Fighting Crime by Day, Lighting Up the Big Screen by Night

Armen Garo is Superman in reverse. By day he can be found serving the city of East Providence as a senior lieutenant with the police department, protecting civilians from crime and enforcing the law. But Garo also pursues a part-time career in acting, with recurring roles in the TV series "Brotherhood" and "The Sopranos" among the many parts he has played.

For Garo, the lure of acting is clear and simple.

"I look at it as inhabiting the lives of other people in history and fiction, to bring them to life with my own tools," he said. "The thing that really attracted me to acting was the feeling I had when I did it. It is a tremendous feeling. There is no euphoria that compares to that."

Performance arts have been a lifelong passion for Garo. While in the ninth grade at the Albany Academy for Boys in New York, he won first place in a declamation contest, an oral recitation competition, which he calls the "beginning."

"That was the one thing I did better than anybody," he said. "I never let go of that. I always loved it."

Garo pursued drama through extracurricular activities in high school before attending college for speech communication, building off his performance experience. He also wrestled in college, the start of a lifelong interest in remaining active.

After a brief stint in California for graduate school and forays into Los Angeles for auditions, Garo moved back to the East coast.

"While I had a comfort zone in school, I did not have a comfort zone in climate…I am not a California person," Garo said of his reasons for moving back.

The acting bug lived on in Garo after his transcontinental move. He first moved to New York to pursue acting on Broadway, but financial concerns brought him to East Providence, where his mother then lived. Garo began studying karate and self-defense under George Pesare.

"I enjoyed strenuous physical activity too much to let it go, and I thought self-defense would be a good activity," he said.

Through Pesare, Garo made a number of contacts in the police department and decided to join the force in 1985.

"As I approached the age of 30, I thought maybe I could do this for a couple of years, bank some money, go back to New York and be a little bit better prepared," he said.

He rose the ranks as a police officer, eventually becoming lieutenant. Garo also learned that his acting skills uniquely prepared him for a career in law enforcement.

"After being on the job here, I enjoyed this," he said. "The skills I had communicating fit hand and glove with the skills required of a police officer."

However, his love of acting never left him. As Garo entered his 20th year of service, he began planning for his retirement and the career he had never been able to pursue. He traveled to New York to shoot professional headshots with Deborah Lopez and took acting classes in preparation.

"In your twenties you are convinced that life will never end and that you'll have plenty of time to do stuff weeks and lives and months different from what you could be doing now," he said. "But after 20 years of work of watching people destroy themselves and end their lives, you realize at age of 50 that there's no such thing as years ahead and months ahead.

"I would have considered myself a fool if I didn't pursue those things that made me feel good about myself," Garo continue. "When you start to get downtrodden about outlook of life, you should pursue something that makes you happy and other people happy. There's nothing better than that."

Beginning in the mid-2000s, Garo traveled to New York and Boston regularly for auditions and shoots while juggling his duties as a lieutenant, although he maintains that his police schedule is "flexible." Occasionally, he has had to fly as far out as Norway and Romania, ignoring geographical distance in pursuit of his passion.

Of all of his roles thus far, Garo said that working with the ensembles of both "Brotherhood" and "The Sopranos" were the most memorable to him. He also had a small part in the film "The Departed," working under Martin Scorsese.

"I received direction from the man himself. It doesn't get much better than that," he said of his "The Departed" experience. "That's like being in the promised land."

Garo plans to retire from the police force in 2013, at which point he will pursue acting full-time. His time with the force and experience with acting has left him with words of wisdom for East Providence.

"You should always follow your dreams," he said, "because if you don't follow your dreams, they will forever remain just dreams."