PORT BARRE, La. (KLFY) -- From small town beginnings in Port Barre to the wrestling ring to the star of a motion picture, the journey of Gabriel Perez is one that's been anything but conventional, but it's one that shows that dreams really can come true.
"As soon as I graduated high school, a lot of my friends are going to college and all that, and I was like, 'I don't think I'm going to do that.' I always wanted to somehow tell stories," Perez said.
The path Perez chose to tell stories was initially through professional wrestling, traveling to Florida to train under WWE Superstar Tyler Breeze, until one moment changed everything.
"He throws me into the turnbuckle, and I hit it and then all of a sudden I just felt something like Snap in my back. And I was like, 'Oh, that's weird'," Perez said.
The result was a shoulder injury that would take Perez from the sport, and return home to Port Barre.
But during his time at home, Perez remembered his love for another form of storytelling: acting.
"It's kind of just like a crazy idea, but it's like, I'm going to I'm going to go for it," Perez said. "You know, I've been thinking about doing acting but it always kind of held me back thinking I couldn't do it because of the small town I come from. But at this point, I really had nothing to lose."
Posting acting videos on social media, Perez would book roles in commercials and short films, eventually landing his first major role in the film, "The Cramps: a Period Piece" alongside Louisiana-based filmmaker Brooke H. Cellars.
The experience would result in Perez landing his first leading role in the Detriot-based film, "Morrow Road", based on the Michigan legend of a mother and child that go missing on the road with haunting events soon to follow.
"They officially announced that I booked it, and we start filming pretty soon," Perez said.
Through all of his ups and downs, from bieng uncertain of his future to making a dream a reality, Perez said with your heart in the right place no dream can be too big.
"Acting is like the thing that like, I don't know, it just it gives me energy," Perez said. "And when you're like very when you're very passionate about anything, you don't really need a blueprint as long as you just get up and you try to get just a little bit better at something every day, you'll take the right steps, like instinctively or what you need to do to, you know, to get to the right spot."
