Why I Want to Act

Let me set the stage, so to speak, the year was 1997 and I was sixteen years old.  My mother had remarried a man I despised and we were all moving from the one place I had finally started to feel comfortable, to the awful and loathsome Kennewick, WA.  I hated my new home, hated my new stepfather, missed my friends terribly, and was suffering from both depression and a severe case of teenage angst.  Life was miserable.  I would only be living in that god forsaken town for my last two years of high school, that much I was sure of, so it hardly seemed worth it to invest myself into friendships that would quietly fizzle when I got the hell out of there.  I was lonely.

After years of being depressed and angry, my family pretty much hated me, and though I tried to be amiable, sometimes their low expectations of me were enough to squash my futile attempts to “be nice.”  The best thing for everyone seemed for me to spend as little time with them as possible.  Now, there was nothing to do in Kennewick; it was literally void of any and all culture (i.e. Red Robin was the nicest restaurant in town), but I found one sanctuary.

I spent almost all of my meager earnings on movie tickets.  It never bothered me to go to the movies all by myself, in fact I preferred it that way.  When I was in the dark movie theater I could escape my depression and all of my family problems; all of my loneliness was gone.  My heart, eager to experience a full range of emotions outside of teenage misery, threw itself into each and every story.  Comedy, drama, thriller, romance, action…whatever, it didn’t matter much to me.

Like most teenage girls I developed intense crushes on actors and actresses alike, but I think what motivated mine was how much I envied their ability to pull all sorts of emotions out of me.  They relieved me of myself for ninety minutes at a time and I loved them for that.  I wished I had that power too.

To this day, I find solace in movies.  Even though my palate has refined, I still watch all kinds of movies (the good and the hopelessly bad).  Now days I’m usually multitasking while I watch, but I still consume around 3-6 movies a week.  Gotta love Netflix!  I just love the feeling I have while I’m enjoying a movie.

Hollywood is a long ways away from any small town in America, but when I was eleven I got to be an extra in a real Hollywood film.  That tiny glimpse into the world of actors and cameras and sets was enough to make Hollywood seem just a little closer.  Maybe it was my young age that made me feel comfortable around all that high tech equipment and those high-powered people, but I did.  I knew I wanted to get back there someday.  I always felt like I could, too, but I was too scared, too self-conscious, and too inhibited to go for it back then.

As the years ticked by I started to feel like maybe being an actress was just a dream for children, not realistic for someone like me.  I kept working, doing what I thought was smart, and hating it more and more.  Inevitably in every 9 to 5 job I had I grew bored and resentful of my work and my employer. My unnatural love of films and movies has been the one constant thing in a very tumultuous life.  I knew I could be more than what I was shaping up to be, but it was me who the blame was placed squarely on.  I was the only one keeping me from going after what I really wanted.

Baby's First Headshot

The biggest stumbling block in my way was my fear—my fear of declaring what I wanted and my fear of failing to attain it.  I want to be an actress because I want to make people feel differently.  I want them to watch me and believe that I am the character I’m portraying, and I want them to be right there with me when I get hurt, get scared, and feel good.  I want them to feel those things through me.  It doesn’t matter that I’m not Hollywood beautiful, Hollywood thin, or Hollywood glamorous—all that matters is that I can make people feel things as I act.  That’s my dream.  That’s what I’m gambling for, and that’s what I hope to achieve.

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