How They Made It

Hi guys!  I thought I’d start things off by talking about something that has always interested me as an actress:  How other actors and actresses made it in the business.  Everyone has their own story and background and I always thought it was smart to learn what other people did to get where they wanted to be so I could learn from them.  Every single working actor and actress out there right now has had to get from where they were to where they are now somehow, and my question is: How?  Well, if your anything like me, you’re curios too.  So, I've compiled a few popular actors and actress to show you the different ways that they’ve made it to success.    

One way to break in that pretty much guarantees you a good shot in the industry is having parents or friends who already have a foot in the door.  Here, we look at Chris Pine, most known for his role as Captain Kirk in the 2009 Star Trek, or, for my not so star trek savvy audience, the voice of Jack Frost in Rise of the Guardians.   He comes from a whole bundle of connections.  His grandparents were both super involved in Hollywood and, as a result, their daughter, Gwynne Gilford, became an actress.  She married Robert Pine, also an actor, and they had two children, Chris and Katherine Pine, who both became actors, as well.  Long story short, Chris was pretty much born right into the industry.  
 Another example of major connections is our talented, yet very connected, Troian Bellisario, an actress most known for her role as Spencer on the ABC Family hit Pretty Little Liars.  Troian saw her film debut at the age of three in the movie Last Rites.  Three-years-old and she was acting in her first movie.  Why?  Her parents, Donald P. Bellisario and Deborah Pratt, are both producers.  So, her career as an actress was pretty sealed. 




What about Jennifer Lawrence, the actress who is most known for her role of Katniss in the Hunger Games?  Where did she come from?  Jennifer was actually born in Kentucky, pretty far away from any serious acting work.  So, what did she do?  She decided she was going to graduate high school two years early so she could start her acting career.  From there, she spent a summer in New York, where she was discovered.  Jennifer said, “My mom and I were watching street dancing and some guy asked if he could take my picture. That picture got around to all these acting and modeling agencies, and when we went home to Kentucky I begged my parents every single day to let me try it,” (Wall Street Journal).  Basically, she went to NYC and got her face out there until someone decided to give her a shot.  She started by acting in small roles and then, finally, she landed a few big ones that would end up making her name.    

Jennifer’s counterpart in the Hunger Games, Josh Hutcherson, also has a pretty interesting story.  Josh’s film debut came when he was eleven-years-old, playing a big role in American Splendor.  After that, his acting career exploded, acting in big movies like Kicking and Screaming, Little Manhattan, Zathura, Bridge to Terabithia, and so on.  That’s a pretty big career for someone who only started acting when he was nine.  But, from four-years-old, Josh told his parents he wanted to become an actor.  So, he got into a local agency in Kentucky.  His acting coach told him that he should go to California for “pilot season.”  So, what did he do?  When he was nine-years old, his family picked up and moved to LA .  There, he landed himself a few small roles which would launch his career. 



Emma Stone, an actress who’s been in a wide variety of movies from Easy A to The Help, has a similar story.  At the age of fifteen she had been acting in small play groups her whole life and finally decided to make it a career.  Apparently, she made a power point presentation to her mom to pitch the idea of moving to Hollywood so she could become famous.  It worked.  Jealous?  I am.  She and her mother moved to LA and she auditioned and auditioned until she finally landed a small role that, like all of the other actors and actresses, would launch her career.  

So, what if your parents aren’t going to move to LA anytime soon and you have absolutely no connections?  Then, you’re like Josh Radnor, the actor who plays Ted on How I Met Your Mother.  Josh always loved acting, but he was on the college-bound path and put most of his focus into his education.   He finished high school and when it came time for him to pick a college, he decided he wanted to go for performance.  He got into an acting program at Kenyon College where he graduated with a B.A. in drama and then went on to receive his Master of Fine Arts degree for acting at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.   When he got out of college, he used his education and connections he made there to start his career, writing screenplays and auditioning for roles until, finally, his hard work paid off and he landed the lead role in a very popular TV series.    


Deborah Ann Woll, most known for her role of Jessica on True Blood had a similar story.  She was always involved in performing, taking acting, piano, and dance classes while attending high school.  After her high school education she went off to get her BFA in the USC School of Theatre.  During her studies at USC, she auditioned a lot in the area and actually landed a bunch of small roles, making her television debut in 2007.  Eventually, these small roles grew bigger and she landed her first big role on True Blood.  


So, what if you finished high school, but you need to start your acting career and college just isn’t your thing?  This is probably the most common pathway for actors and actresses to take.  Adrianne Palicki, for example, most known for the role of Tyra on Friday Night Lights.  She finished high school and realized that she wanted her primary focus to be on acting.  So, instead of going to college, Adrianne went to LA.  Here, she worked in a sandwich shop and pursued her acting career, going to auditions and sending in to agencies in the area.  Eventually, she scored small roles in shows like South Beach and Popstar, and, thus, her career began.



Ian Somerhalder, better known as Damon in the CW hit the Vampire Diaries, also jumped from high school into acting.  At ten-years-old, Ian started modeling (a great way to get connections in the industry by the way), but put it on hold to focus on schoolwork and sports in high school, until a few years later, when he was offered the chance to model in Europe.  But, by the age of seventeen, he was back and in New York.  He decided then to start seriously studying acting and, by nineteen, he was already working with an acting coach and pursuing his career.  Luckily for him, he landed the extra role of a life time.  In a crowd of four-hundred other people, Ian was spotted by a talent agent who immediately signed him.  Let that be a lesson that no extra role is too small if you’re as good looking as Ian Somerhalder. 

Well, that’s it for me.  Besides giving some very interesting and helpful info, the point I was trying to make in this first blog is that no matter where you come from, no matter what background or family or life or story, you can do what you love and succeed in it.  People all over the country are doing what they love to do because, one way or another, they worked for it and they believed they could do it, and they did.  The actors and actress I talked about in this blog stood out to me as people who worked with what they had in life to get to where they are today.  They inspire me to do the same with my life.   So my questions for you guys are as follows:  What’s your story?  What’s your plan to succeed in life?   What are some stories or people that inspire you? I hope you liked my first blog post!  Tune in soon to see my next one, I’ll be posting pretty frequently.  Thank you so much for reading and I can’t wait to read your comments J!