Milo Ventimiglia Says Diving into Work After Losing Home in L.A. Fire Was ‘Healing’ (Exclusive)

Milo Ventimiglia found healing through his acting work after losing homes in the Los Angeles fires.

The This Is Us alum takes on the role of Tim Timmons, a real-life singer/songwriter, in I Can Only Imagine 2, the upcoming sequel to the 2018 movie.

In the film, inspired by the true story behind MercyMe’s song “Even If,” Timmons joins the band and brings lead singer Bart (John Michael Finley) a “renewed sense of gratitude,” per a synopsis.

The real Timmons, now 49, was diagnosed with cancer over 20 years ago. At the time, he was told he only had five years to live, but since his diagnosis the songwriter and his wife Hilary Beth Timmons have welcomed four children, and he now spends his days sharing his story through music and ministry.

“He approaches everything with such positivity and with love and grace and gratitude, and it’s not often you get to play a character like that, that is battling so much but never expects anything in return and just constantly is giving and giving and giving,” Ventimiglia, 48, tells PEOPLE of Timmons.

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For the actor, the chance to step into Timmons’ shoes onscreen came at a time when he and his wife Jarah Mariano were grappling with the loss of their homes just days before the birth of their daughter, Ke’ala Coral Ventimiglia.

He and his wife were among the thousands of people who lost their homes in the devastating L.A. fires in January. On Jan. 31, Mariano shared on Instagram that on Jan. 7 “my family & I evacuated from the Palisades Fire. We lost our home that we were living in & everything we own, as well as our home under construction that we were about to move into.”

In an interview with PEOPLE, Ventimiglia recalls the film’s directors offering to give him time to get him and his family settled before filming, but the Gilmore Girls actor knew jumping into the project was exactly what he needed.

“When it all happened, I was ready to get to work,” he says. “Andy Erwin and Brent McCorkle, the directors, they said, ‘Hey, we can take a pause on this if you need to, and you can focus on your family and get your family settled.’ And I said, ‘No, probably the best thing for me would be to dive into this film and dive into this world and this work.’ And it truly was.”

Ventimiglia says it was “very healing to kind of play a character that had been through so much physical distress, and just looking at a mountain in front of you that you have to climb that there’s no end to and putting one foot in front of the other.”

Embodying Timmons also allowed him to maintain a sense of gratitude even amid his family’s loss.

“As Timmons says, he gets to wake up every day and he’s grateful for it,” he adds. “And every day he puts an X on his wrist for another day that he’s given, which he doesn’t take lightly. So he’s constantly just putting goodness out in the world. So to inhabit a character like that, to be a part of a project like this just was very healing for me.”

In addition to Ventimiglia and Finley, I Can Only Imagine 2’s cast also includes Sophie Skelton, Sammy Dell, Dennis Quaid and Trace Adkins, the latter of which, Ventimiglia calls a “legend.” The star shares that he and the country icon, 63, bonded over the shared experience of losing homes in a fire.

“Trace is a bit of a quiet character, very rugged, manly man, and I think he was looking at a California boy who’s wearing little bright clothes and has a bright personality like, ‘Who’s this guy?’ ” he recalls. “That was me. But then he’d heard about me losing my house to the fires, and he had lost a house to a fire, and we found a lot of common ground starting a conversation about that.”

In fact, he says the entire cast “pulled me in [the] family,” which only echoed the message of the story the film tells, which is one that Ventimiglia promises is all about “goodness.”

“I think in all the struggles that we have in life, all the things that we individually and collectively go through, not being so weighed down by them. Finding goodness, finding compassion, finding friendship and love, and being able to give those things is just very important,” he says. “I hope a film like this can show that to people, and they can take that and put that practice into their own lives.”

I Can Only Imagine 2 is in theaters Feb. 20.