C: Was it kind of an even split between ballet and acting when you were younger or was acting almost like a back-up plan? G: My mom always wanted me to have a childhood that wasn’t in the spotlight, so she kept acting a hobby, rather than an actual career path when I was growing up. I’d go to auditions, but I was dancing ballet day-in and day-out. It’s funny though, it was always an even split in my brain. My friends would ask, “If you could pick acting or ballet, which one would you pick?” Acting was always something that I thought, I don’t want to let that go. But I was not good by any means in my middle school years. I was trying so hard to be a good actress, but I just lacked so much life experience and self-realization from being in a ballet room everyday. Also, I was a part of this private home-schooling group — like a private little art school, and I was just in this little bubble of working really, really hard in ballet and school work. I was kinda a hermit. All of the material I would get for auditions, I didn’t quite know how to connect with it. Then when I stopped dancing ballet at eighteen, it was like wow, there’s this whole world out there. I started teaching ballet and also started learning how to simply hang out with friends. [Laughs] And my acting got significantly better. C: What kind of experiences stick out in your mind that prepared you to be a better actor? G: At 18 — and I’m sure a lot of people can relate to this — I had some childhood trauma to confront that I hadn’t confronted my whole life. I had been pushing it down for so many years. So much so that I had actually wiped it from my mind and it came up when I was eighteen — I had the choice to either push it down again or confront it. The process of confronting it, going to therapy, working through the pain, working through all of it — really changed me as a human. Confronting that wound in my life and all that came with it: shame, fear, sadness, loss, anger— literally opened me up so much as a human. I suddenly had so much more understanding for the characters I auditioned for. A lot less judgment. A lot more compassion and empathy. I think diving into the darker parts of our lives and with the painful parts of our lives allows us to engage more fully, when you can make it through, you know? C: Yeah, absolutely. That’s beautiful. G: I think that the injuries with ballet and having a dream slowly die — that’s an experience that I didn’t confront, once again, until I was 20 or 21. It’s something I’ve still been processing the past six years. I didn’t really process it when I was losing it around 16, when I had my injuries and my body was changing. It was so hard to wrap my head around — that something I loved and dedicated, thus far, almost my whole life to, was not something that was going to be feasible for me going forward. I still take classes, and I teach ballet. I started teaching when I was 18, so it’s not like it’s completely out of my life, but even still, I think having that loss occur was kind of a cold, little wake up call for me. You can put in your best efforts but sometimes things don’t work out. C: Yeah, I can’t imagine. I didn’t really stick with any hobbies that intensely when I was younger. I can’t really imagine what that’s like, being so young and having that vision for what your future is going to look like and seeing it change. G: Totally, yes! And a lot of my friends growing up didn’t have a clear vision of what they were doing so I was very, I consider myself to be a bit of a strange child because I was very, very innocent and very much my age, but at the same time very responsible, very driven, and like a little adult pursuing working on set at a young age and knowing what I wanted to do and having the brain and the ability to look at ballerinas and think, alright, so that’s what it’s going to take and I’m gonna do that. And then it didn’t work out! I genuinely feel like I’ve lived two lives sometimes. With acting at one point, I got insanely burnt out. I would say yes to every single audition, because I genuinely was excited! And fearless in auditioning. I was just like ‘let’s go, let’s go, I just want to work.’ I wasn’t booking for a little bit and I got really insecure and doubtful, and I had actually worked with an acting coach who made me question my ability to do what I do. And I remember walking out from her class — I was auditioning for this Frances Ford Coppola movie, and it was this exciting audition — I ran outside and saw her in her car and said, “What do you think?!” I was kind of asking her advice about it and then she stopped and she looked at me and goes, “Here’s the thing about you, when people meet you…you have an amazing team and they hype you up so much that when someone meets you it’s really exciting and you really are impressive, but then over time, you’re just not that great.” C: Oh my god. G: [Laughs] I remember just standing in that parking lot and going, “Oh, right, yeah. Oh, I...I think you’re right. I must be some secret let-down, some secret impostor.” My dad picked me up and I’m in the car processing through what had just happened and within a couple minutes it dawned on me: I have to stop seeing this coach. I have lost my confidence being in her class these past months — I was so confident before this. I think she’s part of the problem of why I’m not as great these days because I’m doubting everything I do because she’s just… this isn’t a good fit for me. And I completely took a break from acting coaches and I went and coached myself. I didn’t want to show anyone my work, I was so scared of being told that I was not that great and that I was some sort of let down or something. C: Yeah. G: So I said, I’m not going to work with any coaches, I’m just going to coach myself, and I got the best feedback from casting directors! I had a director tell me to not let anyone over-direct me or over-coach me because my instincts were good. It was this season of me getting back in touch with myself. It’s funny because when I started to see this acting coach that was so damaging for me, it was around this time that I was losing ballet and I wanted to get back into acting and be the best I could possibly be. I looked for a great coach and she was working with amazing people, and I ended up having such a damaging experience. Then I dropped that and went with my gut, back to my innate passion — and got the best feedback. That was the first time I experienced doubt and it was just literal, verbal words spoken to me. I auditioned for quite a few years and wasn’t booking anything and struggling. For me, a year or two years of no work is not a good sign when your manager’s agents are sending you on audition after audition after audition. You just start to question, okay, what’s going on? Am I just not bookable? What is it?

