FINDING HAPPY

FINDING HAPPY
The Unscripted Path To Purpose
Exclusive Interview with Peter Samuelson
Featured in 'Innerviews'
Hosted by Allié McGuire

​Peter Samuelson has lived a life that spans red carpets and real-world rescue, building stories on screen while rewriting the stories of children who were never given a fair beginning. From producing films to founding First Star, his path hasn’t followed the script. It’s been shaped by purpose, grit, and an unshakable belief in what’s possible for young people. In this conversation, we go past the résumé and into the reason, exploring how a man who spent decades making movies discovered what it truly means to make meaning.

ALLIÉ: You started in film but somehow ended up building hope for thousands of kids through First Star. Looking back, Peter, where did that shift happen… from creating movies to creating change?

PETER: I was raised by two wonderful parents who taught me early that life is a circle where you give back what you can. I remember being six years old, licking stamps for my parents’ charity appeals. I grew up believing we have an obligation to leave the world better than we found it.

Filmmaking ended up being the perfect training ground. Each film is a start-up: new crew, new city, new problems to solve. You learn not to accept failure. If the front door is locked, you look for a window. Eventually, I realized I could ​take that toolkit and apply it to long-term social problems and to approach them laterally, pilot a solution, prove it works, and then replicate it. That became my life’s privilege.

No one wants a tombstone that says, “Made a billion dollars” or “Lived in a big house.” What matters is legacy. It’s the ripples on the pond. We create that through our children, grandchildren, and through organized philanthropy. My gratitude to America runs deep. I came here with an invitation from a producer who got me a visa, then a green card, then eventually I raised my hand and became a citizen. Ever since, I’ve tried to honor that gift by lifting what and who needs lifting.
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​ALLIÉ: You’ve helped foster youth find belonging through education. What’s one story that still stays with you that has maybe even changed you?


PETER: When we started the First Star Academies, we housed, educated, and encouraged high-school aged foster youth who we called our ‘scholars', which sounds better than ‘kids’. It’s a four-year program: grades 9 through 12. And the outcomes are astonishing. Only 9% of American foster youth go to college, but 89% of our scholars did this past June. A 10x uplift. Education gives them more than academics. It gives stability. It gives role models. It gives family for kids who have been deprived of unconditional love.

I thought I’d teach a videography class, but the class I’m proudest of is one I created: Random Acts of Kindness and Pay It Forward. It’s two 90-minute sessions.

In the first, I ask: “You see an elderly woman asleep on the sidewalk. Do you slip a dollar under her arm? Wake her and give it to her? Or walk on by?” It sparks deep conversations about the Golden Rule which is something found in 174 religious texts. It’s about the human instinct for justice and balance. Then I ask, “What if you’re an atheist?” And they always say, “An atheist still has a heart.”

I introduce them to the second law of thermodynamics: closed systems fall apart without external energy. Families, communities, even planets collapse without care. Then I tell them something extraordinary will happen the next day thanks to a donor: each student receives $200, not to keep, but to give away. They write a 300-word essay about who receives it and why. The essays are extraordinary.

One student wrote:
“I’m adding $10 of my own. That’s $210 which is three times $70. It costs $70 at the shelter to save a dog from being euthanized. I’m saving three puppies because last time I was there, I looked into a beaten dog’s eyes and saw my own.”

Another wrote:
“My mom is in prison for two years, three months, and seven days. She did very bad things, including to me. But I love her. She hates the shampoo they have there, so I’m putting the money in her account so she can buy better toiletries.”
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These essays show me the hearts of young souls and give the kids something they rarely experience: agency. Foster youth often have none. They’re moved from placement to placement with zero control. But this class? It makes them stand taller. They give. They follow up. They learn that philanthropy sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t, but trying matters. And they become a foot taller in spirit.
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​ALLIÉ: These stories are beautiful, and I’ll carry them now too. Your life swings between Hollywood glitz and real-world grit. Let’s talk about the unpolished times. When things got messy or uncertain. What kept you grounded?

PETER: I believe I have a relationship with the life force… call it what you will. I also feel deeply the fragility of civilization. We’re obligated to help it along, especially now when cruelty and “othering” seem louder than compassion.

At First Star, you see America’s real mosaic: every race, every religion, every background. Child abuse and neglect know no borders. And these kids are magnificent kids. They are the future. It hurts me to see fear of the “other” being exploited. Fear is prehistoric. We visited the Neanderthal caves in France once, and I imagined early humans: cold, hungry, terrified of the valley across from them. Then a leader comes along and converts fear into hatred. “Follow me,” he says. “They deserve to be hated.” That still happens today. And it’s absurd. The people doing the hating are the grandchildren of immigrants—Irish, Italian, whatever. They wouldn’t like it if Native Americans said, “Learn Navajo. This is our country. Go back where you came from.” America’s strength is its diversity. I’m not a partisan ideologue. I’m a centrist. I’m fiscally conservative, but deeply committed to compassion, charity, empathy. Hatred corrodes everything. It makes the hated hate back, and civilization crumbles.

