Actors who actually make a living at acting are almost mythical creatures to a lot of us still struggling in the business. We all know luck plays a part in everybody's career. But what do these working actors bring to the table when opportunity comes knocking? And what do they do to help maintain their ability to keep working?

NOW CASTING: I see in your credits that you started acting at the age of ten.

ANDREA MORRIS: That's when I booked my first job. My mom told my brother and me that we could do anything we wanted and she'd support it as long as we researched it and pretty much did it ourselves. So my brother went into exotic reptiles and I typed up a resume. I was ten years old. I made stuff up and got a friend to take my picture, then marched into an agent's office and said that acting was my destiny. (NC laughs) As a kid you can take the subway in Toronto, so I literally did it all myself. My mom taught me how to type, but that was it.

NC: So at ten you knew acting was your destiny. Where did that come from?

AM: I honestly don't remember. I barely remember saying that. Apparently the agent said I cracked him up and so he signed me. I have a globe with LA highlighted with a highlighter from when I was six years old. I guess I knew I was going to end up here and that this is what I wanted to do. I just don't remember how it got in my head.

NC: So tell me about getting a job at twelve.

AM: My best friend back then was Sarah Polley—she directed Away from Her—and we were in the same art school. I was up for the lead in this Canadian MOW, and I knew that she had been offered the part, because she was a really big star even then. I didn't want to bring it up to make our friendship awkward, but we were at PJs Pet Store buying hamsters or something and she mentions, “I'm supposed to do this movie, Take Another Look, and I don't want to do it.” And I was like, “Oh, that's great, because if you don't take it, I'll take it.” So she calls her agent and says that she's backing out of the lead, but she'll take the part of the best friend if I am starring in it. So she basically hooked that whole thing up, and that was one of my earlier credits. (Both laugh) I mean I did audition for it, and I was their runner-up, but of course they wanted her, so she ended up giving her name to the project while still giving me the part. It was a really generous and thoughtful move for anyone, much less such a young girl. I was very grateful and we had a lot of fun.

NC: So you did Take Another Look with Sarah…

AM: And after that I did Margaret's Museum with Helena Bonham Carter. I learned a lot from Sarah and Helena early on.

NC: What did you learn from Sarah?

AM: Well, she's an incredible actress, so I learned a lot about acting. I also learned a lot of practical stuff on set mostly by the way she handled herself. We were not very much alike. She was very diplomatic and experienced and I was clueless. She was four years old when she made The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, the biggest blockbuster of it's time. So she knew all this stuff and very gently told me what I was doing wrong and what I could be doing in different ways. It was extremely informative. And then with Helena, it was just watching her. I really loved her. I had seen A Room with a View and thought she was incredible. And she taught me a lot of practical stuff about how to protect myself.

NC: Can you give me an example of something you learned acting-wise from Helena?

AM: Stillness. She was always very calm and still. She's motherly too. She had this calming effect on the set. If she had an idea she'd whisper it to the director, not to override his direction. There were a couple of love scenes where I was just mortified throughout because I was supposed to be this little seductress, and I was too young to handle it. She was very good at finding ways for me to deal with that.

NC: I would imagine you were completely hooked on acting after that.

AM: Yes and no. I was really mesmerized by sets. It's such an organic whole. And the fact that when I'm shooting, I have a memory of what I'm shooting and I have an experience of what I'm shooting, but then when I see it, it's so completely different from what I remember. The difference in perspective between mine and the camera's of the exact same event—I've always found that so fascinating. I think that's why I like film more than stage. After Margaret's Museum I worked on Road to Avonlea. But shortly after that I had a complete nervous breakdown. I needed to go to college and not do anything related to acting because there was too much pressure. I was moving back and forth between Toronto and New York from the time I was fourteen, then to Los Angeles when I was sixteen, and it was too much. I was at the point in which the only roles I could get were characters that were terrified. I would book those. I was very skinny and had an agent tell me I needed a boob job to even out my look. So I had to leave it all.

