Christian Camargo: feeling stalled, this actor opened a car dealership. Now he's going full throttle

Christian Camargo might think he got into Juilliard because "they saw someone who needed a lot of work and welcomed the challenge," but what the school's admissions board likely spotted was the dark, electric quality that has since brought the actor success on the New York and London stages. In this summer's K-19: The Widowmaker, a submarine movie with Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson, Camargo brings that same magnetism to the screen, playing a nuclear technician aboard a Russian vessel.

More than subs, however, it's cars that hold a special place in the 30-year-old's affections. Two years ago, while Camargo was receiving raves as the lead in Broadway's Kit Marlowe, he began to feel conflicted about his chosen career. "I was having an amazing time," he recalls, "but I was despising the life. Theater does not [financially] support its actors." While on a self-imposed hiatus--so as not to "soil my experience by becoming bitter," he explains--Camargo and a friend opened Fast Ashley's, a muscle car dealership in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. (They added on a studio after the space became popular with photographers.) But just as the proud owner of a tricked-out '74 Dodge Monaco settled into his new trade, The Widowmaker offer came through. "That's how life is," he laughs. "As soon as you quit something, it wants you back."

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