C: Was it kind of an even split between ballet and acting when you were younger or was acting almost like a back-up plan? G: My mom always wanted me to have a childhood that wasn’t in the spotlight, so she kept acting a hobby, rather than an actual career path when I was growing up. I’d go to auditions, but I was dancing ballet day-in and day-out. It’s funny though, it was always an even split in my brain. My friends would ask, “If you could pick acting or ballet, which one would you pick?” Acting was always something that I thought, I don’t want to let that go. But I was not good by any means in my middle school years. I was trying so hard to be a good actress, but I just lacked so much life experience and self-realization from being in a ballet room everyday. Also, I was a part of this private home-schooling group — like a private little art school, and I was just in this little bubble of working really, really hard in ballet and school work. I was kinda a hermit. All of the material I would get for auditions, I didn’t quite know how to connect with it. Then when I stopped dancing ballet at eighteen, it was like wow, there’s this whole world out there. I started teaching ballet and also started learning how to simply hang out with friends. [Laughs] And my acting got significantly better. C: What kind of experiences stick out in your mind that prepared you to be a better actor? G: At 18 — and I’m sure a lot of people can relate to this — I had some childhood trauma to confront that I hadn’t confronted my whole life. I had been pushing it down for so many years. So much so that I had actually wiped it from my mind and it came up when I was eighteen — I had the choice to either push it down again or confront it. The process of confronting it, going to therapy, working through the pain, working through all of it — really changed me as a human. Confronting that wound in my life and all that came with it: shame, fear, sadness, loss, anger — literally opened me up so much as a human. I suddenly had so much more understanding for the characters I auditioned for. A lot less judgment. A lot more compassion and empathy. I think diving into the darker parts of our lives and with the painful parts of our lives allows us to engage more fully, when you can make it through, you know? C: Yeah, absolutely. That’s beautiful. G: I think that the injuries with ballet and having a dream slowly die — that’s an experience that I didn’t confront, once again, until I was 20 or 21. It’s something I’ve still been processing the past six years. I didn’t really process it when I was losing it around 16, when I had my injuries and my body was changing. It was so hard to wrap my head around — that something I loved and dedicated, thus far, almost my whole life to, was not something that was going to be feasible for me going forward. I still take classes, and I teach ballet. I started teaching when I was 18, so it’s not like it’s completely out of my life, but even still, I think having that loss occur was kind of a cold, little wake up call for me. You can put in your best efforts but sometimes things don’t work out. C: Yeah, I can’t imagine. I didn’t really stick with any hobbies that intensely when I was younger. I can’t really imagine what that’s like, being so young and having that vision for what your future is going to look like and seeing it change. G: Totally, yes! And a lot of my friends growing up didn’t have a clear vision of what they were doing so I was very, I consider myself to be a bit of a strange child because I was very, very innocent and very much my age, but at the same time very responsible, very driven, and like a little adult pursuing working on set at a young age and knowing what I wanted to do and having the brain and the ability to look at ballerinas and think, alright, so that’s what it’s going to take and I’m gonna do that. And then it didn’t work out! I genuinely feel like I’ve lived two lives sometimes. With acting at one point, I got insanely burnt out. I would say yes to every single audition, because I genuinely was excited! And fearless in auditioning. I was just like ‘let’s go, let’s go, I just want to work.’ I wasn’t booking for a little bit and I got really insecure and doubtful, and I had actually worked with an acting coach who made me question my ability to do what I do. And I remember walking out from her class — I was auditioning for this Frances Ford Coppola movie, and it was this exciting audition — I ran outside and saw her in her car and said, “What do you think?!” I was kind of asking her advice about it and then she stopped and she looked at me and goes, “Here’s the thing about you, when people meet you…you have an amazing team and they hype you up so much that when someone meets you it’s really exciting and you really are impressive, but then over time, you’re just not that great.” C: Oh my god. G: [Laughs] I remember just standing in that parking lot and going, “Oh, right, yeah. Oh, I…I think you’re right. I must be some secret let down, some secret impostor.” My dad picked me up and I’m in the car processing through what had just happened and within a couple minutes it dawned on me: I have to stop seeing this coach. I have lost my confidence being in her class these past months — I was so confident before this. I think she’s part of the problem of why I’m not as great these days because I’m doubting everything I do because she’s just… this isn’t a good fit for me. And I completely took a break from acting coaches and I went and coached myself. I didn’t want to show anyone my work, I was so scared of being told that I was not that great and that I was some sort of let down or something. C: Yeah. G: So I was like, I’m not going to work with any coaches, I’m just going to coach myself, and I got the best feedback from casting directors! I had a director tell me to not let anyone over-direct me or over-coach me because my instincts were good. It was this season of me getting back in touch with myself. It’s funny because when I started to see this acting coach that was so damaging for me, it was around this time that I was losing ballet and I wanted to get back into acting and be the best I could possibly be. I looked for a great coach and she was working with amazing people, and I ended up having such a damaging experience. Then I dropped that and went with my gut, back to my innate passion — and got the best feedback. That was the first time I experienced doubt and it was just literal, verbal words spoken to me. I auditioned for quite a few years and wasn’t booking anything and struggling. For me, a year or two years of no work is not a good sign when your manager’s agents are sending you on audition after audition after audition. You just start to question, okay, what’s going on? Am I just not bookable? What is it?

Thankfully, I also had acting in my life. And while I was recovering from my dance injuries I spent a lot of time on the couch watching Oscar-nominated movies; I fell deeper in love with acting. So thankfully, when one door was closing, another door opened up. I teach ballet now and I am a worship leader in a church, so I sing frequently. Acting right now looks like a lot of auditioning. Thankfully in the past five years, my acting career has gotten these deeper roots — I’ve started to see the result of a lot of hard work. I’ve been acting since I was six years old. C: Was it kind of an even split between ballet and acting when you were younger or was acting almost like a back-up plan? G: My mom always wanted me to have a childhood that wasn’t in the spotlight, so she kept acting a hobby, rather than an actual career path when I was growing up. I’d go to auditions, but I was dancing ballet day-in and day-out. It’s funny though, it was always an even split in my brain. My friends would ask, “If you could pick acting or ballet, which one would you pick?” Acting was always something that I thought, I don’t want to let that go. But I was not good by any means in my middle school years. I was trying so hard to be a good actress, but I just lacked so much life experience and self-realization from being in a ballet room everyday. Also, I was a part of this private home-schooling group — like a private little art school, and I was just in this little bubble of working really, really hard in ballet and school work. I was kinda a hermit. All of the material I would get for auditions, I didn’t quite know how to connect with it. Then when I stopped dancing ballet at eighteen, it was like wow, there’s this whole world out there. I started teaching ballet and also started learning how to simply hang out with friends. [Laughs] And my acting got significantly better. C: What kind of experiences stick out in your mind that prepared you to be a better actor? G: At 18 — and I’m sure a lot of people can relate to this — I had some childhood trauma to confront that I hadn’t confronted my whole life. I had been pushing it down for so many years. So much so that I had actually wiped it from my mind and it came up when I was eighteen — I had the choice to either push it down again or confront it. The process of confronting it, going to therapy, working through the pain, working through all of it — really changed me as a human. Confronting that wound in my life and all that came with it: shame, fear, sadness, loss, anger— literally opened me up so much as a human. I suddenly had so much more understanding for the characters I auditioned for. A