The truth about acting #1

They say the best actors, or the more employable actors, are those with the most life experience to draw upon.
In other words: actors who have experienced life; is this even true; is this what a casting director or director considers?

Here's a question that would surely cause a stir at your next dinner party;

At what stage have you actually 'experienced life'? Like hell I'm waiting until age eighty to book a decent acting or presenting role, man.

For me personally; I went to primary school, got a sister, started acting classes, went on loads of family holidays, rode my bike until all hours, played under the sprinkler, played softball, did karate, regularly collected & sold my neighbors mail back to them, my favorite movie was The Wedding Singer and My Best Friends Wedding (i was eight or ten), lost my grandfather, went to high school, still doing acting classes, got severely bullied, spent my summers waterskiing and winters snow skiing, changed high schools from public to private, stopped getting bullied, dabbled in modeling, travelled with my family, had my first boyfriend, learnt to ride a horse, sucked at maths but got an A in drama, got bullied by a teacher, became part of a social scene, graduated high school, started university, still acting, travelled, met my 'now' fiancé, partied, made new friends, travelled again, started working in Human resources, went through social traumas, grew up a whole heap, started a business in fashion, got a new more advanced job in Human Resources, had lots of money, wore the miss corporate crown and rocked, graduated, decided I couldn't let go of my acting aspirations, moved to LA, lived on my own & had not many friends, worked twelve hours a day 7 days a week, discovered I was a good presenter, got accepted into Chubbucks classes, continued to travel around and work hard, missed my man decided to head home, started a new business in recruitment, finally confident and comfortable with who I am, channel 7 discovered me, started caring for my grandmother, worked hard on producing my own work, got booked to play the lead in an Aussie-Viet film, hello world this is me, picked up a whole lot of presenting work, kicking goals, booked my first TVC, started producing & writing, bought a house, got an agent, welcome to Korean food was born, still working on my own stuff, lost my other grandfather, renovated my house, became a voice over artist, he proposed, still acting and presenting, still running my own business, organizing a wedding, busting my ass to be prepared for when the right person calls me with the right role for the right project, still training, still acting.

Voice recordings

This week I was in the studio to do my first three voice recordings for the Marco Polo Project.
We were at Salt Studios in Brighton for the most part of the day and even though I have done some VO work previously I still felt a little nervous as I walked into the sound booth. Our sound engineer Matt Hadley is such a lovely guy, as soon as I heard his voice filter through the speaker I immediately felt at ease.
Two days prior Matt, Nghi and I had gotten together over brunch in Brighton to discuss the recording and run through the readings, in between that I had worked on the material myself familiarizing myself with difficult vocabulary, learning to how to pronounce many chinese words and of course finding the meaning and objective to assist me in driving the material.
Even though I had practiced my Chinese I still fumbled on many of the words but there were lots that I actually pronounced very well too.
There were no real hiccups on the day, apart from the lighting in the sound booth not being completely adequate, which of course poses as a slight problem when you are required to read in order to perform your role! As they say, the show must go on and we all made do with the light we had, it just meant a little more concentration and emphasis on attention to detail - and a splitting headache on the way home!

I'll be back in the sound studio in coming weeks to record more!

The truth about acting

As an actor I find that my performances almost always need to be pulled back for tv.
I began studying acting when I was 5 and continued with theatre studies until 18 and I find that I struggle just a bit with bringing my performances back down to reality. I don't need to hit the back row when on a tv or film set and it would be wise of me to keep that in mind.

My most recent audition was for a speaking role on a TV commercial and again I got the 'pull it back, make it smaller'. I can do this perfectly well but I can't help but wonder - does my tendency to begin with all guns blazing hinder my chances of booking a job? Or, does my ability to take direction and give the director what they've asked for during my audition overshadow my blazing gun and work in my favor?

I need to remember to keep things small. While studying in LA I really mastered this and was never really told to pull things back, in fact, in LA the overall reaction to me as an actress was so much more positive compared to here in Australia. Someone once told me that could be due to me being a minority in LA - but really - the place is literally crawling with kids from Oz!

What I need is a role similar to Elaine from Seinfeld, Fran from The Nanny, Rachel from Friends, or even Penny from The Big Bang Theory.

R is for radish

I've been slack on the cooking band wagon of recent and I have no shame in admitting that I have thoroughly enjoyed dining out during this wonderful summer period. I don't really know anyone who actually enjoys turning the oven on and standing over a stove in this heat, and if you told me that you do I'm sorry but I would just have to call your bluff!

It's no secret that I would prefer to spend my time baking cakes, however I was recently told by the man that I live with that we just cannot survive on cake. What planet is he from?

So here you go Michael, my darling non cake surviving fiancé, these are radishes and we will be eating them tonight.
No cake.
Just pork, sautéed raddish and a fresh cucumber and chicory salad.