✨Actor Headshots✨
1) she only drinks unpasteurized milk
2) she CAN’T WAIT to meet, but *will* need to reschedule
3) she’ll eat your merger for breakfast
4) she definitely judges you for reading Romantasy
5) she can identify your star sign within minutes of meeting
6) she’s *just making sure* you signed up for your PTA duty?
I have my first audition since 2016 today (omg this is exciting!) and am actively looking to do shorts so I can build my reel, get repped, and start going out for co-stars. Filmmaker friends, I live for high status comedic characters, and I can still cry on command. If you have an appropriate role, I’d love to read for you!
Big thanks to @huebnerheadshots for these amazing shots. Everyone should shoot with Leah! And @makeupby_ady for making me look so good! 🔥🐎 LFG
I finally got director portraits! And here is some real talk. Ever since I became a director, I’ve thought a lot about how I present to the world. I didn’t admit that I wanted to direct until I was 30, because there is a very specific idea of what a director looks like, and it is not me. I had also internalized many people telling me I was not a director, because I went to drama school instead of film school, because I was copy and not art, because I “didn’t know about lenses.” (Spoiler alert, lenses are not some unobtainable mystery. You can learn about them on the internet, and if you just work with a good DP you’ll refine your taste and learn more specifics as you get more experience on set!) Practicality drives on set fashion, but I’ve made a choice to be more feminine when I’m at film festivals, or promoting myself and my work. I have always loved a good menswear moment, but when it came time to style myself for portraits, I decided that nothing is nothing more me than tutus and combat boats. This has been my uniform since college (swipe for proof,) but I also wanted to make a statement. I am a director, and dressing like a punk rock cupcake doesn’t make me any less competent. The best art is created when there are different perspectives behind the work, you don’t need to be a white guy in a baseball cap to run a set. Okay rant over, hire me to shoot your commercial, xoxo!
📸: @huebnerheadshots 💄: @makeupby_ady 💕💫
Today I finished a self tape class to determine if I want to get back into acting, and spoiler alert… I do! I’m getting back into acting! I haven’t auditioned regularly since the early 2010’s, when I shifted my focus to writing and soon after, directing. That hustle isn’t going anywhere, but returning to my first love has been on my heart for a long time, so here we are. I’m a director/writer/classically trained actor.
This is a terrifying thing to put out there as the industry dies around us, but I lived through hell this year and what’s life if we’re not living it, amirite?! For the sake of the algo, I dug through old headshots and… look at this fresh faced baby. So serious. So into a wide belt. So ready to audition for Gossip Girl. Filmmaker friends, make her day! If you need a yoga mom, a hard ass lawyer, or some other type of high status 30-40something actor in your film, I’d love to audition for you. Long live art made by and starring humans!
I was clinically diagnosed with Endometriosis at 38, after years of “unexplained infertility.” It takes an average of 7-12 years to be diagnosed with this horrible chronic disease - mine should have been found at least a decade earlier when I was in and out of my OBGYN’s office so often he joked that I had a “frequent flyer pass.” But in spite of a cyst on my right ovary the size of a clementine, I was told to wait for surgery until I was done having kids, as I risked losing the ovary, and the ONE study done on this concluded that IVF outcomes are better pre-surgery. But this spring, that cyst grew to the size of an orange, and I was told to stop lifting anything heavy, including groceries, because I was at risk of ovarian torsion, and needed surgery ASAP.
It was so much worse than any doctor expected. Stage 4 Deeply Infiltrating Endometriosis had taken over my entire pelvis. I was not surprised, as I’ve known something was wrong my whole adult life. The anger and frustration about the decades of gaslighting were so much worse than the physical pain of recovering from being “scooped out like a watermelon” (thanks @thealux for that apt description).
At least 1 in 10 people who menstruate suffer from this disease. ONE IN TEN. And yet, because this is a “woman’s disease,” so little is known about it that most GYNECOLOGISTS can’t recognize it. Even if they could, there is no way to officially diagnose without cutting you open and testing the tissue. And chances are, if it’s not impacting your fertility, they won’t care unless you advocate for yourself.
So here I am, at 40, finally with an official diagnosis, and ready to thrive. This disease has never held me back - I’ve spent my whole career working through the pain, because I had no other choice. But I’m excited to finally have some control over it. And part of that means being open. The only people who should feel shame about this disease are those in the medical community who have ignored it forever.
(More in comments)
Life has been LIFING, but I managed to crank out the first draft of my Riot Grrrl horror-action-comedy with days to spare before my endo excision surgery. She’s a thicc girl (142 pages oops!) but even though I need to take a machete to her, I’m more excited than I’ve been about a first draft in a very long time. This one is special.
Friends, it’s brutal out there, but the robot overlords can’t stop us from making art!
Mimsy would like the world to know that she singlehandedly felled this tree in order to take down the squirrels. It was definitely Mimsy and not the tornado warning and 90mph winds.
🪩🔥 This Sunday April 13th DJ EDC is bringing you a fiery playlist for you to work out all your rage on the dancefloor! You don't want to miss it 🔥🪩 RSVP 🔗 in b10!
✨The Yeti Twins ✨ @aaronjburdette and @willgcooper have written the dumbest, most hilarious scripted podcast, and a few weeks ago, I helped produce and co-direct the pilot episode with a truly insane cast (more to come on that,) and collaborate with some of my favorite crew. But I also got to go in front of the mic for the first time in a zillion years to voice a couple small characters and, like everything else about this project, it was a damn delight.
When people hear that I started as an actor, they ask if I miss it, and the truth is, I do! But acting is secondary to my desire to direct, and building a career as a director/writer is so consuming, I haven’t pursued it seriously in over a decade. Anydo, this project is special, I’m stupid proud of Will and Aaron, happy to know I can still cry on command, and can’t wait to share mooooooore!!
📸: @damon_loves_u
If you ever wondered where @willgcooper got his dad jokes, you shouldn’t be surprised to know that they came from his father, the Right Revered Dr. William H. Cooper Jr (his preferred moniker.) Bill loved his family an immeasurable amount, and he leaves behind an enormous, unclosable hole in our hearts. 🖤
My favorite human on the planet turns 40 today. @willgcooper is the sweetest, most humble, hardworking partner anyone could ask for, and he’s taking the big 4-0 a lot better than I did, as evidenced in this photo from last night’s sunset hike where he’s not having a full meltdown (Mimsy, however, was at peak maniac.) Happy Birthday, Will! You make everything brighter for everyone around you, and you deserve nothing but good in the year ahead. 💕
