Balancing Acting with Life

*V-J Day in Times Square*- famous romantic photo from 1945.

The victorious “Rocky” from the 1976 movie *Rocky*.

In order to have a full life, we can’t become so solely focused on our acting career that we forget the rest of who we are. I believe that it takes a balance in life to be a solid actor that has depth and is interesting. I learned from one of my acting coaches about a pie chart that described keeping your life in balance when pursuing such a passionate career. I’ve always found his difficult because I found that the art of filmmaking would take over my life, so there was no balance.

I like to think of my life in six categories— and every week, I need to be working on each category a little bit in order to stay balanced. The categories for me are: love life, acting career, health/wellness, family & friend time, spiritual faith time, and continuing education. To become the best actor I could possibly be at 80, I want to have a full life. And in order to tell great stories as an actor, I need to live a full life.

I’ve played mothers in film before, but I’d never had a child, and I always wanted one. In the past few weeks, I’ve been able to experience motherhood for the first time and it’s changed my level of respect for all mothers in the world. Not til you’ve tried it do you learn how difficult it can be, but also how much joy it can bring you. When I’m exploring the different categories of my life, they ebb and flow in percentages of how much I’m able to dedicate myself to them per week. For years I’ve said “I must dedicate something to my actress every day”, which may mean dedicating to the health & wellness category such as taking a dance class (I’ve taken dance for most of my dance life). It also could mean going to an al anon meeting or seeing a therapist. When I do these things for my mental health I find that I become so balanced in my acting work.

I think that spending time with friends and family is underrated for developing a healthy life. When you’re young you don’t think about it too much, but it is crucial to a meaningful life. When you look back on your life, you always remember the relationships you’ve built— and some of that can happen in your acting relationships/classes— but you have to have other relationships outside of that to become balanced.

For me, a spiritual faith side of my life is something I focus on daily. When I forget to connect spiritually, I definitely get off-kilter. And I love the continuing the education part of my life because I see so much that I still have to learn about through listening to books on Audible about history, or studying cello, or visiting the symphony or art museums, traveling, or building knowledge about the world and people. Also studying other famous artists and how they’ve approached their careers & stayed balanced themselves. I remember reading an article about Kate Winslet who she said she was determined to cook all the food her children ate; she wouldn’t order out. She’d said her own mother did the same for her, so she wanted to make that kind of environment for her own kids— despite being a busy actress. To me this is the perfect way to find priorities and balance of family life within your career as a creative.

I hope to give my own new child a large portion of my pie for a while and learn something new about characters I could play in the future. I love ALL the aspects of my life, and I feel privileged to get to call myself an actress.

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