Actor Chris Wood's screen time

Actor Chris Wood's screen time ranged from PBS drama Mercy Street to HBO's Emmy Award winning series Girls and The CW, Containment and The Vampire Diaries series. Supergirl fans, also on the CW, recognize him as Mon-El, who had a troubled relationship with the titular heroine, played by Melissa Benoist (Wood's real-life bride). After wrapping up the third season of Supergirl, the 31-year-old actor, who studied musical theater in North Carolina before moving west, took time out of acting to pursue other interests, including writing and directing a short film, The Stew; cheer for your beloved Yankees; and found a non-profit mental health awareness organization that, in just two years, donated $ 350,000.00 from selling branded products to mental health organizations.

What have you been working on since leaving Supergirl?

Since leaving Supergirl, I have devoted all my time to writing and working for my non-profit organization, IDONTMIND. I needed to take a break from acting, and I'm excited to be back on active duty now that I've taken some time off. I'm really working to keep myself sane and with a selective mindset, so I don't feel suffocated again. I'm developing a project that I wrote - which is incredibly exciting, but I still can't talk about it - and I wrote other projects.

Why did you want to make your short film, The Stew?

So The Stew came at a time when trying to recover that creative power. I had to do something that felt good to do and that allowed me to take risks and tell stories in a way that I wanted to tell, regardless of what other people thought. I created something really peculiar and unique, which I am proud of, despite any flaws.

Does being an actor influence your writing and direction?

I grew up writing and making shorts and, in college, my focus had shifted almost entirely to acting. It wasn't consciously, it's just exactly what happened. I never stopped writing, but I was really doing it just for me. As an actor, I was very lucky to have had so many opportunities and worked more or less nonstop for a few years, but I was not in the same hurry to act that I used to be, and my need to write and create content was only getting stronger.

Why is mental health so important to you?

A while ago, I had an incredibly difficult year that left me juggling sadness and depression. My coping mechanism was to shut down and not talk about it. When people asked how I was doing, I just ended the conversation and said I was fine. For a few years, that was how it acted. And it was terrible. I didn't really recover until the first time I decided to be really honest about what I was feeling and what I had been through. Instead of shutting myself out to people when they asked me how I was doing, I started to respond with, "Oh, I don't care, I can talk about it." Just that little change in my response to people changed everything. I didn't admit there was a problem, so how could I get help? Only when I admitted that I was not well could I start looking for ways to improve.

Why did you start your own organization, IDONTMIND?

The healing process. I was starting to work with mental health organizations in order to be able to give back and I was thinking: every approach I see is for insiders, for people who already know mental health and it is a problem and needs attention. It occurred to me that we might need to try something different to reach more people. … If it is true that 1 in 4 people in the world experience mental illnesses in their life, then we were all close to someone who suffered. And that means that we can all relate and we should all be able to talk about it. So, I founded IDONTMIND in 2017. It is a mental health awareness campaign that works to defeat stigma, inspiring conversations. The idea is that the more we talk about mental health, the more we normalize, so we do everything possible for people to talk.

What is the difference between your organization and other mental health nonprofits?

I came to this idea that people talk more about what they are wearing than how they are feeling. And I thought, "Oh, I can just try to use that as a resource". It's all about style and message. And it's in your face and people will be very afraid of it. It is very little, punches and brings meaning. So we chose a name that makes you ask what it means, what will start a conversation. We chose a style [T-shirt, sweatshirt, cap and other items printed with “IDONTMIND”] that is minimal and can easily fit into your everyday wardrobe. But it is clearly about mental health. Whatwe can appeal to people's curiosity. We hope to make it interesting for people to buy, use, share, chat, publish and manage a dialogue.