If you had asked me ten years ago what I’d be doing today, acting would not have been at the top of the list. I’ve always been the type of person that people felt comfortable sharing their stories with, and coming to for guidance. This fostered within me a desire to help people who were going through hard times, and so I started undergrad with the intention of becoming a therapist. But through complete happenstance, something unexpected occurred in my Freshman year. Someone had decided to shoot a movie on campus. The film of course had scenes that took place within a college, and they needed a good number of background actors. Regardless of whether or not they were a member of the theater department, every student in the school was invited to submit an application to take part. At the time, I was raising money to put towards a security deposit on an apartment; the pay for this extra gig would cover half. Pairing that with the fact that I’d get a free pass to skip classes all week, I thought I should go ahead and sign up.
I’ve always had a deep love of film. Watching movies with my dad was something that we did to bond; we even made a short movie together (a gripping spy drama about a chief intelligence officer whose orange juice is stolen out of the communal office fridge). So it’s safe to say they’ve always had a special place in my heart. But that experience as an extra really opened something up in me. It was one of the first moments that I seriously started to consider being a part of the movie-making process. What a fantastic thing to see all the work happening just a couple inches outside of the camera frame. The machinery, the lights, the choreography, even the endless takes– I was enraptured. And then came the acting. I didn’t know what moment work was then, but as this actor gave a heartfelt monologue whilst looking out at his “audience” of extras, our eyes connected. I felt him reaching out in the void for a hand, and I felt myself reach back to grab his. I thought of all the times that movies had helped me in my life; when I needed to be inspired, or reassured, or even just needed an escape. I thought to myself ‘Maybe this is also a way that I could help people.’
Although I was there to study psychology, my alma mater was and is known for its theater program; their alumni list alone could make any Academy member drool. Beyond kismet, it seemed inevitable that I would get bit by the acting bug there. Even still, I couldn’t quite admit to myself that this sort of work was even remotely in the realm of my possibilities. For the next year I felt my way around the notion, long and slow like I was rubbing my fingertips along a small stone, only to cut myself against the jagged edges of its reality. And the reality was that the theater program at my school was extensive. It required long hours outside of class, and those were hours I didn’t have. I was already working heavily at several part-time jobs in order to afford not only tuition, but cost of living as well. There was no way I’d have been able to reconcile the time I needed to work to survive and the time it would've taken to do those courses.
And so even as that week on set lived quietly in the back of mind, I decided to pivot towards some more manageable alternatives. I knew there were other avenues that lead to being a part of storytelling, and I explored a variety of them. Eventually, I settled on Animation. This, I felt, in a lot of ways could combine my love of storytelling as well as my love of creating things with my hands. I thought perhaps this was after all the path I was meant to be on. But as graduation loomed, and I began filling out grad school applications, I realized that I wasn’t happy. To be frank, I was half-assing all of my applications. I began to doubt whether or not Animation was what I really wanted to spend my life doing. After all this time I of course had still held on to that unforgettable week from Freshman year. But the old fears still held stronger. There just isn’t room to fail when you come from a place of financial instability. After four years of working part-time jobs that I hated just to make ends meet, I knew that I wanted a career that could give me more than money. But I couldn’t pretend that money wasn’t important. Often, you have one chance to break out of the cycle of poverty, and it felt foolish to waste that chance on a career in which the odds were so blatantly stacked against me. The pragmatist in me found it too ridiculous to even consider letting some inconsequential experience dictate the trajectory of my life.
As it so happens, life has a way of shifting trajectory for you. Mine shifted because of grief. It does different things to different people, but fundamentally it does change you. The death of my father certainly changed everything for me. It left me with some perspective on a couple of things; like how abrupt the end of a life can be. You never know how much time you or the people you love are going to get, but it’s very often the things you were too afraid to say—or do—that haunt you in the time you have left. So once I came out of that haze of loss, I decided to have a more compassionate sit-down with myself regarding what I wanted to do with my time. When I gave myself that space, I was surprised to find that this desire to act had been around much longer than I’d ever known. I started to kind of piece together all these little vignettes from my life: when I had recited a poem, or was in a small play for church, or made that silly movie with my dad, or when the theater teacher at my high school told me she thought I’d be a good fit for her class. I realized that I’d been holding on to all of these little moments and more my entire life. But I’d never really given myself permission to think about what those things meant to me or why they made me feel good. Finally, I decided that it was time to listen. I applied to acting schools. The rest is kind of history.