I am in the awkward position of being a working, over-40 actress in Hollywood. WAY over 40, although not too many people in the business know just how old I really am. And I'm not a child actor who grew up working, or an ingenue who has "aged out." No, I put myself in this position. I used to be a big-shot executive in the telecom industry, back when companies like Nortel Networks (where I worked for ten years, now bankrupt) and AT&T (where I began my career, now swallowed up by one of its "Baby Bells") were places you could expect to work for 30 years and then retire with a comfortable pension. But then AT&T was broken up in 1982, and then the dot.com meltdown - well, the first one, anyway - came in 2002. In between I had a career-ending accident, severely injuring my back and forcing me to retire in 2000. And that is where my acting story really begins.
I have always been a performer. I don't really remember learning to sing; it was like learning to talk, I've just always done it. I do remember my father teaching me to sing his favorite song, "Summertime," when I was about three, and about the same time insisting to my Sunday School teacher that I DID know all the words to "Here Comes Peter Cottontail" and proved it by singing it, unprompted, in front of the whole class. My mother always called me her "little ham." I knew I loved to sing, and when I started tap and ballet lessons at six, I also learned to love dance. But it was when I saw my first musical, "Oklahoma," at a local high school, when I was around nine, that I turned to my mother and said, "That's what I want to do when I grow up." She laughed, and the idea was never discussed again. But I just didn't know that I could have actually pursued acting as a career. Because I was a very good student, kind of shy, and very serious, my parents just assumed that I would go to college, study business, and as my daddy always said, "grow up to be a Vice-President at AT&T." Well, I did go to college on a full scholarship and later got an MBA at Vanderbilt (the Harvard of the South), and did go to work for AT&T, only to have the government break up the company six months later. My timing in business was always bad. With just a little encouragement towards a career in the arts, my whole story might have turned out differently.
However, I did have a very successful career working in corporate America, but I was never happy. I had started singing in bands at 20 while I was still in college, and I was always torn between music and business. My heart was in my music but my money was in my job, and I could never figure out how to break away from the golden handcuffs that bound me so tightly to my work. So I kept marrying musicians and settling for watching them live their dreams, until finally I met a man who had both a computer science and a music degree, and we began to figure out a way to integrate both sides of my life. It was going pretty well, too - I was a wedding singer in New Jersey, living on the ocean and telecommuting - until we moved to Silicon Valley and got married. The work ethic there is killer - 70 to 80 hour weeks were the norm. I started having serious health problems as a result of my job stress, and although I changed companies, the stress never really lessened. I believe my fall was the universe's way of saying to me: "Enough!" I have never been able to return to a desk job, or a standing job, due to the pain involved to my back, neck, and shoulders, and various other symptoms. I went on disability in September of 2000, so although my income was drastically reduced I did still have some money coming in.
However, although I couldn't work a full-time job, I still had my brain, and I was criminally bored and lonely. I drove my friends nuts sending them jokes on e-mail, and detailed descriptions of my symptoms and various procedures I'd had to undergo. I tried to do other things: I was a successful mystery shopper for several years, but the money was terrible and it's pretty hard work for not much reward (although I did get two trips to South America to rate hotels out of it). I put together a jazz band and sang a few jobs with them, but I couldn't stand up for long and after a while it was clear that I lacked the back strength you need to be a strong singer. Then a friend suggested I look into musical theatre, as I lived close to a small community theatre that put on several musicals each year. I signed up for a class called "Acting for Singers," and my teacher insisted that I should audition for an upcoming show, even though I felt I was "too old." The show was "Little Shop of Horrors," and I got a part in the ensemble, as a hooker (the oldest stereotype in the acting book). And, pardon the pun, I was hooked.
I loved doing the show, which ran in September of 2001, right after 9/11; it seemed like we were doing something heroic by singing our hearts out to lift people's spirits. And then the director of the theatre's next show, the non-musical comedy "Lettice and Lovage," asked me to appear in her play without an audition! It was only my second show, and I began to feel like I must be called to do this. I have always prayed since then for the jobs to stop coming if this is not the right path for me, and although they haven't always been paying work, I've always worked steadily ever since I started acting back in 2001, and I still believe that acting is my true calling.
