“What I love about acting is that it allows you to ask ‘Why?’ I found acting after college as a way to grieve the death of my mother, and I fell in love with it. My world exploded! I read everything I could get my hands on. Here was this thing I could do that I absolutely loved. I felt open and creative in new ways and could put my innate curiosity about others’ experiences to creative use. What is so magnetic about acting is that it invites you to examine who you are as you step into the shoes of another person (fictional or not) and try to genuinely understand the background, point of view, and motivations of that person who may be in so many ways different from you.”
“Acting aside, when I look at our world today, I believe there would be far less strife and partisan fighting if people were less afraid to imagine and empathize with another’s person’s struggles and beliefs. In acting, teachers often say, ‘Never judge your character,’ which is good advice. I find that you have to bring empathy, nonjudgment, and humanity to whomever you are portraying. Characters, like ‘real’ people, are complicated.”
“The business has definitely changed a lot since I started, not always for the best, but I am gratified to see on stage, TV, film, and in commercials many more people of different colors, ethnicities, genders, sizes, shapes, ages, and neurodiversity. That gives me hope. We all want to recognize at least small nuggets of ourselves in what we read or watch…that is how we know we are not alone, that we matter, that we are human.”