lot less judgment. A lot more compassion and empathy. I think diving into the darker parts of our lives and with the painful parts of our lives allows us to engage more fully, when you can make it through, you know? C: Yeah, absolutely. That’s beautiful. G: I think that the injuries with ballet and having a dream slowly die — that’s an experience that I didn’t confront, once again, until I was 20 or 21. It’s something I’ve still been processing the past six years. I didn’t really process it when I was losing it around 16, when I had my injuries and my body was changing. It was so hard to wrap my head around — that something I loved and dedicated, thus far, almost my whole life to, was not something that was going to be feasible for me going forward. I still take classes, and I teach ballet. I started teaching when I was 18, so it’s not like it’s completely out of my life, but even still, I think having that loss occur was kind of a cold, little wake up call for me. You can put in your best efforts but sometimes things don’t work out. C: Yeah, I can’t imagine. I didn’t really stick with any hobbies that intensely when I was younger. I can’t really imagine what that’s like, being so young and having that vision for what your future is going to look like and seeing it change. G: Totally, yes! And a lot of my friends growing up didn’t have a clear vision of what they were doing so I was very, I consider myself to be a bit of a strange child because I was very, very innocent and very much my age, but at the same time very responsible, very driven, and like a little adult pursuing working on set at a young age and knowing what I wanted to do and having the brain and the ability to look at ballerinas and think, alright, so that’s what it’s going to take and I’m gonna do that. And then it didn’t work out! I genuinely feel like I’ve lived two lives sometimes. With acting at one point, I got insanely burnt out. I would say yes to every single audition, because I genuinely was excited! And fearless in auditioning. I was just like ‘let’s go, let’s go, I just want to work.’ I wasn’t booking for a little bit and I got really insecure and doubtful, and I had actually worked with an acting coach who made me question my ability to do what I do. And I remember walking out from her class — I was auditioning for this Frances Ford Coppola movie, and it was this exciting audition — I ran outside and saw her in her car and said, “What do you think?!” I was kind of asking her advice about it and then she stopped and she looked at me and goes, “Here’s the thing about you, when people meet you…you have an amazing team and they hype you up so much that when someone meets you it’s really exciting and you really are impressive, but then over time, you’re just not that great.” C: Oh my god. G: [Laughs] I remember just standing in that parking lot and going, “Oh, right, yeah. Oh, I...I think you’re right. I must be some secret let-down, some secret impostor.” My dad picked me up and I’m in the car processing through what had just happened and within a couple minutes it dawned on me: I have to stop seeing this coach. I have lost my confidence being in her class these past months — I was so confident before this. I think she’s part of the problem of why I’m not as great these days because I’m doubting everything I do because she’s just… this isn’t a good fit for me. And I completely took a break from acting coaches and I went and coached myself. I didn’t want to show anyone my work, I was so scared of being told that I was not that great and that I was some sort of let down or something. C: Yeah. G: So I said, I’m not going to work with any coaches, I’m just going to coach myself, and I got the best feedback from casting directors! I had a director tell me to not let anyone over-direct me or over-coach me because my instincts were good. It was this season of me getting back in touch with myself. It’s funny because when I started to see this acting coach that was so damaging for me, it was around this time that I was losing ballet and I wanted to get back into acting and be the best I could possibly be. I looked for a great coach and she was working with amazing people, and I ended up having such a damaging experience. Then I dropped that and went with my gut, back to my innate passion — and got the best feedback. That was the first time I experienced doubt and it was just literal, verbal words spoken to me. I auditioned for quite a few years and wasn’t booking anything and struggling. For me, a year or two years of no work is not a good sign when your manager’s agents are sending you on audition after audition after audition. You just start to question, okay, what’s going on? Am I just not bookable? What is it?