my older sister, she was either bartending, or waitressing, or maybe managing a restaurant or a bar.

I'm doing Hollywood. Hey, Hollywood. I was like, that's a really cool, attractive thing that my mom might be able to get her way into, and then have this purpose. Then all of a sudden, I got the job. Now, she wants to be a part of it. I don't even think my mom really knew that she was doing these things, honestly. I think that so much of this stuff is subconscious. I got the show. We're doing the show. It's got a live studio audience, like most multi-camera sitcoms do. Of course, I want my friends and family all to come down to all the tapings and see it. It's so much fun. I told my parents. I told my mom. I told her like, “Hey, you stay up in the audience. I'll come find you. I'll come say hi. At the end of the show, we'll all go have dinner and drinks afterward. You guys stay up there. I gotta do my job.”

Everyone abided by this rule, except for my mom. Because my mom couldn't bear not being down in it. She had to be a part of it. She had to have some of that for herself, because she didn't have anything in her own life that was giving her that. She couldn't just chill. I always likened it to – I told my mother since I was a kid, “I can't wait to be successful and buy you a house and do all of that.” I meant it. I wanted to. I loved my mom so much. I just needed her to chill the fuck out and ride in the backseat of the car. Take the ride. “You don't have to do anything anymore, mom. You don't have to navigate. You don't have to drive. You just get to enjoy. Just sit back there and enjoy the ride.”

But my mom, I mean, backseat driving wasn't enough for her. She had to barrel up there and get in on. Get it on. “I need to be up there. I need to be doing this. I'm your mother. I brought you into this world. I can take you out of it.” That kind of stuff. It just wasn't enough for her. She had to get in there. In doing so, was insanely impairing our relationship, because I'm a young adult trying to be taken seriously at work with a bunch of other adults. All of them were older than me. Everyone in the cast was older than me. Every one of my bosses was older than me. I'm the baby here.

I'm trying to step into being a man and my mom would be down on the floor, regaling the writers with all of these embarrassing stories like, how I wet the bed until I was in sixth grade and garbage like that. I'm like, “What the fuck are you doing? What are you doing? Why are you doing it?” I knew why she was doing it. She was doing it just so she could get her way in there. Just weasel her way in there so then she could be friends with the writers and the producers, and then maybe she would then start to work her manipulative magic and be like, “You know, I wonder.”

Who knows what pitch she would have had? “Oh, I've done some acting in my day.” Trying to somehow find. Again, but in the pursuit of finding purpose, which there's nothing wrong with that. It's just how you go about it, and my mom went about it so wrong, so long. Yeah, and this is right around then, right when I started that show, it was when I had to put the brakes on it really. Because my mom would literally be calling me daily in my dressing room and berating me, calling me a bastard, saying I don't love her, because I didn't want her to be my agent, or my manager, or because I didn't want her to come down on the floor and be hanging out with my writers. She couldn't handle that.

Her way of not feeling not loved, which was not me not loving her, but that's what she felt, so she had to attack back. Now I'm in tears in my dressing room, moments before I got to go down and make funny for all the people. I was like, “This is not a healthy thing. I cannot abide. This will not work.” I had to say, “Hey, no more. Until you can speak to me in a way that's not this abusive and toxic, we won't have a relationship.” That was basically the beginning of what would then end up being a 13-year non-relationship. Then 13 years later, she passed.

[17:41] LW: You went into great detail in the book, it all culminates at this intervention that your mom has for you, which shows that she can also manipulate everyone else as well to get on her side. Then that's when you eventually had to cut her off. Talk a little bit about your journey. Again, I want to focus on the mental health aspects of being an actor in Hollywood, relatively successful, steadily working. Then also, managing the other things that you wanted to achieve in your life, such as being married, having successful relationships. What was going on in terms of that, over that decade that you were now an actor and had this dodgy relationship with your mom, but close relationship with your sisters?

[18:29] ZL: The truth is, over that decade, a few years after I cut off my relationship with my mom, I was 23, nearly 24. I started dating who would end up becoming my ex-wife. We met early on, fireworks. Wow, just everything, so incredible. Both wanted to get married young. I thought it was going to happen. It all fell apart. I blamed myself. That definitely was the moment that I needed to go to therapy, because I didn't realize that I was really just attracted to a version of my mom. I was doing exactly what Carl Jung talks about in spades. This is psychology 101.

We both were on some level. If you're unhealthy, you are putting out your unhealthy vibes and you are attracting an unhealthy version of love to your life. Because that all fell apart and I blamed myself and I already didn't know at the time, but I didn't love myself. I went into this deep, deep, deep, deep, deep spiral, depression. Again, also started having some suicidal ideation at that point. I was able to pull out of it, mainly because I was working. I still had some purpose that I had to get up. I had to get up out of bed and I had to go to work. I had people depending on me. I would get dopamine, when I went to work, because I was accomplishing. I was doing.

I didn't realize until actually, even after I went to all this life-saving therapy, that I think really, one of the biggest reasons why I've even suffered with depression on the level I've suffered is because of my dopamine deficiencies that I've struggled with throughout my life, which is also what's led to various addictions. Be it through substances, or video games, or sex, or whatever. These are all ways in which you are trying to supplement your lack of dopamine. This is also psychology 101. Although things were only really starting to piece together right now, we were at such an incredible time in science, where we're understanding how humans work, whether it's dopamine, or serotonin, or norepinephrine, or pick your hormone. These are all very important things and all directly relate to our mood and our ability to either be happy or not.

