Making a Film with My Father Helped Me Fall in Love with Acting Again

Marcel Ruiz is a long-time actor and first-time screenwriter whose new film, “Summer of Three,” will premiere at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival. Ruiz also stars in the film, which was directed by his father, Carlitos Ruíz-Ruíz. Ahead, the burgeoning filmmaker shares how the process of making the film ignited a new love of acting and helped him grow even closer to his own, extremely creative, family.

12:15am. Saturday, June 6, 2026. I slept three hours last night. It’s not looking like I’ll get much sleep tonight either. I’m currently in my living room couch, cause there’s clothes scattered all over my room. Hopefully, I get to start cleaning it at around 2 a.m. Can’t vacuum of course or else I’ll get a noise complaint. This is good though because I haven’t journaled in almost two months. Counting this as morning pages. Two days away from premiering my new film “Summer of Three,” I’m, clearly, overwhelmed.

I got to write and produce “Summer of Three” alongside my dad, Carlitos Ruiz-Ruiz, who directed it while I acted. Similar to my first memories of acting — a commercial I did for a whole milk brand at four years old where he was the director — I was back on a set again with my father behind the camera, something that I’m oddly too used to, although it had last happened over 12 years ago. On the one hand, we now get to take in and share with a lot of love what feels like a sculpture we’ve been chipping away at every day for almost three years. On the other hand, that sculpture now symbolizes for me not only a full circle moment, but a clear before and after in my life, and therefore as an actor.

I was born in an apartment on the corner of Calle Sol and Calle San Justo in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico to a family of artists. A 42-hour-long birth that culminated with a party outside my parents’ apartment. My mom and dad, both film directors; my uncle, a cinematographer; my aunt, a playwright and actress; my grandpa, a writer and musician; and my grandma, a painter and singer, were all there. My mom and dad moved to LA to continue to pursue their film careers when I was eight, and I ended up working there for over 12 years as a child actor.

Acting was very much a part of my identity, because it has always been present my entire life, but up until two years ago, it didn’t feel mine. To me, it was a hobby that opened up a lot of opportunities at an early age, but I dreaded it because it kept me from doing many other things a child prefers to do, such as spending time with friends or at least coming back to school with good grades. I try to cut myself a little slack now, cause I don’t expect a 12-year-old to feel ecstatic on a sitcom with ten-hour days, five months out of the year, forced to also sneak in school work in between breaks on set.

I don’t know if it was my way of rebelling, similar to a son of doctors telling his parents he was going to study art history, but I hated it when people would call me an actor. I didn’t feel connected to the label because it wasn’t something that I was pursuing, it just happened, and I couldn’t relate to that rush I heard other actors felt of connecting so much with a character that they wanted to completely submerge themselves into their world.

I went to a performing arts high school, but dreamt of attending a catholic school with uniforms, lockers, and a basketball team for some reason. After high school, I chose to take a step back to study writing, business, and film at Columbia University, and in my third year of college, an opportunity came to make a film with my dad, something I’ve been wanting to do since I was 15.

We came up with an idea to write a coming-of-age film set in Puerto Rico, and when it became possible to realize it, it was an offer I couldn’t refuse. All of my most memorable coming of age moments have occurred in my summers, vacations, and everything in between alongside my childhood friends in PR. Watching Bad Bunny and Arcangel’s “Tu No Vives Así” music video for the first time in 2016, sneaking into my friend’s seventh grade middle school welcome dances where artists like Jowell & Randy would perform, and even “prepa week” in Mayagüez (a week-long party that happens once a year at the University of Mayagüez, Puerto Rico to welcome its freshman class), to name a few.

‘Summer of Three’

“Summer of Three” was an opportunity to take so much of the nostalgia I’ve collected over the years in Puerto Rico and use it to proudly represent my generation and the unique feeling of being young on the island. I slept on it for a couple nights before agreeing to write the film with my dad, because knowing both of our intense personalities, I was worried we would never talk to each other again after the process of making this movie, and there was also a possibility that I’d have to put college on hold.

Spoiler alert: that was not the case, and I’m so glad I said yes.

The line between work and life was always blurred at home growing up, so working with my dad on “Summer of Three” did not feel new. We’d sometimes go back and forth over Zoom late into the night, and no matter if it was editing an emotional monologue or analyzing the intricacies of a dick joke, it was all sacred. “Summer of Three” is a love letter to a place that has given me so much, I’ll forever cherish sharing all the wins as well as all the challenges encountered along the way with my dad, and through writing it, a new dimension opened up in my acting, making me truly fall in love with it again.

My writer’s process became my acting process, having built from the ground up these characters — their arcs, background, and voices — I understood the emotions much more deeply and therefore truly cared about them and the story. Having the freedom and time to come up with so many ideas while writing the script, as well as alt lines I wanted to try out or improvise on set, I realized there was nothing stopping me from bringing that same energy to every other set as an actor, even when not a writer.

Not liking acting as a child came from feeling a lack of autonomy in my decisions and creativity. “Summer of Three” taught me that as a screenwriter or not, as an actor it is imperative to think like a storyteller and to be a good human first, giving yourself time to live and experience life in order to have more to say in your work.

“Summer of Three” allowed me to reconnect with my roots much like my character in the film does, as the experience is a reflection of my beginnings in acting as much as it is of growing up in Puerto Rico.

At three years old, I was present at the premiere of my mom and dad’s debut film “Maldeamores (Lovesickness),” which premiered at Tribeca in 2007. I’m a big supporter of not repeating generational patterns, but coming back 19 years later to the festival, this time with a movie I made with my dad, deserves a pass.

It’s 2 a.m. now and I’m definitely too tired to clean my room.