Actor Growth

I was called to be an extra on a TV show called Samurai Girl.  Most of the extra work I have done involves me being some kind of professional with a business look and this one is no exception.  I know this has a lot to do with my headshot as I have a pretty professional business photo as one of the choices that my extra agent uses.

My call time is at 6:30 am at Vancouver downtown today and I’m not really sure what to expect as it is my first time working on this production in particular.  This is going to be one hot day too having to wear business attires such as a suit on such a hot summer day.

As a teenager I always thought I would go into something tech oriented and I was a fairly quiet person. During high school though, for one reason or another the school’s theatre program instructor really pushed me to take the theatre acting program. I personally thought he was crazy too considering I always got nervous whenever trying to speak to a large group of people.

I then learned later on that a big reason for wanting me to go into the program was that the instructor wanted to break a stereotype that Asians were too quiet and could not succeed in the program. As a point of note the school, Templeton Secondary, had one of the best theatre programs in all of BC with an ample amount of awards and recognition to back it up.

Long story short, I eventually did decide to dedicate myself to the program throughout my high school life and accomplished a lot including winning recognitions in provincial competitions. It really did change me a lot as well for the better such as giving me the confidence to do public speaking with ease.

After graduation though, the tech side in me still wanted to explore other things such as the growth of the Internet and that led me into a direction away from acting. A few years later, I seemed to have done what I wanted to do to satisfy the tech side in me and I started to wonder where if I pursued acting immediately instead how would it have turned out? At the same time, I really enjoyed film as it is one of those things where you create once and it can stay alive for ages.

As a result, I decided I wanted to get back into acting. At first I took an intensive acting workshop from Studio 58 since my training has primarily been in theatre. Eventually, I decided that I needed to learn about film acting specifically and so I enrolled into a full time film acting program at Capilano college. After completing the program, I was ready to start my journey in trying to make a career as an actor. However, something came up shortly after, which I can probably write a script for one day, as it involves a lot of things that halted my ambition.

Despite these setbacks, just a few months ago I decided to go ahead anyways with my ambition as the longer I wait the more time I am wasting I’d say. As of now, I am doing gigs on short independent films as well as extra work for various productions.

I am still young with a youthful look, so let’s see where this journey takes me. Fortunately with my tech background, running this blog is easy for me and maybe I’ll get to meet some great people along the way.

Well, this is officially the first post in the actor growth blog.  Hopefully I’ll be able to provide people an insight with what it is like trying to become an actor in the film and television industry.  I’m sure I will go through a lot of positives and negatives which should make this a fun journey to document as well.

I am not exactly new to the whole business of acting as I have been formally trained and have won various recognitions as well.  Although, in terms of being able to do this as a profession full time is still a path that I am working to achieve.

Of course, through my blogging I will be unable to reveal specific details of the work that I do which require some form of non disclosure agreement.  Here’s looking to a fun journey.