NC: At what age did you realize you were at the point of a breakdown and you needed to go to school?

AM: By the time I was seventeen I was having these mini-anxiety attacks. I was represented by a really big agency and they'd get me out all the time. So I'd go on these auditions and the casting director would look at me and I'd have these mini-attacks. I kept going because I was determined to follow through even though I would botch them. And then one day I remember being in my agent's office and telling him I didn't feel like I had a right to exist on the planet unless I knew more about it. All I knew was this industry and I had over-focused. So I needed to counter that.

NC: Did you find, at that age, how you were treated on a set became different than you were in real life?

AM: Well, I think actually, on set it was alright. It was the pressure of auditioning and booking work and adults having a lot riding on me. Like my manager came out to LA with me and she was counting on me. Everybody was saying I was going to be the next, you know, Natalie Portman, or Claire Danes, or whatever, and it was just a lot of pressure to book. When I was on a set, I was relatively okay, but even then, it was a lot of pressure. I was a virgin, and there was a lot of sex, and it was very intimidating. Adults would make advances and stuff. I just couldn't handle it.

NC: That would do it.

AM: (Laughs) I didn't realize it at the time. I was like, “I've got to get stronger, I've got to be able to handle this. It's what I want.” But now looking back at it, I'm really glad I took the time off to go to college. I needed it. Santa Monica College was one of the best experiences of my life. It's a wonderful college. Ironically, although nobody had ever offered me drugs in the industry, during my first day at Santa Monica College, somebody was in my bathroom offering me coke. (Both laugh) I called my Dad and said, “This is where you want me? Really?”

NC: Did your Dad freak?

AM: No. He didn't know what to do at that point. My poor father. The age of majority is sixteen in Canada so they couldn't keep me there and I was already in the United States. I'm a dual citizen. The age of majority here is eighteen and so I was living across from high school and I'd walk down my street and get ticketed for truancy. I could have been taken into foster care. So it was a really weird kind of situation, a few years of purgatory.

NC: Before you went to college, did you have any stage experience, or was it all film and television?

AM: I think the reason people love stage so much is that's normally where you start. My theory is you fall in love with what you start with and I started in film. I did do a stage play and it was a big success in Canada. It was a beautiful theatre, 900 people, we had a full house most nights, and I did it for three months, but I absolutely hated the experience. I'd fall asleep on stage when I was supposed to be in a tableau (NC laughs). I was bored out of my mind. I didn't like the repetitiveness of it. I'm a perfectionist, and I really like attacking a scene and working it out and leaving it. And then what you can do in editing I find so interesting. On a stage it feels a little one-dimensional. It's like what you see is what you get and that never clicked for me.

NC: What made you get a degree in Philosophy?

AM: The big questions, mortality and all that stuff. I was particularly interested in philosophy of mind and psychology of emotion to find out why I had the breakdown and left what I wanted to do most. So I transferred to Cal State LA, ended up doing a lot of cognitive psychology, started a Master's, and then I got back into acting.

NC: How did that happen?

AM: I knew I could possibly be a professor and not be an actor ever again. I would leave film and essentially leave LA. So I decided to approach Vincent Cirrincione, Halle Berry's manager, told him I had these credits and was thinking about getting back into it. He saw me, he saw some of my work, really liked it, and I ended up booking two movies back to back.

NC: What was that like coming back onto a set again after a four year break?

AM: It was really, really, really great. And it's always those jobs that get you hooked, and then you have to audition again (both laugh). It's those stretches of work, and then you slave away at what really is our work, which is auditioning and hustling.

NC: Yes.

AM: It was great. I felt like I was learning all over again. And having forgotten what I had learned made me better. I think I was my best when I was a child. I'm just getting back to that now, forgetting all the technique and crap that I learned in school. It was really important to forget all that.

NC: You went to an acting academy, is that correct?

AM: When I was a kid in New York I went to American Academy of Dramatic Arts. It was a youth program for four months. I barely ever went because they had a policy where you couldn't audition and that seemed absurd to me. I learned more in three days next to Helena than I did in three months there, so it just didn't make any sense to me.

