Paper # 3 - Gina Carrano

Gina Carrano

6/4/05

Paper #3

Fame, Interrupted

Many children are born with stars in their eyes. They dream of the bright lights of the stage, of flashbulbs popping, of auditions and callbacks, or maybe just of seeing themselves on TV. When my stepsister, Cassia Bradley, was a child, some of these dreams were her reality—for a little while, anyway. We sat down and discussed her brief childhood acting career, the reasons it got interrupted, and how she felt about stepping into—and then out of—the limelight.

Ever since Cassia was a little girl, she was drawn to acting. When she and her family would sit around their San Fernando Valley home watching TV and a child would come onscreen, she’d wonder if she could do what those kids do—be on TV, that is. She didn’t have to wonder for long; growing up in Los Angeles, where everyone’s in the business and looking for the next great talent, it took only until she was six before she met Diane, a talent manager who recognized her potential and helped her get started.

After meeting and becoming friendly with Cassia and her family at church, Diane informed them that she thought Cassia and her older brother possessed all the tools required to successfully get into acting, particularly in commercials. She cited their friendliness, maturity, likeability and, of course, the all-important cuteness factor, as reasons they would excel in TV, and offered her assistance in hooking them up with some auditions to get them started.

Diane initially approached Cassia’s parents, Tom and Sharon, with her ideas. After they agreed that it would be okay with them to let their kids explore this, they sat down with Cassia and Luke and discussed with them the opportunity at hand and all it entailed. Cassia remembers her parents being very up-front and detailed about the audition process, particularly that they would have to get all dressed up, go on long trips, wait in even longer lines and then recite lines in front of strangers. All of that might deter some children, but Cassia’s parents later told her that was not her intent, they only wanted to make sure their kids fully understood what they were getting into before they got into it. And although some parents may want to push their kids into acting for their own reasons—such as vicarious fulfillment of their own childhood dreams that have gone unrealized—Tom and Sharon left the decision entirely up to Cassia and Luke, telling them all they’d need to know to make an informed decision, and then reminding them that they’d support whatever decision they made.

Although Cassia and Luke felt no pressure from their parents, they wanted to at least try going on a few auditions. They both thought it would be fun, but of the two, Cassia was distinctly more excited about the prospect of acting; she loved getting dressed up and performing scenes from movies or singing songs in front of family and friends. In retrospect, Cassia said, they both knew that if they got any parts in commercials, they would be on TV—in fact, they both thought that was “cool” and it was a major motivating factor in their decision. However, she doesn’t think that either one of them were too terribly aware of the concept of fame at that point in their lives (Cassia was six and Luke was eight.) If Luke was aware of the possibility of attaining some level of fame as a result of doing commercials, she said, he didn’t mention it, and to her at that age, her world didn’t extend very far beyond her family, friends, peers, neighbors and church. She knew that the people she saw on TV and in movies were actors and actresses—which was what she wanted to be—but had never considered the concept that they had an adoring public of fans. And although her experience with commercials would never garner her own group of screaming fans, it certainly did teach her a whole lot about the business of show business.

It was not long after Cassia and Luke had decided to start auditioning for commercials that she came to her first realization—how long everything would take. Before they could go on any auditions, they had to have head shots to give to the casting directors. And before they could get any head shots taken, they had to sharpen what Cassia now calls their “marketable skills”—not only acting but dancing, an element that is often present in commercials featuring children. Diane, the talent manager, helped them with all these preparations; in fact, she often held acting and dancing classes in the church’s recreation room for all the church kids interested in getting into the business. This speaks to the omnipresence of show business in Los Angeles—the bright lights of Hollywood leave their mark everywhere, even in church basements.

Cassia never felt overwhelmed by the large number of her peers who were also looking into acting. In fact, she said it was more of a positive than a negative, both for reasons of moral support—she always had people to go to the auditions with—and practicality—all the kids knew each other from church, and their parents could take turns carpooling them to auditions. She never felt competitive with them, she said, jokingly adding that maybe that’s how she first knew she wasn’t destined to be a star. More than anything, she and Luke were glad to always have friends around to talk to while waiting on those interminable audition lines.

After going through a few months of lessons and head shots, Cassia and Luke finally began the audition process. This sometimes seemed like climbing a mountain, she said, because for every small part that she’d get, there were 10 others she wouldn’t. However, she and Luke both did pretty well at the auditions, landing two or three different jobs each fairly quickly. Within a few months of going on her first audition, Cassia had already landed work in commercials for Oscar Meyer hot dogs, Bounce fabric softener, and even appeared in some print ads for a family-oriented spa. Because she and Luke looked so much alike, directors were often interested in having them appear in family commercials as brother and sister. They were even offered what would have been their biggest role yet in a McDonald’s commercial, but Luke turned down that opportunity once he realized how long a job it was and how much work it would entail, preferring instead to spend his after-school time playing soccer and flying model planes.

Cassia’s biggest “almost famous” moment came when she was seven. She auditioned for a movie called Splash 3 and “got close,” she said, earning several callbacks, one of which included on-location filming at the beach, something she’d never done before. She was filmed standing on a beach along with the actors and actresses that would play her family in the movie, and she even had to learn to wink for the occasion—and to this day, every time she winks, it brings her right back to the scene of a frenzied casting director standing atop a blanket of sand, telling her to twitch her eye as if something was stuck in it.

In the end, Cassia didn’t end up getting the part. But the audition, which was her biggest and most memorable experience in front of the camera, also turned out to be her last one. Shortly after she tried out for the movie, Luke’s interest in acting began to wane. He joined a recreational soccer team and spent most of his days playing and practicing, leaving him with less time to go to auditions. Cassia’s parents were supportive of her continuing to act if she wanted to, but it just seemed less fun without her big brother, so she eventually stopped going to auditions too.

She missed the fun of acting, she said, but there were more things about the audition process she didn’t miss, like waiting on sometimes-endless lines or putting up with the pushy “stage parents” of other kids who were auditioning for the same parts as her. She initially thought that when she was older she would return to acting, and she did consider doing just that when she was about 13, but she quickly learned from talking to her friends who were still auditioning that the older you got, the more serious the business of acting became, and the more intense the competitive atmosphere at auditions got. And although Cassia always enjoyed acting, the stiff competition at auditions wasn’t her scene—she saw acting merely as something fun to do, not as a path to instant fame and fortune. Achieving recognition or renown for acting was never something to which she inspired; instead it was just a hobby for her.

As she grew up, Cassia found other ways to indulge her inner actress without casting directors, callbacks or commercials. In high school, she joined her school’s drama club and acted in several plays. One day she and some castmates in a school play were going over a script with an eye toward changing some of the dialogue, and it was then that she realized her true calling was behind the camera, not in front of it. She went on to take film classes at USC, and there she fell in love with video editing, an activity for which she had an immediate knack. She liked that editing allowed her to be just as creative as acting would, and she knew that while a career in TV editing would be challenging, it would come without the immense pressures that often accompany acting.

Today, Cassia is a college graduate working in an entry-level position at Warner Bros. Studios in Los Angeles. Her position has allowed her many a fascinating glance into the lives of the famous actors and actresses that are often at the studio to shoot episodes of their shows. These actors and actresses are doing the same things she once dreamed of doing as a child, but seeing them at work every day only makes her surer of her decision that behind the scenes is where she’s supposed to be. Her ultimate career goal is to become a producer/writer on a successful and long-running TV show. When asked if she would ever consider making a cameo appearance on a show she produced, she laughed and said she probably wouldn’t be able to turn such an opportunity down, if only for old time’s sake. “Someday I’ll act again,” Cassia said. Until then, she’s more than happy backstage.