“I was born to act. I am a product of a wild childhood. I used to jokingly say that I would’ve either become schizophrenic or an actress. I guess technically one doesn’t preclude the other. You just get paid to be emotionally malleable as an actress.
My parents split (amicably) when I was two-and-a-half. From that moment, until I found myself in New York City not knowing I was about to find my life’s vocation, I lived multiple lives. My mom and I lived in some of the most beautiful spots sunny California has to offer. We also lived in many permutations: a hilltop perch in Big Sur with an outdoor shower, which created my life-long obsession with outdoor showers, and also a white van with shag rug upholstery for a stint, a (real!) tepee with a propane stove and two twin beds in Paradise, California, and a beautiful, glass-walled home in La Jolla with the most expansive view of the Pacific Ocean one could wish for. It had a flat rooftop on which I did one of my first DIY fashion shoots.
With my dad, I lived in a big, white, waterfront house with a swimming pool and a tennis court flanked by the Gulf of Mexico. That’s where I learned to ride a bike. We went on summer European holidays to opulent places like Villa D’Este in Italy, getting to jump from the floating pool dock into Lake Como, and Hotel Schneider in Austria where I learned to ski in the winters. Fondue, wool blankets piled on in horse-drawn carriages, apple strudel by the fire, tasting Fernet Branca (baffled as to how adults could possibly like it).
As I write this, it strikes me that I was always near ever-shifting bodies of water. And that we are all to some degree, ever shifting bodies of water. Alas, I digress.
Back to acting finding me. And how I couldn’t do anything else. I was 13 when I was recruited from John Robert Powers modeling school in San Diego (yes, we did learn to walk in a straight line with books piled on top of our heads) to give modeling a go in the infamous Big Apple with the prestigious Elite Modeling Agency. Well, Elite Petite, as I am barely 5’5.” For context, if it’s not clear from the above, I was a hippie child, but with a family with enough means to allow for European travel and a good education. What I was not was a seasoned New York kid. So Manhattan was A LOT.
I had just months before taken my mom’s book, Richard Hittleman’s Yoga, off the shelf, grabbed her mat and proceeded to see what yoga (which my mom had always loved) was all about. I had done a Candida cleanse by age 12 and seen a strange iridologist who told me that I in fact had blue eyes, not hazel, and that they were my particular shade of olive green because my liver was toxic. After a brief bout of terror that I was dying, my mom and I laughed it off. In case you are worried, my eyes are still hazel and my liver seems to be fine.
I was in New York for about a month, pounding the pavement, getting on subways in the wrong direction trying to make it to ‘go-sees,’ portfolio in hand, looking for a fresh vegetable or a mountain to hike. I came down with bronchitis and called my Aunt Carol—of Let’s Make a Deal fame; she was the original Vanna White—whom had been great counsel to me in the past. I said ‘I don’t want to give up on anything’ (I’m still like that) ’but I don’t think this modeling thing is for me.’ She said there was an acting class in L.A. with a man by the name of Gene Bua, who she thought I’d love, and maybe it was worth a shot. Sure enough, I found myself in L.A. staying with Carol and my Uncle Mark for the summer.
I enrolled in Gene’s cold reading class in the San Fernando Valley. I will never forget the moment it hit me—onstage with my pages in my hand and another person making their way through me, that I knew acting was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I called my parents and professed my newfound passion. To my surprise, probably because I was a way-too-serious kid, they believed me and supported this crazy notion.
The rest is history. I still live the life of a nomad, uprooting on a moment’s notice to fly to another corner of the world, beckoning the alchemical process of turning my multiple personalities into art—to see the world through different eyes each time, even if they are technically my own hazel ones. And for that, my gratitude is beyond words.”