About the time I started acting, I guess it began to sink in to my husband that I was not going to return to my high-status, high-paying job. Ever. And that was not the deal he thought he got when we married in April of 1998. He began to be resentful of the time and money I spent on acting, especially when the only way I showed a profit was by doing products demonstrations at WalMart that absolutely killed my back. We might have been okay, though, if two things hadn't happened to convince me that I needed to go to LA to act: In October of 2002, when I was a contestant on "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" (I won $64,0000), Meredith Vierra said, "You have a really good look on film. You should try film acting." And early in 2003, when I started auditioning for student films at one of the local colleges in San Francisco, the head of the program came over to me after my first read and said, "You are absolutely a natural actress, and you have got to go to LA." Unasked, he gave me a template for an LA resume and told me to call him if I ever wanted coaching. I was amazed, and I began to feel strongly that I would forever regret it if I did not give acting in LA a shot.
So in January of 2005 I rented a small apartment in central LA for three months, intending just to see if I could get work, and to get LA "out of my system." Once again, I was surprised at the ease with which I was hired, from my very first day at a casting agency. And the other thing that I didn't count on was that I would fall in love with LA. The longer I lived there, the more I came to know and love its many quirky neighborhoods and shops, and to meet people from all over the world, including many Southerners like me (I grew up in Huntsville, Alabama). I was also happily surprised that there were many other disabled actors who mostly did extra work just for fun, as well as many over-40 actresses who had decided, like me, to give their childhood dreams "one last shot." And when the three months was up, I came home to San Francisco, but I left my heart in LA. Over the next five years, this would drive a huge wedge between my husband and me, both philosophically and financially. Ultimately, I realized that my health, both mentally and physically, was much better in LA due to its dry climate, and I asked him if he would move there with me. But as a computer scientist, his true home is in the Silicon Valley. His tribe is there; my tribe is here. We could find no way to resolve this dilemma, and sadly, separated in May of 2010 after a twelve-year marriage and a nearly 17-year relationship.
So I find myself here in LA, alone, old by Hollywood standards, yet still working steadily and happily. In 2010, I joined the Association of Film, TV & Radio Actors union, and became eligible (finally!) to join the prestigious Screen Actor's Guild (SAG) as of November 1. Also in 2010, I shot my first national commercial (for Wells Fargo; no residuals, though), joined a theatre company, played a lead in a primetime re-enactment series for Animal Planet, returned to musical theatre in "Willy Wonka," and did my first work in children's theatre as Tintag the Elf in Dancing Squirrel Productions' "The Adventures of Holly and Snowflake," which brings live theatre to at-risk and abused children around Los Angeles. I ended the year playing the rabbit in the wonderful children's story, "The Velveteen Rabbit," at the Children's Theatre of LA. I also have featured parts coming up in two feature films. I'm still praying, and the parts are still coming.
And I will keep doing this because I believe that the arts matter, and that acting is not a frivolous pursuit. I am fortunate to be able to do this because I have steady sources of income and don't need the money, but I would do it for free. Art is one of man's most primal and noble instincts, and it is as old as language. Man invented writing, and then began to write poetry and plays. We still perform the plays written by Euripides and others from ancient Greece. Art lasts. How many other human endeavors can we say that about? I feel privileged to be following in the footsteps of centuries of actors and performers who have done this before me, even, as I recently learned, my maternal great-great-grandfather, who was a famous concert violinist. I'm no longer apologetic about what I do. I am a proud actor.
What I will attempt to do in this blog is to write about the strangeness of being an older actor in Hollywood. I can't promise to write daily, or even weekly, but I'll write when I have something to say and I'll try not to bore you. Life here can be surreal, especially for a Southern girl like me, but it's not usually boring.