NC: Who have been your greatest mentors so far?

AM: Grace Zabriskie is a big one. She's a very balanced, creative individual who does everything by her own standards and her own kind of rhythm.

NC: How did you meet her?

AM: I met her on the set of a movie called Brothel. I didn't know of her work, and I was working next to her and this other actress Sarah Lassez—they're both fantastic and I hadn't ever heard of them. It wasn't till after the movie where I was like, “Oh my god, I was working with them?!” (Laughs) But Grace and I became friends and she's really helped me through a lot of stuff in this business. She has a great perspective. She's had a very interesting career. She didn't start acting professionally until later on in her creative career and she doesn't cow-tow to the industry in any way. If you hear her on the phone with her agent, it's quite funny. “Yes. Yes. Uh-huh.” Click. Many actors talk a lot or even whine. (Both laugh). So, besides her, Sarah and Helena, the biggest influences have been from afar, people I watch, respect, and try and find out what they're doing.

NC: Like who?

AM: Like Jane Lynch, Leslie Mann, and Kaitlin Olson.

NC: What is it about them that you watch?

AM: They're amazing comediennes. They're really remarkable actresses and I think that's the hardest form of what we do. It's very easy once you get the hang of it to be small and interesting, but to really take risks and have that straight face and be able to pull off the timing and comedy, it's more like handling a musical instrument.

NC: Have you always been drawn to comedy?

AM: I've always liked it but I never thought I was naturally a good comedienne. But when I saw “40 Year Old Virgin”, I just loved what they were doing and so I started to veer more and more away from drama. I don't care for heavy dramas. I just don't understand the point (NC laughs). I like dramas that have levity in them.

NC: When did you decide to teach, and why?

AM: I wanted to learn how to direct. That was my primary focus. Then I got the idea that I could live off teaching acting and the proceeds from acting jobs I'd invest in my own productions. I got an editing suite. I got the camera and equipment.

NC: When did you decide to form your own production company?

AM: I was on Seventh Heaven for a year, which was a great experience, but it gave me a big realization. You know, how you'll say, “I want to be a regular on a series” or something like that, and then you get it, and you're like, “Okay, well, that didn't thoroughly fulfill me.” (Both laugh) By then I had started to put myself on tape. I was one of the first people to do online auditioning. It was always a private link. My agent would send it out to casting directors, and it'd go straight to producers 80% of the time for stuff I would have never been seen for otherwise. I was up for the role of the Sonia Baker in State of Play. At the time it was a pivotal character with Brad Pitt and Ed Norton attached. I met with Kevin McDonald, the director, for like an hour and he told me how we were going to shoot it. He's like, “I'll see you in a few weeks”, but the deal memo never came through.

I was a little frustrated after that. I mean, I've been in this business, I'm not green, and I'm a competent professional. And I realized I wanted more control. It was ridiculous being at the whims of other people. I knew I was doing great auditions. But I also had to do my own thing.

That's how I ended up teaching. I had hired my fiancé to read with me, and we'd do online auditioning all day, everyday and it was opening a lot of doors. And I had proof they were good auditions, no matter the feedback, my agent and I would watch my own audition and know I nailed it. I also knew I could show people how to do great on-camera auditions. And auditioning is the most important thing we do in our field. On-camera auditions are what get sent on to producers and directors. And it's an area where we have some control.

The strike happened, everything slowed down, and I knew I had to generate an income. I had money from Seventh Heaven. I invested it all in equipment and then we just started shooting LA Sucks, which was not meant to be a web series. It was just meant to be like figuring out the equipment.

NC: What was the angle you went with in terms of teaching?

