Why I REALLY stopped acting 😬

And why I might be ready to start again after all these years.

Before I dive in to my admission of the very little-known truth behind why I actually stopped acting, it’s probably a good idea to share some context on the why and how I started acting in the first place.

As cliché as it might sound, for as long as I can remember I was “that kid” to my family, teachers and peers. The one constantly role playing and putting on performances and wanting as many people watching me as possible. Whether it be at a recital or in a classroom or at home or just simply walking across the street. Since I was a toddler, I craved just a smidge more than the average amount of attention.

But make no mistake, while I was undeniably that kid, I was not a theater kid. Important to point out because theater kids are a different breed whom I admire and respect whole-heartedly. I just wasn’t one of those kids.

You see, those kids truly, madly, deeply love “the craft”. They love the art of performing and the satisfaction of moving an audience to emotionally respond in real time. They love it all so much that they would commit their lives to performing wherever and whenever they can, so long as they made just enough money to get by.

I enjoyed performing, sure. But it wasn’t solely about “the craft” for me. My dream of being an actor was fueled by one thing and one thing only as a child: becoming famous. Well, if I’m being completely honest, it was actually becoming an Olsen triplet but I knew that was biologically impossible so I was content to settle for famous.

I remember meeting with my first agent at 12 years old and telling her that I just wanted to be on TV. I told her she could keep my whole paycheck because I was a kid and I didn’t need any money. I just needed to be on TV.

She laughed. I went on a handful of cattle call auditions and didn’t book anything so I swiftly gave up on that pipedream and focused on my grades. If I couldn’t become famous, I would get my special attention fix from being a star student, instead.

Then, I met my next agent, Amanda. Spoiler alert: 22 years later and she’s still in the picture.

Amanda had recently left her agency to start her own business and was spending evenings scouting for talent at young performer recitals. I was doing dance/musical classes as an extra curricular and happened to be in the back row of the stage at one of said recitals. This lady sat through 3.5 hours of discombobulated dance routines and horrendous renditions of West Side Story numbers in a sweaty old hall to chase me and my mom down in a parking lot afterwards and ask if I wanted an agent.

I was special, after all. I knew it!

But I also knew I was starting highschool in the Fall, which I’d already accepted was my road to whatever special destiny was meant for me. I reluctantly agreed to spend the summer going to whatever auditions she wanted to send me to, if my mom was available to take me, before parting ways come September so I could focus on what was important; my education.

Shortly into my summer of auditions, I booked a voiceover for a commercial. That’s when I heard my voice coming through a TV screen for the first time. And I made my first paycheck — which she did not keep all of, by the way, because evidently, per our contract, that would be illegal — and I finally got to buy something for myself with my own money and zero negotiation or permission required from my parents. That, my friends, at 13 years old felt fucking wonderful.

Naturally, I wanted more. The rest is history, as they say.

School started, I kept auditioning and I kept booking jobs. One after the other until my shooting schedule was too full to attend a regular highschool. Then came opportunities that would fill my bank account too generously to pass up for university.

So… that was kind of it. That was my path. Determined for me by a 13-year-old who liked attention, had a lot of luck and really loved shopping.

Fast forward to my first come-to-Jesus moment at 23 years old. The show I’d worked on for 5 years and had moved me to a different country on my own, away from all of my family and friends, was abruptly and unexpectedly cancelled. Life as I knew it my entire adult existence was over.

I could go on about all the conflicting ways that moment hit me in a whole chapter of a book but the key takeaway for this story is that I finally had a moment to breathe and reflect on what I wanted to do next. Did I want to continue pursuing a path chosen for me by my 13-year-old self? Or did 23-year-old me who’d spent years unhappily playing out that decision want to choose something else for herself now?

A couple weeks after receiving the news and filming my final days on that set, I called all of my agents and managers and told them they were fired. Not because they weren’t wonderful because they were but because I didn’t want to jump into another acting job.

I’d endured so many mental health struggles that the entertainment industry just wasn’t conducive for at that time and spent so long working that I didn’t even recognize myself anymore.

When I started my decade-long run of back to back TV shows, I was just a tween. Now, I was a 23 year old woman about to get married with no clue who she really was beyond her public persona, professional life and personal baggage she’d racked up with no free time to actually process it. Beyond the sweet paycheck, I simply wasn’t passionate enough about what I was doing in front of the camera to put myself through it all for any longer. I didn’t want to find myself in the same boat 10 more years down the line.

I was done.

I was also young. And had spent a majority of the past decade working very long hours on various sets in very closed bubbles. I couldn’t fathom healing or having better experiences in a different environment and had total blind confidence that I’d find another way to making a living.

With little responsibility requiring me to think rationally or imminently about what that might actually look like, I was perfectly comfortable making that very emotional, very rash, very huge decision about my future.

The novelty of freedom wore off and time started to pass. I toyed with the idea of re-visiting university for business and marketing. I half-assedly pursued hosting and editorial writing because they were passions that’d lived in the back of my head for years. As I dabbled and spent savings and watched weeks turn into months, the stark reality hit that I was aging out of starting from scratch.

At least, that was true in my mind. I watched peers my age starting to truly excel in the paths they chosen post-highschool while I was living my pre-teen self’s dream and it was uncomfortable.

I’d spent years earning a great living and being quite successful while most people my age were just being my age. Now, people my age were starting to earn great livings and climb their ladders to success while I was starting over with no degree and zero work experience that would be relevant to any profession outside of acting. The math was no longer mathing, if that makes sense.

After two years making no real progress towards anything particularly fruitful because real progress would require real commitment that I wasn’t ready to commit while maintaining my current lifestyle, I felt I didn’t have much choice but to head back to that 13-year-old’s chosen path.

So, I got another agent. And I took meetings and did auditions but this time, I wasn’t booking job after job. I’d fortunately built enough of a career to still have enough opportunities come my way to keep me going financially but I had to face the cold, hard fact that I had halted the momentum of my career by taking those two years off. I’m sure you’ve heard the term, “You have to strike while the iron’s hot”. Well, in the entertainment industry, it’s more like “When you’re hot, you’re hot” but when you’re not… “you’ve gone cold.”

In that two years, I’d gone cold. And the industry had changed a lot.