About Me
One of the many looks I offer: "90's J.Crew catalog."
Authenticity. This is the word that most people use to describe me and what I offer to the world - and coincidentally it’s a great buzzword to start an artist statement with, so that’s a win-win.
I was born in New York City and then promptly relocated to Lawrence, Kansas, where I grew up living between worlds. I attended a non-traditional Montessori school and spent my weekends riding (falling off of but let's be generous here) unruly horses at my family farm. I started at the local community college when I was 16, where I studied dance, anthropology, and Arabic - the latter took me to Morocco briefly before transferring to the University of Kansas. There, as part of my major in Film & Media Studies, I studied screenwriting under Oscar-winning BlackKklansman writer Kevin Willmott and acting under Lisa Picard Is Famous star Laura Kirk. In my free time, I studied regenerative land management, which took me to Zimbabwe and London and introduced me to the largest global family I could ask for. I've eaten truly horrifying things in Paris (sorry, France, I just can’t do the snails), branded cattle with true-to-life cowboys in the California mountains, learned to ride a horse backwards and upside-down, and ridden a motorcycle up the tallest paved road in the Rocky Mountains - twice. You could call me midwest work ethic meets big-city dreamer, and the thing I want most in the world is to live as many lives as I possibly can. Enter, acting. (That’s kind of a theater joke, right? You get it. I’m hilarious.)
I was born in New York City and then promptly relocated to Lawrence, Kansas, where I grew up living between worlds. I attended a non-traditional Montessori school and spent my weekends riding (falling off of but let's be generous here) unruly horses at my family farm. I started at the local community college when I was 16, where I studied dance, anthropology, and Arabic - the latter took me to Morocco briefly before transferring to the University of Kansas. There, as part of my major in Film & Media Studies, I studied screenwriting under Oscar-winning BlackKklansman writer Kevin Willmott and acting under Lisa Picard Is Famous star Laura Kirk. In my free time, I studied regenerative land management, which took me to Zimbabwe and London and introduced me to the largest global family I could ask for. I've eaten truly horrifying things in Paris (sorry, France, I just can’t do the snails), branded cattle with true-to-life cowboys in the California mountains, learned to ride a horse backwards and upside-down, and ridden a motorcycle up the tallest paved road in the Rocky Mountains - twice. You could call me midwest work ethic meets big-city dreamer, and the thing I want most in the world is to live as many lives as I possibly can. Enter, acting. (That’s kind of a theater joke, right? You get it. I’m hilarious.)
"Whether I'm being hired for a job or writing it myself, I fully intend to always be working at my craft, and that drive is why I have lived a full life that I am proud of."
My first big role was Templeton the Rat, Act II, in my sixth-grade production of Charlotte’s Web. This might sound like I’m being modest - “Oh, she played the rat, how quirky, I bet this is a story about how she didn’t want it at first but she grew as a person!“ - absolutely not. I wanted that role. I needed that role. Because, you see, when I had watched the play two years earlier, the actor who played Act II Templeton got to eat so much at the county fair that he ran off stage, stuffed his shirt with a pillow, and re-entered with a fat belly. If you do not think this is not the height of comedy then you are just wrong. I spent the next two years plotting out how I would obtain this - in my mind - highly-coveted role. I petitioned all the teachers, I put it top of my list when they asked us for our preferred parts (“ACT TWO!” I said, because what was the point if I didn’t get to be fat?), and lo and behold, I got the role. In hindsight I don’t think there was actually a lot of competition. But I played that role, nailed it, and that was when I learned I could do anything.
I spent my childhood acting in school and community theater, and in the year after earning my college degree, I wrote, produced, and starred in two separate productions; a web series about a superhero who was just atrocious at her job, and a short horror film about a persecuted witch coming back for revenge. I also acted in multiple student productions, where I got to enjoy the luxury of acting in a project I was not also attempting to produce. I spent the rest of this time working three jobs to save up for the move to LA, learning monologues and researching acting classes I would take once I arrived. And now, I have officially arrived.
"You could call me midwest work ethic meets big-city dreamer, and the thing I want most in the world is to live as many lives as I possibly can."
I’ve read many times that an actor needs to be able to articulate what it is they bring to the table, so I’ll say this: the sum of my experiences have made me incredibly capable and grounded in who I am. I consider acting to be a search for truth, and I want to know every truth of the human experience. Whether I’m being hired for a job or writing it myself, I fully intend to always be working at my craft, and that drive is why I have lived a full life that I am proud of. So, with that being said, let’s talk about work!
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Below is a list of careers I considered at some point, until I realized that through acting, I could be them all:
- Horse trainer - Circus performer - Lawyer - Anthropologist - MMA fighter - Welder - Police officer - Foreign translator - Rodeo trick rider - Professional party superhero - Orchestra bassist - Novelist - Stuntwoman |
