Actress (Part Three)

Inside Television 551

Publication Date: 4-29-11

By: Hubert O'Hearn

Actress Part Three. This is the third and final column in the series on Lisa DiGiacinto. Where we left the story last week, Lisa had left Calgary for the major media production centre of Vancouver. She was leaving on a high, having featured in the stage production of Red Light Winter and been nominated for Best Actress at the Alberta Film and Television Awards for her role in the short film Deadwalkers, available on iTunes.

I've wanted to explain to you the life of the working actress through the story of Lisa's life thus far. What have we established? If I've done my job, you know that she is lovely and talented and ambitious and dedicated and teachable and had established a solid resume in stage, film and radio. So what more do you need? The world's her oyster and pass her the pearl necklace.

Oysters and pearls. A pearl - in case you didn't know or in case you have forgotten - is born of pain. The little oyster is irritated by a grain of sea sand. It hurts. It hurts and the hurt won't go away so the oyster grows this shiny substance that hardens and smooths around the sand hoping it won't hurt any more. We who just see the result thinks the pearl is all prettiness on the half shell. The oyster knows better, but who ever thought to talk to an oyster?

This story called Actress has been in the works for a year now. When I got back in touch Lisa through Facebook I knew that her story was the story every aspiring actor, and every smug audience member who thought that Life is Hard but Acting is Easy needed to know. I asked her last summer what the highs and lows were. She sent me an audio file last August. It was devastating.

We don't have room in a newspaper column to quote from it, so let me summarize the pain. After a year and a half in Vancouver, things were going less than well. Lisa had passed age 30 and that is a dangerous time for an actress. To paraphrase from a play I directed once called Four Dogs and a Bone, and actress gets three lives: Ingenue, Star, and Someone's Maiden Aunt who's dying of cancer. In the ridiculous age standards of Big Entertainment - and they are our standards dear friends, for Hollywood gives us what we ask them - Lisa was in her prime time, but where was primetime?

Worse, one has to exist. The old joke that inside every actor is a waiter is true. Also inside every actor is a receptionist, office temp, booth attendant, all manner of jobs where the employer hires you on the understanding that if you have to book off for an audition - no problem! Then you need the time and that is a problem.

And it can get very, very lonely. Working actors are surrounded by bonhomie - good times! Cheers! But the relationships are temporary and often born of a quiet desperation. No one can ever fault an actor for finally saying 'The hell with it.'

But Lisa never said those words. She has overcome. Cast in the feature film Quiver over the internet on Skype, she returns home to Thunder Bay in a few weeks to begin shooting. And, her present day job hits a sweet spot for an actress. She works for a casting agency in Vancouver. They will surely understand an actor's needs.

How does Lisa DiGiacinto summarize her own story? 'I feel that the universe (all my jobs and the industry) is all finally supporting me and that I am extremely excited to see what the near future has to offer me! I just feel that some major successes are just around the corner.. but I needed to go through the tough times to get to where I am now, it was all part of the journey.'

Irony and pain and talent and excitement. That - that is an Actress.

Be seeing you.

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