AM: I had been to so many different acting coaches, and the analytic approach just crippled me. Anything with super objectives and intentions and beats and all that, it just crippled me. I find that my body can pick it up. And it's more fun for me that way. I think many actors can pick it up physically and emotionally without getting too heady. I have my doubts whether all that intellectual stuff even reads. So along with developing my own technique by working every day on camera, I also came to understand that so many actors don't know that their choices don't translate on camera. You really have to throw out your instincts and re-establish them according to what the camera sees. The camera is such a different eye from the naked eye. And instincts…I know everybody's like, “oh, trust your instincts.” But instincts about food and shelter, those are primal and real and we have those innately. But other instincts, especially based on film work, that's cultivated. That doesn't come with birth, you know? You don't have instincts about driving until it becomes unconscious. And it's the same thing with camera work. You really have to…really have to work with the camera intensely and in a very intimate way. It's laser surgery. I think Michael Caine said that.

NC: Yes.

AM: So, that's what I do here. And I put auditions online. Actors come in with material like I was doing and still do. I put them online, send them a private video link. The actor forwards it to their agent, and the agent forwards it on to casting. Privacy is very important. The link is not traceable by Google or any search engine. It's hidden and kept strictly between the actor, their rep and casting. It's imperative actors have respect for unproduced material. Some actors upload auditions on Youtube. That's a big mistake.

NC: Has there been a surprise reward in any of the teaching?

AM: I'm learning a ton about directing and acting. I love it. I wasn't sure I wanted to direct. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do other than I wanted more control. I didn't want to be at the whims of others, waiting by the phone for the audition or the call that you've booked. I knew I just couldn't get any older and still be doing that full time. So teaching ended up really reinforcing the fact that I love directing, and working with actors.

NC: When did you first start writing?

AM: I've always written, but I wouldn't say I'm very good at it. Actually, I'm not as good an actor, director, or writer as I am an editor. I can edit writing. If you give me a body of work I can really see how it should be cut together. The same is with film. I can really see how to cut something together. Or at any rate, I have a very distinct vision. So writing, I wouldn't say it's the easiest thing. I recently completed a full-length screenplay “The Untitled Super Mysterious Project” which is now in development, but it didn't come easily. I wouldn't say I'm a natural at writing. I don't think many people are. I think a lot more people think they are than are.

NC: Tell me more about that.

AM: Well…(laughs), it goes without saying, the bulk of what you audition for isn't Shakespeare. And it's somehow gotten a budget behind it. I don't know how that happens. (NC laughs) It's amazing. When you think about how hard it can be to forge ahead in this business, and then you read this stuff and go, how did that get there? It's just such a paradox. And, of course, writers feel this way about actors too, when actors show up for auditions or even for work unprepared and unprofessional. So although I'm working at it, I wouldn't consider myself a writer. Creating something from scratch has never been my strong suit. I know writers who are fantastic, they're just brilliant. I don't know how they do it. I don't think I'll be doing much of it because it's painful working so hard at something you're not necessarily great at.

NC: It seems that part of life is teasing out what you're great at from what you're good at.

AM: Exactly. And disabusing yourself of the notion that you're really good at a whole lot of things (laughs).

NC: When you act, is it that you want to tell the truth or that the camera forces you to tell the truth?

AM: I guess it's a bit of both. The camera sits there like a lie detector. It catches everything. When I'm talking to someone I might not catch what the camera catches. It's such a voyeur. Like when I'm watching someone on camera, I'm not participating in the conversation so I can literally pick everything apart. When I watch myself I'm horrified until I get it right. It's an amazing mirror. It's better than the mirror. I can't look in a mirror and practice my lines and get what I get from the camera.

NC: Right.

AM: It forces me to be true or to give up. (Laughs)

NC: Aside from creating an opportunity, what does writing give you that acting can't?

AM: Control. It makes me sound like a control freak, but anyone who's an actor knows how much control is lacking. So instead of sitting there every day waiting for some other project to come by that I don't necessarily even want but I'm desperate to get because I need to work for my health insurance or blah blah blah, I can sit in front of a computer, go over my material, and not have to show it to anyone until it's absolutely what I am comfortable putting forward. Whereas in acting, I can go in and maybe I'm not comfortable with that take, but that's the one they're going to use. It's a very different way of performing, I guess. I get my own ideas on the page. It's more control because it's more analytic. I mean, you give up control as an actor. You want spontaneity and improvisation and impulse to infiltrate your performance and take you somewhere else. It's very meditative. But with writing, it satisfies that other side of you.

