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Confessions of a Latina Actress |
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By Yeni Alvarez
It started out as a noble idea, which later turned into unrelentless passion. I didn’t know at the time that it would end up being my career. I’m talking about acting. At the age of seven, as I stepped unto that marionette stage in Cuba, I experienced an incredible high to be followed by a torrid emptiness when it came time to get off the stage. I spent the years to follow trying to get back that high. And as incredible as it may have been to my Cuban parents, I had decided to be an actress. “Is that a career?” “Can you really survive on that little?” “Please try computers for a few years first, you know, they are the future.” How many times I heard that, I cannot tell. But it seemed to be the whole world regarded acting as “not a real profession.” After three miserable years in computers and a few acting classes later, a teacher opened my eyes. He actually said I was good enough! He said I could make money at it! What a concept! Mr. Rachelle made me an actress. The rest is history. .. and this column… Yes, acting is a real profession, a real job. Most 9 to 5ers would not agree, seeing us at coffee shops during office hours discussing idealistic works in progress. They do not realize all the work that has to be done before the actor gets the job. Which, by my count, takes a lot more than eight hours. And as difficult as it may be for some to fathom, we are not all waiters. We are writers, painters, sketchers, singers, poets, artists, and therapists. And that’s the thing you can’t bottle. Let me raise the banner and say that we not only work hard at our craft by attending classes, we endure countless auditions and interviews every week. We are scrutinized by casting directors. We get turned down more times than we actually worked. We’re too fat, we’re too old, we’re too tall, or not tall enough. Rejection is just something you deal with in our profession. And it is a profession. We are constantly calling our agents, sending postcards, staging showcases, selecting acting teachers, and buying books on gearing our careers. All this, while improving our image to abide by the ever-rising Hollywood standards. By the time we actually get the job, we are tired. We’ve been preparing for years. How many 9 to 5ers have lived through or survived those odds? Not many. And in some sneaky way, we are doing what we loved form day one. We are living our dream. We have followed our destinies down the road less traveled. And as neurotic as it may seem, being that acting is actually living in someone else’s shoes, it takes courage to leave your own shoes behind. It takes balls. Brass ones. In my own quirky way, what I am trying to say is: Don’t dismiss acting as the easy way out. There is nothing easy about it. And don’t ever tell an actor to get a “real job.” We deal with enough rejection in the job we’ve got. Well, this didn’t start out to be the column it turned into. I am not here to preach the word of Stanislavsky or Stella Adler. I am simply hereby sharing with you all the pesky details, all the fabulous adventures an actress goes through in Hollywood. Educational it won’t be. Sophistication it does not attempt. Entertaining and eye opening to the Hollywood experience, now we’re talking. So sip your coffee, read on and tell Mr. Rachelle I’m doing just fine.
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