I was able to pull out of that tailspin, but I never worked on me. I didn't know that I didn't love me. Sex became a huge part of, whereas before, it wasn't really that much of a factor. All of a sudden, I basically just became, I don't know, chained to love. I thought, if this woman who I thought was going to be my wife and was the perfect woman, if that's not going to happen, well then, I'm just going to go have fun and lose myself and all of that, and feel better. You do for a second. You feel better for roughly those few seconds of that elation, where there's a girl that you fancy, that you think is beautiful and that wants to give that to you.

You think, “Okay. Then I must have worth, if they trust me and wanted to do this thing with.” But if you don't love yourself, that just immediately wears off and you need more of it, and you need more of it, and you need more of it. That was going on in my life. My relationship with booze, cigarettes. In high school, I screwed around with stuff like this a little bit, but then I actually went pretty straight edge and was wanting to be much more responsible about it.

Then after all this, there was just definitely a fuck it mentality. I was like, “Okay. Well, if I tried so hard, and I thought I was doing it all right, and this is the heartache that I'm left with, then fuck it. Then I'm just going to go live this other life.” Still being me, still loving people, or trying to, still trying to bring joy to the world, but not recognizing just how little to not at all that I loved myself. That all manifested in a lot of self-sabotage and self-destruction. Cigarettes, man, I smoked cigarettes for at that point, I mean, I started in high school and I quit. Then once I picked them back up again, I mean, that was in 2004. I smoked all the way until I was 37. That was, again, another 13 years at almost a pack a day. Thinking, no, because I like it. No, not just because I like it, but also, because I get dopamine from it, because you do. Because I didn't love myself.

None of this stuff, I realized until I had a complete falling apart, which is what led to the book. That didn't happen till I was 37. All of this time, even while my mom – my mom died, and I still didn't come to terms with all of the things that were haunting me and hurting me, and all that,  for another couple years after that. All this time, from 22 to 37, that 15 years, was me not knowing that I didn't love myself and all the ways in which that manifested, and me not being able to find love, shocker. Because if you don't love yourself first, you're not going to find it from somebody else. Not a healthy version of it anyway.

Me not stepping into all of the bits of my career that I wanted to, because also, shocker, if you don't love yourself, you're not going to have the confidence to really put yourself out there and stay on that, and know that little failures are okay. In fact, even big failures are okay. They don't define you. You learn from those things. If you don't have any real self-confidence, real self-love, you're terrified to fail. Because that failure is now telling you, “You're really worthless. You really don't have what it takes. You really are a piece of shit.” So you don't have the courage to go step out there and do the things that are necessary to bring about manifesting those larger, bigger things in your life. It just progressively got worse. That's ultimately what it was.

I was continuing to work. I would continue to keep achieving things. God continued to bless me. I continued to get to do really amazing things, but it was still not ultimately adding up to the career that I knew that I was supposed to be living and doing the life that I was supposed to be living. I couldn't figure out why, until ultimately, I had a complete mental breakdown and went to therapy at 37 and realized that that was the biggest part of the formula. I did not love myself. I barely liked myself.

[END]

That was Zachary Levi and to see what happens after Zachary realizes that he doesn't like who he's become, you can go to episode 139. And started around the 54 minute mark. And in addition to listening to the rest of his episode, I also recommend following Zachary on the socials @ZacharyLevi. And if you connect it with this conversation, you also want to check out my past interviews with Ava DuVernay, which is an episode 18. And she talks about how she switched from owning a PR agency to becoming a film director. You may also want to check out Humble the Poet's episode, which is 137, where he went from teaching school to becoming a spoken word artist and author. 

And another interview that we'll do is a plot twist one day, because it has such a fascinating backstory is Saul Williams, who won The Slam Poetry Championship after putting himself out there one fateful night in Brooklyn. And that's episode number 49, if you want to check that out. 

And if you know anyone else who's making the world a better place and they had an incredible plot twist in their life, email me your guest suggestions at light@lightwatkins.com. 

My other ask is that you take a few seconds to leave a rating or a review for the show. You always hear podcast hosts like me asking listeners like you to leave a rating because that's how a lot of guests will determine if they're going to come onto a podcast. So it does make a huge difference. All you do is you look at your device, you click on the name of the show. You scroll down past the first few episodes, you'll see a space with five blank stars. Just tap the star all the way on the right to leave a five star rating. And if you're feeling generous, write a one line review, just letting that potential listener know which episode you think they should consider starting with. And that can go a long way as well. 

Also, don't forget you can watch these plot twist episodes on my YouTube channel if you prefer to see what Zach looks like as he's sharing his story. And don't forget to subscribe on YouTube as well. 

Alright, I'll see you on Wednesday with the next long form conversation about an ordinary person doing extraordinary things to leave the world a better place. And until then. Keep trusting your intuition. Keep following your heart. Keep leaning into those plot twists in your life. And if no one's told you recently that they believe in you, I believe in you. Thank you and have a fantastic weekend.