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Breakthroughs in life occur at the feeling level. That’s the beginning and end of it. If we want to evolve, grow, face our fears, reach new heights, become the kind of artist we know we can become, we have to feel our way there. We have to feel things we aren’t accustomed to allowing ourselvesRead more

What do you tell yourself when you don’t get the job? Be honest. Generally it follows something along the 5 stages of Grief. (Sometimes all within the same minute!) 1). Denial. “Ummm . . . What? They definitely don’t know what they’re doing! They’ll figure it out and when no one else does a betterRead more

  You have to love yourself. End. Of. Story. What else is there really on this individual journey we’re all taking? If you don’t love yourself, how can you possibly love another and radiate that love to your work, creativity, the birthing of new ideas and bringing something tangible and worthwhile into the world? WhenRead more

Remember just how much you’ve already accomplished in your life. We forget that. Especially when we face constant rejection and hear endless “no’s” and begin personalizing and believing the negation means there’s something wrong with us or we’re untalented or flawed in some way. We start believing the illusion that this business is harder thanRead more

  Whenever I’m in NY teaching at our school there, I’m reminded of how much humanity is about . . . well . . . just being human. Maybe because LA is shaped by a car culture, it’s so easy to remove ourselves from life (from connection, from vulnerability, from having to confront life head-onRead more

Playing. That’s the thing. What happened to that? Since the beginning of time, that’s the real reason to be an actor. The ancient Greeks may have called their little skits “tragedies” but the word is a compound of two Greek words: “goat” and “to sing.” So, ummmm . . . they were definitely having funRead more

  Go all in. That’s what filmmaker Steve McQueen, director of 12 Years A Slave, says actors should be doing all the time. Always. But we don’t. Why? Mostly, because we have a number of defaults to keep us from really committing fully, 100%. In our lives. In our work. In our auditioning. This isRead more

  I had a sort-of meltdown at the Vancouver Airport’s Air Canada check-in counter this week. I missed my flight. No big deal. I’ve missed flights before. But for some reason – no not some reason – a specific reason – I was triggered. The trigger: We can’t control anything in life. We may deludeRead more

Now you can train your mind to do the impossible. That’s a catchy title I saw recently in the Huffington Post. But was I surprised by what this mind-training tool is? Not really. Meditation. It seems neuroscientists have proven that meditation actively rewires our brains over long periods of time and creates neuroplasticity to makeRead more

In the HBO documentary, Casting By, the late casting director Marion Dougherty, talks about how it didn’t really matter to her if actors bombed auditions. Or sucked. Or weren’t great all the time. What mattered is that she saw something in them and knew that eventually there would be a role that would come alongRead more