NC: What brought you to the decision to produce your own web series?

AM: Well, it wasn't originally a web series. It was something that after we shot and put together was pretty funny and people told us we should market it. One of the stars of LA Sucks has a grandmother who was bridge partners with Jeff Zucker's grandmother and he put in some calls for us. We got some meetings, but it was September of 08. Actors were stale-mating and the economy fell through, so there was no hope that we were going to be able to turn it into a pilot for TV. And at that point, I was getting a dose of reality about what shopping a show is like. I had prepared myself, but you can never really prepare yourself. So ultimately we put it online to try and get an audience for it. And for now I'm working on feature-based stuff, but in the same kind of comedic genre.

NC: Once you had the idea for LA Sucks, as it emerged, what came next? Who you would work with or how you would tell the story?

AM: It is mostly improvisational but I had every scene worked out in my head. One of my students and good friend was really good at accents and I had this idea for a character brewing so I had him over, stuck fangs in his mouth, and asked him to start talking with one of his accents. And it all came alive. Then we started to improvise time capsules, which ended up being the video. It was shot on a smaller camera, not professional equipment, and we had a boom that stuck into the side of the camera, and we'd hold the boom between our legs when we were shooting. It was very fly-by-night but it was funny and it cut together well. So I ended up keeping it. There was nothing professional about it but I like the home-spun quality. You can do a lot with very little now if you have a few basic things.

NC: Then you went out on the streets. So where did you find your camera operator? Where did you find your people?

AM: Our camera operator was our DP, and our crew consisted of three people. We ended up getting some really cool locations because you put the camera on a stick, on a telescopic pole, and it's as good as a steady cam for a lot of what we we're doing. We'd sneak into places and just start shooting until they kicked us out. It was so much fun shooting like that. There's something to be said for a well put together production, but going in, shooting, and then coming home and quickly playing it back to see what we got was exciting.

NC: It must make for an interesting editing process.

AM: One of our friends was our main editor. She's worked on Brothers & Sisters and The Sarah Connor Chronicles. She was actually on set and did a lot of the boom-holding. She's one of these very quiet but observant people who can catch things and say, “Oh, no, you don't want to shoot that because it'll mess you up in editing.” So she and I edited for a number of months before she had to get back to work. And because the shooting was such a hodgepodge, all the writing was done in post. I ended up taking it to two other editors and then learning to edit myself to finish it up.

NC: What did that teach you?

AM: Everything. You realize everything in post. I love editing. I have such respect for editors because it's amazing what can be done in the editing room. We lost 90% of the footage that was really funny because it couldn't cut together. We didn't have two cameras so we couldn't cut away from somebody because their hand was in the wrong position. Everything we screwed up in shooting, I learned in post. It's such a wonderful process because you really put your story together. But it can also be horrible when you realize this long piece of wonderful footage is just trash. That's why I don't necessarily want to do a lot of improv again.

NC: Tell me more about why improv made it so difficult in the editing room.

AM: When you're doing a master shot, you have the entire scene, the lines, the physicality around each line, so you have a general idea of where you're going to cut. When you're improvising you have no clue! Somebody can go on a tangent, you turn around for coverage, and they're not in the same ballpark as the master shot. One thing we've learned with improvisation, you can never repeat yourself or it loses that quality. And if you compare improvised work to scripted work, it looks different. Maybe it's because you're thinking from a different part of your brain, but it's very detectable. And I found we couldn't mix the two. You really had to stick with one or the other.

NC: Once you had it together, what was it like pitching the story?