One reason I wrote the book, Finding Happy, was pattern recognition from decades of mentoring. Young people come with the same universal problems: “I’m being bullied… I’m terrible at math… How do I find love?” I realized those issues, combined with my own mistakes, could guide a self-help structure. There’s a chapter on risk: what’s a good risk versus a bad one? I nearly killed myself twice as a young man doing idiotic things because, neurologically, young men operate from the amygdala (the fight-or-flight brain) until their mid-twenties. Logic and long-term thinking haven’t fully set in. That’s why we send young men to war. Older men and women would say, “Sergeant, that looks dangerous. You go first and let us know.” Through that lens, I started shaping the book by using stories from my life to help young adults see themselves more clearly.

ALLIÉ: It sounds like an incredible mission. After everything, from the films to the foundations, to the impact, what does happy actually mean to you now?

PETER: I break happiness into three parts: short-term, medium-term, and long-term. Short-term? A tub of chocolate ice cream, a spoon, something good on the screen, and no interruptions. Medium-term? More tubs of ice cream, more films. Long-term is trickier. There are three chapters in the book called The Meaning of Life at the beginning, middle, and end. The essence? Once you have the basics, such as food, shelter, health, etc., the heart of happiness is volunteering. Selflessness. There’s even a chapter called Selflessness Can Be Selfish, and I mean that in a good way.

People often look for love in bars or on apps. I suggest something different: do what I did. Volunteer. I didn’t know I’d find my wife through charity work, but I did. When my cousin and I granted a wish for a dying child, I gathered a group at my house to talk about forming a charity. I thought: I need a lawyer, a graphic designer, someone who knows hospital politics, and an accountant. I’d been on one date with a beautiful young accountant, so I called her and said, “Remember me? Please come.” That became date number two.

When the lawyer asked what to name the charity, it was she who said, “What about the Starlight Children’s Foundation?” Inspired by the children’s rhyme: Starlight, star bright… And the graphic designer immediately imagined a child reaching for a star. That was 42 years ago. Since then, Starlight has become a leading children’s charity across multiple countries, raising and spending over a billion dollars to make seriously ill children happy. Then Steven Spielberg and I founded Starbright. Then First Star. Then several more for seven in total.

​Happiness for me comes from invention. It’s imagining a new solution to an intractable problem, daring to build it, finding the funding, proving it works, and replicating it. In entrepreneurship (profit or nonprofit) you imagine the thing already exists, then reverse-engineer the steps to make it real. We need more of that mindset in philanthropy. Too many charities stay small: “We’re in Akron because I live in Akron.” Well, Starbucks didn’t stay on one corner. If it works in Akron, it can work elsewhere.

Volunteering is also the easiest way to become an entrepreneur. Charities crave help. Raise your hand with a good idea, and you’ll suddenly be the vice president of that initiative. And you’ll meet people. Your network grows, your joy grows, and so does your purpose. Legacy isn’t money. It’s the ripples on the pond. If you lift people up, and they lift others up, and so on, that, to me, is immortality.

​ALLIÉ: Seven charities. So much hope. So many stories.
Let’s close this way: looking back at 22-year-old you, what would you tell him about success and happiness that you wish he had known?

PETER: First: find people to help, and find pathways to help them.

In the book, I talk about organizing your life. There’s a tool called a spider graph: you in the center, with lines radiating out to each challenge, then to the people blocking you, then to those who could help, then to possible solutions. When you see your life visually, you can focus better. Organization gives you a massive advantage. Most young adults aren’t organized. You don’t have to be faster. You just have to be organized.

Second: don’t kill yourself. Literally. I nearly did at 22. I was a production manager on The Return of the Pink Panther in Marrakech. I heard a kitten crying inside what I thought was a cabinet. It was actually a four-story pipe duct. At three in the morning, I took off my clothes and climbed down the pipe to rescue it. The kitten ran away. And I realized I couldn’t climb back up. I spent two hours inching my way out, covered in muck, thinking, “I’m going to die in a pipe duct in North Africa because I didn’t think this through.”

​I survived, but the lesson stayed with me. Use your prefrontal lobe. Think about the move, not just about the moment.

Third: take risks anyway. Life is an envelope. You can sit cross-legged inside it forever, never poking the pencil through. You’ll be safe, but you won’t live. Or you can poke in every direction. Sometimes the pencil goes through and reveals something you’re not meant to pursue. Pull it back. Try another direction. Keep poking until you find what and who gives you joy. With Finding Happy, that’s all I’m trying to do: be helpful. And the emails I get (hundreds of them), they lift me up as much as I try to lift those who write to me. It’s the circle again.

ALLIÉ: I love how we began this conversation with you mentioning a circle and ended there too. Thank you for everything you’ve shared… your life, your work, and your story.

PETER: My gratitude to you for having me. I hope this helps someone. I hope the book helps. And I believe we’ll get through the dark patches. History bends slowly, but it bends toward the light. Our job is to give it a little shove. ∎

Learn more about Peter online:
www.samuelson.la

Get your copy of Finding Happy:
www.awarenow.us/book/finding-happy