the processed actor

well golly. i've been in LA for over five years and it only occurred to me now that maybe i should blog about my experiences building an acting career in LA. it's definitely not easy, at least not for 99% of all actors trying to make it out here. for some it takes years just to get represented or join the union.

so...in a huge nutshell, here's how my journey went.

i moved to LA in the summer of 02' with my now ex-boyfriend. we were living in good ol' Rockville, MD (it's as exciting as it sounds). this was one year after i graduated from University of Maryland, College Park. you might be wondering if i studied theater in college. the answer is a big fat NO. i did NOT have the slightest interest in studying theater in college. i did theater in high school and that was all fun and games, but i knew that my interest was in film/television, and in my mind a theater degree was NOT going to help me. if anything, it would be a useless degree to me in case i discovered this crapshoot business was too much and i gave up. i knew, however, that i would NEVER give up.

as much as i would have liked to just move to NYC or LA right after high school (still something i wonder about all the time), college was probably the right move. i lived my childhood somewhat incubated in a non-english speaking household. parents were conservative, first generation immigrants from Taiwan. my experiences inside and outside the home were complete dichotomies. i had to learn how to function socially and academically as a "typical american kid" without it already mapped out by the last generation. needless to say, i was not always good at it. i was very opinionated and very blunt, so i would piss people off sometimes. i was super naive, and college was the first time i didn't have my parents constantly holding me back. if that had been NYC or LA right after high school and not college, i'd probably be a jacked up coke-head with herpes or something equally terrible and nasty. no, instead i got to experiment in a somewhat controlled environment with peers that had life goals and shit. whew for that.

SO ANYWAY, the move. driving across country is fun, but expensive. and please be careful using bungee cords or you might find yourself gushing blood out of your forehead somewhere in Arkansas. true story. not fun. bungee cords suck. scar to prove it.

arriving in LA is a surreal experience. when you first get here, everything looks the same. everywhere looks like a beach town. sort of. there's palm trees everywhere and it's sunny and hot and flat. there are cars everywhere. five miles feels like 25 miles. you always turn left on red. awesome. you're in LA.

then you start apartment hunting and you're like, "WTF??? that shithole is $2000/mo?" awesome. you're in LA.

also, when you first arrive in LA, you think that living by the beach is the cat's meow. oh man, did i want to live by the beach. so you get an apartment about 5 miles from the beach and whoops! you realize that even driving five miles to go to the beach is the equivalent to trucking across town in suburban Maryland. so you move closer to the beach, like 6 blocks. it smells kind of like the ocean when you're not smelling the bums. awesome. you're in LA. BUT WAIT!!! NO. you realize that you're not fucking in LA!!! yeah, the beach is awesome in theory, but i spent a year and a half living on the westside and went into the city like three times. EVER! what the fuck is LA??? i had no idea! i wasn't learning jack about what i needed to do to further my career whatsoever.

in the midst of all this discovery, my relationship also fell apart. sorry dude. i loved you, but it was just not working out. don't worry kids, he's ok (still lives on the westside) and we're still friends.

SO i moved east. to Silver Lake, the land of hipsters. moving out on my own was one of the best things i ever did for my career. this period of time was when i started to self submit on Actors Access. i booked some regional commercials through this avenue, as well as a music video for a Taiwanese pop star JJ Lin. for any actor, self-submitting is one of the best things you can do before you become union or find representation. even if it's a crappy student film, you start to understand how shots are set up, and how you look on camera. and if you're lucky and perform well, you get footage for an actor's reel.

over the next few years i end up moving around a few more times, first with a friend, and then eventually moved in with another boyfriend. it's through him that i met my first and current agent, Melissa Hirschenson at Innovative Artists. Melissa used to be his commercial agent years ago, but left LA for a few years to work as a casting director. when she moved back to LA in 05', the agency where she used to work did not have a position for her in the commercial department, but instead gave her a spot in a new department called the Crossover Division, which has now merged with their Youth Division.

i was extremely lucky to meet Melissa at this time because she was just building her list of clients. since she didn't have any girls of the asian persuasion, she called me in. right at this time, i had received an offer for commercial representation at a boutique agency called Howard Talent West, which i brought up to Melissa and she had me meet the commercial department at Innovative. they started to submit me and i quickly started getting callbacks. several months later, the company legitimately signed me on as a client.

i cannot stress how very fortunate i am to have met Melissa at that time. i don't think i'd be with such a good agency now had i not met her. since then i've worked on several commercials, independent film, and gone on many interesting (and educational) auditions. since this first blog is already so long, i'll stop here and go into more detail about some of those projects and current events in separate blogs.

if you made it this far, thanks for reading! i hope i can help some of you who have the same goals!!

p