As an actress, it’s important to always be honing my skills. There are a couple of ways to do this. 1) You either do it on set which is not always conducive to experimentation or 2) you take a workshop. I must say, when the coach is good, I love a good workshop but most of these workshops focus on your performance skills. I started taking an online self-tape workshop with Greg Apps, a casting director from Sydney Australia which I am enjoying immensely because he’s introduced me to an entirely new way to think about how I put myself on tape – and that is from the point of a casting director. Surprisingly, that doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with your acting ability. It’s all about how to be surprising and standout. I mean, think about it. The casting directors look at the same scenes all day long. They can probably recite the lines themselves. So you’ve got to do something to makes yourself stand out from the rest of the actors. The way to be entirely unique is to be yourself.

I always try and find the similarities within the characters I play to myself. We all have thousands of facets inside of us that are cut and polished based on our life’s circumstances. If you keep that in mind, it’s not too hard to find the things you share. This is important because then you are being true to yourself and the character and in doing so, will be entirely unique.

I usually get cast in really heavy, dramatic things (which I love) but Greg has introduced me to another side of my acting persona and that’s the comedian. I had an absolute blast doing this Rom Com self-tape. My son, Marc, who loathes helping me, even had fun. I’d love to get your feedback.