I honestly don't even know how I got into acting. It happened so quickly because my mom and sister used to do commercials, and apparently when I was little I would unbuckle myself from the stroller and crash their auditions.
Even when I was really young, I hated doing commercials, because I would say, "That's not real acting." And it's not. It's embarrassing what they make little kids do in commercials.
My one piece of advice to anyone trying to do acting - this would just be to keep going. It sounds really basic, but I went to 121 auditions my first year in L.A. That is no exaggeration, because I keep lists - I know it's a little psychotic - of every audition that I have ever been to. I went to 121 auditions and I got none. But who cares?
When I was little, I didn't even know what acting was. But I was in commercials - baby toy commercials like Fisher-Price.
I used to belong to a family unit, with a foster mom and dad and my little sister, Bean, but that's over and I don't want to talk about what happened , or how unfair it was. Not yet. The less said about that the better, because if there's one thing I learned from Ryter it's that you can't always be looking backward or something will hit you from the front.
It was always fun auditioning for commercials, because that was the beginning of my career, and me figuring out how I was going to portray myself as an actress vs. a model, because models were very different back then in the early '70s. They didn't usually hire models for acting. But I acted first in commercials and then I did modeling, so it was a little different.
I got started acting by going to auditions that my mom found in the entertainment section of our local news paper. Then, I got a manager and started going out on more auditions.
I do very little on-camera acting, so within a phrase as a voice actor you have to know how to convey when someone is 95 years old or 19 years old. . . When I was the lead singer of the California Raisins commercials there was a traditional actor there as well and he would do all these body movements without saying anything because he was "acting." And the only acting the microphone picked up on was silence.
When I was little, my mom was an actress, and she still is now, and she'd go on commercial auditions, and if they needed a mom and a son, she'd take me along, and that's how I got started.
I used to have a sister, but I never got to meet her because she died after two days, I think. So if I got a tattoo, it would probably have to be something to do with my sister.
My sister pursued acting, and one day, I was like, 'Hey, I want to do acting, too' - this was just in commercials - and then one day, I got an audition for my first movie, 'Smurfs 2,' and I did it.
I was cast in commercials, music videos, and booked a lot of modeling jobs. But my acting career never took off because I was holding myself back. I was acting across from male partners who didn't know that I am trans. I was being taught by teachers who didn't know.
I always think that some of those moms who are rocking cool fashion looks while walking their little babies in a stroller is just the bomb. You don't have to, all of a sudden, have to transition into 'mom' outfits from the '90s just because you became a mom.
It's only in acting where I've heard in auditions, 'Can you black it up a little bit? Can you make her a little bit more urban?' And it's just like, 'What?' I don't even know the word for that.
I'm not really sure if I have anything that inspires me. I think what goes into my work is everything beforehand that I do with my dad. He teaches me acting, and I think maybe without him it would be pretty hard. I started acting for fun, really, because my dad's an actor and my sister's an actor, so I started doing it and it was normal. But it got places really fast, and I started doing feature film auditions and stuff.
Honestly, as hard a profession as acting is, I think music is even harder. Acting, you're like a leech, because someone else does the hard part for you. They write it for you, then the director tells you what to do. You really just need to know how to pay attention, follow instructions.
I used to be really shy, and I think something happened in my brain where I was like, 'All right, I don't care anymore. I'm just going to be myself.' So I went to school wearing eyeliner and eye shadow, and they called my mom, telling her it was a distraction. My mom fought the school, and I got to wear makeup every day.