Did you know that famous actor Giancarlo Esposito was so tired of financial struggles that he thought about hiring a hitman on himself so his family could receive his life insurance?

I think a lot about the nature of failures, setbacks, total hopelessness, and endless rejections — where they lead, what they can teach, and how much strength is hidden in them.

In a sense, storytelling and therapy are built on rethinking and transforming failures into fuel. And Giancarlo Esposito has reached the limit of his understanding of failures.

The magnificent actor, who plays cold-blooded and charismatic villains, couldn't cope with financial difficulties for many years due to the unpredictability of an acting career, couldn't always find work, went through personal bankruptcy twice, and lost his home. At some point, he seriously considered: if he hired a hitman to kill him, his family and four children could receive a payout from his life insurance, and this could provide for them.

He talked about this in a recent Jim and Sam Show interview, which I stumbled upon yesterday.

Today, Esposito has appeared in a large number of famous franchises: he played drug dealers in "Breaking Bad," "Better Call Saul," and "The Gentlemen," was an imperial warlord-revanchist in "The Mandalorian" in the Star Wars universe, the head of a corporation of superhero psychopaths in "The Boys," and will soon debut in the Marvel cinematic universe in a new Captain America film. In the Netflix project "Kaleidoscope," he played a robber seeking revenge — the series was structured so that it could be watched in any order, mixing episodes, resulting in entirely different stories.

In the series "Parish," which Esposito was promoting in this interview, he plays a driver who, due to financial difficulties, is forced to get involved with human traffickers. Esposito says his story and struggles inspired him to develop the character.

Esposito was stopped by the thought that, along with the payments, he would pass on an unbearable generational trauma and pain to his family, and he decided not to give up — to try again. He found side jobs and projects that allowed him to make ends meet, and soon, he got a role in "Breaking Bad," which became "the light at the end of the tunnel."

Such stories encourage me. Now Esposito can look back and see how bottomless the pit was from which he managed to crawl out.

There's always something left to do — another step.