Lydia's Journey BEYOND Hollywood

Man, it can't get anymore DEAD for me! ZERO auditions! :( Sooooo, I decided to be proactive and do some drops yesterday. Me and a friend put in a good 4 hours of dropping off headshots at various casting director offices. Funny thing happened, we happened to be driving by a commercial casting office and decided to stop and drop a pic since we were in the neighborhood. Well, we were turning the corner to the back of the building where the entrance is and we heard someone go inside, just as we got into their cloud of marijuana smoke. We tried to enter the building to drop our pictures off and the door was locked. Guess they didn't want us to find out who that cloud of smoke belonged to! haha Needless to say, we ended up leaving - along with our pictures. Oh well. Seems like friends left and right are going into auditions - sometimes three in one day - and it's as if I left town or something - no one is calling. :( Hopefully things will pick up. Soon. I need a jo...

I have learned so much about people and the way they go after the things they want in life, while living here in LA, pursuing my career. I have learned that there are people who know what to do to make things happen and are just too lazy to make it happen - and there are people who don't have a clue, but are eager and hungry for that knowledge. I think the latter are the ones that will actually succeed. To me, it's a math problem.... 1 + 1 = 2. 0 + 0 does not equal anything at all - meaning you can't expect to get something for nothing, zero effort will give you zero results. I also have learned that I can tell someone exactly what they should do to make their career move forward, but it's up to them to be in the driver's seat. I can't do it for them. I really do try and stay positive and have faith that things will all work out in my career, and I highly recommend that attitude for everyone out there, in everything that you do. I had someone ask me, who h...

Well, needless to say, I did not get the commercial. Damn. I've been waiting to get flooded with auditions now that the writer's strike is over (WHOOOHOOOO!!!!!) - but my phone has not rang once. Damn again. Hmmm...maybe I'll make some postcards, or take some workshops. I gotta do something so I'm not just sitting around.

Just found out today I'm on avail for the ExxonMobile audition I had this weekend! I guess those smiles meant they liked what I was doing! :) I hope I book it, because I could use a nice national commercial right about now! My first one at that! It's shooting either this Friday or Saturday so I guess I will hear something this week. Keep your fingers crossed for great news soon!

I had an audition today (weird, on a Saturday!) for a national commecial for ExxonMobile. I have been here for 7 years and still have never booked a national commercial! I swear I do everything backwards! It was straight to the callback, and they were looking for real teachers - more so than actors. So I didn't give them a headshot and walked in there as if this was all new to me. :) We had to act like we were teaching a chemistry lesson - but I swear I have never taught molecules to my 4th graders! Or my kindergartners!! haha I explained to them that I work for LAUSD and we are just trying to get them to READ and do basic math! ahh, the public school system! But I faked it as much as possible, (or as much as I could remember about atoms and molecules - which isn't much!) and then somehow went into lessons on Health and Algebra. I was stretching folks! Trying to teach what I knew! They seemed to like me, they were smiling a lot, or maybe they were thinking I was ju...

My manager called me with my first theatrical audition for the year. It was a for one of the only pilots that is casting right now, Danny Fricke . I was excited....and then I read the sides and saw what the role was. It was a housekeeper. With one line. In Spanish. Man, as desperate as I am to work, I REALLY don't want to play another maid. And when I do consider playing a maid again, she better be the lead character of the show or movie, or play an important role to the storyline...not just come in and serve dinner! It was pretty frustrating because last year's pilot I was a guest star lead, and now they are coming to me with a small one line maid role? I'm trying to move forward, not take steps back. So I passed. I really wanted to meet this casting director, but I have faith that I will get called in again, and hopefully it's for a nice juicy guest star role.

Today marks 7 years that I have been here in LA. 7 whole years! Wow, sometimes I think that I'm still a newbie in this town, but 7 years sounds like a long time now! When I think back on my experiences these past 7 years, it has been a roller coaster ride! I came to this town on February 3, 2001 without much of a plan or roladex of contacts. I knew one person who I stayed with for 2 1/2 weeks until she kicked me out because she needed her "space" back and I took refuge with a new friend I had known a week, who practically saved my life and took me in for 3 weeks! Tough start to my new LA life! Had my first audition from a blind submission (I just mailed my headshot in and hoped for the best) and had a callback! I moved into a crappy apartment in a rough area and moved out 2 months later. I did background work for a year, trying to get my SAG vouchers, because I was non-union and desperate to be part of the professional world of actors!! Doing background work was...