AM: That was hard. There was a lot of interest but a lot of people wanted to retool it, losing what I actually thought was good about it. I think there are different generations of comedy, of what's funny. LA Sucks is a very specific demographic. 35 and over is hit or miss—and a lot of misses. But people under that age range—particularly males under 25—really get this type of humor. I think it's the Youtube generation. But slightly older people don't necessarily see that humor. It's the same generation that doesn't necessarily get The Office. Like most of my father's generation don't find it funny. They find it stressful. Ricky Gervais doesn't appeal to them, that kind of awkward humor. And also it doesn't matter what my credits are in acting, I was new at this. They'd offer me a little money and then want to shove me aside. All that control I worked so hard to cultivate was going to dissolve. The idea was nobody would ever see the original LA Sucks. They'd see some version that's been completely reworked by someone else to appeal to a broader audience. My friends couldn't be in it even though they were great in the original. But they're just not this, or they're not that name, or they don't have this look, you know. You find yourself in a position again where you have no room to do your own thing.

NC: So you made the decision to go to the internet and you had to deal with web people. How was that?

AM: That's a lot more fun because you can publicize it your own way, but it's hard to reach an audience. We just recently signed on with an internet PR person who does a lot of web stuff and promoting web series online. The whole goal of LA Sucks now is to generate an audience who really gets our type of humor. There's an audience out there. It doesn't appeal to the broadest of audiences, it's specific, which is fine for low budget. And I think the future is catering to more specific niches as it becomes significantly easier and cheaper to make a film. I want to do my next project professionally, with a lot more forethought, but having already cultivated a specific audience.

NC: So you think LA Sucks has become a marketing tool for your next project?

AM: Yes and I like being part of this whole group of people who are taking things into their own hands and taking risks and doing interesting stuff and risking being bad. And I'd like to qualify that, because there is a lot of crap online. I really think it's important to take risks but to also spend a whole lot of time with what you're doing to make it the best, and something you're proud of. We did everything we could with LA Sucks. And yes, if I had the resources or experience it could be a million times better. As a perfectionist, that's what I always think. Interestingly, when I see the studios and networks really trying to make great stuff I now understand how hard it is to do that. I'm amazed that shows like The Shield or It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia or The Office get made. And weekly they churn it out! It's incredible.

NC: It is amazing how difficult that is to maintain.

AM: We get sheltered from that as actors in our trailers. To really try and put something together, the scope of it is just awesome.

NC: So you act, you write, you teach, and now you produce. When you wake up in the morning, do you think of yourself as being in a fast-moving river or in a state of discovery?

AM: A whirlpool (Laughs). And I only say that because I had a whirlpool dream last night. Before you called I was Googling it to find out the meaning. It doesn't bode well. (Laughing) Yeah, it's really fast and overwhelming. Nobody knows what's going to happen.

NC: It seems that the industry, however it's going to change, is heading towards the internet.

AM: Yes. It's an interesting time because we're all working with blinders. I've heard so many different speculations, but nobody knows. I do think there'll be a lot more work. The internet is kind of massive. Even though there are hundreds of cable stations, there are already millions of YouTube channels. However, whether or not we're going to be able to support ourselves that way is a whole other thing. I just got a residual check from Seventh Heaven—before this last contract was ratified—and it's very small. And now it's going to be incredibly less. With the internet we're going to have to write, produce and direct and do our own thing because we're passionate about it. Living off acting has never been something I've expected —unless I hit it big and win the lottery in the acting world.

NC: I've often felt that living out here is like living in Las Vegas if you're an actor.

AM: Absolutely. It really is the lottery. So many people want to be famous, and there's such a huge pool of people who want to knock it out of the ballpark. And many haven't a clue about anything other than wanting to be famous. You don't need schooling or experience to say you're an actor. You don't need anything other than to look cute and maybe know someone. So if you're waiting for the phone to ring, you're playing the lotto. You're waiting for your lucky number to come in. And you might have the illusion of control because you worked really hard on your audition, but being a good actor simply gets you a ticket to play the lotto. If you've ever been behind the camera and worked for the casting director, you really get that sense that it is luck. So essentially, you're leaving your fate up to chance unless you also start creating your own work.

Find out more about Andréa at andreamorris.com
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