As a commercial actor, you get sent out on appointments several times a day with no preparation. Just audition over and over for the opportunity to become a human prop. A prop in a car ordering donuts, a prop being startled by a Transformer, a prop eating limited-release KFC panini sandwiches over and over until the prop pukes . . . I’ve done it all.
I have a great “love to please you!” attitude and look good in polo shirts, so over the next several years of my career, I did amazingly well in this area. If you are persistent enough, you can make a hell of a good living and work only two days a year doing television commercials. Half my nose snuck on camera for an Old Navy commercial during the 2004 Olympics, and I made more money than I’d ever made in my whole life. And the variety is fun, if you can remove yourself as an actual FEELING PERSON from the process.
On different projects I got to skydive, play with parrots, and eat five bags of Cheetos in an hour (FYI, it isn’t how I suspected. If you eat enough Cheetos you will NOT actually poop an extra-large Cheeto). I got hired to walk down a street thinking a whole monologue of silent thoughts about weight loss while drinking liquid yogurt. Later, they asked me to audition to be that same monologue voice in the commercial. Which I ended up LOSING OUT to someone else. Yeah, I lost a job to be my own inner voice. Strange, because I sound exactly like my own voice in my OWN HEAD when I think about liquid yogurt. But I got paid extremely well, so the empty feeling of being treated like a puppet was fine? Sort of?
Actually, not.
Acting in commercials was never my life goal. I wanted to be on TV or in an indie film with Parker Posey about quirky people having family issues around inheritances. Or Parkinson’s. SOMETHING where I wasn’t being yelled at for wrinkling my prop shirt or squeezing the prop burger too hard so the prop mustard started oozing out the back.
After five years of acting and making a great living, I started to forget why I moved to LA in the first place. And so did my family back home.
“We saw you on that post office ad, you’re so cute, are they going to turn that into a TV show?”
“That’s not how that works, Mom.”
“Well, here’s an idea. You should be on that NCIS thing with Mark Harmon. You grew up on military bases, you know that world!”
“Gee, you’re right! Why didn’t I think of calling them before? They’ve probably been waiting by the phone for YEARS!” Le sigh.
On a renewed quest for opportunity (i.e., last-gasp attempt to fan the dying fire of my dreams), I hustled to get hired on bigger projects. I finally accepted that my dazzling 4.0 GPA wasn’t the trump card in this new world that I’d thought it would be, so I started making changes. And I did them out of desperation, which is always a first step into the mouth of existential doom.
I cut off all my hair when an agent suggested it. And, for some reason, I started getting hired more. “People like you looking less like a lead character and more of a ‘best friend’!” Cool! I loved listening to prettier people complain about their relationships, I could work with that!
During one audition, a casting director said I looked “adorable” in a dorky rainbow scarf, so I started dressing only in bright, colorful clothes. Like a hot first-grade teacher who says, “My quilted cardigan hides sensible cotton lingerie under here. Come undress me, but first, please use a coaster for your drink.”
The makeover cherry topper was when I got nerdy librarian glasses. They made me look older, but in a weird, accessible way. Suddenly I could play late thirties as a twenty-seven-year-old. More work flooded in. Good change! Good Felicia! Yay?
And after switching up all the superficial stuff, I was the same person underneath, but for some reason, people couldn’t stop hiring me. The snowballing feedback made me abandon the whole “What does Felicia want to be?” and I started doing whatever anyone told me they wanted from me in order to succeed. Lo and behold, it WORKED!
I got tons more commercials. I overcame my nuclear-meltdown nervousness in auditions to get a few jobs as recurring characters on TV shows. I didn’t work every day, but for the average actor, I started to have a career I could brag about at cocktail parties. With my head-to-toe makeover, I’d found my niche: cat-owning, stalker-y secretary.
And I played the same part again and again and again.