Just to find out about the other side of the business, I enrolled for work as an extra. After two years of days that sometimes turned into sixteen hours of work, I gave that up. Not that I didn’t enjoy meeting people and eating pretty good food, but it meant hours of waiting until the wrangler would call us to the set. We were told, ”You are important to the film.” But I wanted to use those wasted hours for workshops, for on-camera work and scenes with other hopefuls. Quickly I graduated to roles in film schools. What a joy to work with those young, enthusiastic students!
When the biggest reward came along in the form of a real commercial, I knew I was going to stick with it into my old age. Since the commercial tried to show how older people should exercise to stay healthy, all one could see of me were my legs going up and down.
More chances for TV came along, a bit more up-scale. Often what’s going on behind the scene is more interesting than what’s happening in front of the cameras. Talk about fancy and complicated machinery! Once the scene had to be stopped because my stomach was growling. The sensitive sound equipment had picked that up.
Although my age group wasn’t in great demand, I could wait for whatever and whenever my agent found something for me. To my despair I had to change agents four times. One went back to acting again, another one disappeared without a good bye, the next one “couldn’t do anything for me”. I couldn’t believe it! It’s all part of that elusive thing called show business.
Something quite different happened when I got chosen for stage plays. There I had to show the audience in the back row all my emotions with big movements and project my voice as much as possible. Even more fun!
In the meantime my husband reconciled himself to the fact that I was acting up once in a while and stopped worrying about me competing for an Oscar.
For myself? I was glad to have taken the steps to do the one thing that had been niggling in the back of my mind all these years. So far I have a page-long resume to show for it and lots of enjoyable hours to look back on as well as hoping for many more to come.
Footnote:
I taught piano for thirty years, starting with my own children (quite a feat!) and played for various ballet studios, including my own daughter’s. After that I started writing in earnest. When I was close to 64 years old I started my try at acting. I still am whenever the opportunity arises. My main hobby is writing now. My newest book has just been okayed for publishing (# six).
