As he whizzed through back roads and side streets, Matthew Del Negro, Boston College ’94, struggled to stay on the telephone line—Waze and the hustle-bustle of cars at the height of the Los Angeles rush hour were to blame for the multiple dropped calls.

Fresh out of a session with his acting coach in Silverlake, Calif., Del Negro navigated the city while still reminiscing about his senior year in the Mods. Laughing, he recalled a group of friends who blocked two neighboring Mods and then proceeded to knock down the connecting wall with a sledgehammer.

“It was like its own little makeshift doorway from one to the other,” he said. “So instead of it being a six-man, it was like a 12-man. I think they hung like a towel or something between the two.”

Today, Del Negro is credited with having acted in several television shows, appearing in The Sopranos, The West Wing, Scandal, and Goliath, as well as movies such as Hot Pursuit with Sofia Vergara and Reese Witherspoon and Wind River alongside Elizabeth Olsen and Jeremy Renner. His love for acting would be realized late, after countless years spent on the field instead of the stage.