- by Missi Pyle
So Hello and Welcome to The Film E -- The Missi Experience! I'll be guest-blogging for the next 24 hours.
First of all. I always feel a bit like a con artist or something when I am interviewed. I read other actors interviews and I always think. Oh thats how you do it. Thats how you say it. I feel often like a charlatan. Other actors - they seem to be super picky. Or somehow more artistic. But me, I will pretty much do anything. I say yes to literally 90 percent of jobs that come to me. I am so happy and truly shocked to be a working actor.
WITH MEKHI PHIFER ON SET
I was on a set yesterday with Mekhi Phifer. We are doing this crazy low budget Virus movie and we have to wear hazmat suits and helmets and tape or gloves on and we were doing this scene where we are leaving the safe compound and going on a mission to find uninfecteds and we go through this tunnel and we are on this shitty bus whacking stunt people with rubber bats and crow bars and I was just laughing because its like -what the fuck are we doing? We are grown ups who leave their home and go to work and play dress up and make believe. And its awesome.
And then after like 11 hours you get so tired. And you get pissy and want to go home but then its like:
I am getting paid for this.
God. I don't know how anybody makes it as an actor. Really. I look back at my journey. And I think about how much LUCK had to happen. But you know what they say about luck. 'When hard work meets opportunity...'
I went to North Carolina School of the Arts and it was an incredible school. But before that I ended up in a small town in Tennessee called Germantown. This was after my parents divorce. My mom married a German dude and we moved there. Totally unrelated. He was probably the only German in all of Germantown. Anyway, This school randomly had this magical Drama program led by this man Frank Bluestein. He was this gothic southern Jewish man. He is truly one of the most incredible humans I have ever met. I wouldn't be where I am without him. He just never would accept the words "I can't". So they left my vocabulary.
And I guess that would be my advice to young actors:
AS GOOD AS IT GETS (1997) at the very beginning...Take the words "I can't" out of your vocabulary.
And work hard. Harder than you think you need to. And try not to compare yourself to other people in the room when you are auditioning or, really, ever. You are uniquely you and that is what everyone is looking for. Someone who is genuinely just themselves. I think.
Anyway. thats it for advice. Oh and move to Atlanta. You will get mountains of work there.
previous Missi...
Gone Girl & Nancy Grace